Launching a brand new, shiny website for your company should be a good thing, right? It should modernize and boost the company’s online presence and increase the website’s visibility across the internet…. well, not always.
Most website developers are not SEO experts, and though they have the very best intentions to deliver a beautiful, new website, all the hard work that was put into optimizing the original website for search engines could unknowingly be undone with the launch of a new site.
In this article, I’ll break down the most common items overlooked when a new website is launched. Keep in mind, these only pertain to launching a new website in place of an already existing optimized website.
#1- URL Changes
Even small URL changes = a brand new URL!
If a URL for a page is currently indexed and it gets changed to a new URL, a 301 redirect must be put in from the /old-url/ to the /new-url/.
But what most people don’t realize, even the smallest changes count—Google sees just one character difference as a totally different URL. It’s not uncommon for these small changes to be overlooked or not realized as a URL change.
Here are a couple of examples that I’ve seen in the past:
www.website.com/blog/name-of-blog-article/ >>>> www.website.com/blogs/name-of-blog-article/
The “blog” subfolder was changed to plural “blogs”
www.website.com/name-of-service-page/ >>>> www.website.com/name-of-service-page
The new page is missing the trailing slash
www.website.com >>>> website.com
Even changing the website from www to non-www version is a new URL!
If URL changes are planned to take place on the new website, a 301 redirect map needs to be put into place and implemented immediately after launch. However, if the plan is to keep URLs exactly the same, it is best that unintentional changes are identified during the development phase by crawling the website and fixing them before going live.
The consequences of not implementing a 301 redirect after a URL change warrant its own article, but in a nutshell, they include:
- 100% loss of website traffic from the original URL once it’s deindexed
- Anyone visiting that URL will now get a 404 error page, which is bad for the user experience
- No transfer of “SEO juice” from the original URL to the new URL—which helps transfer rankings to the new URL
Pro Tip! A website rebuild is the perfect time to re-evaluate your current URL structure and implement a new, better-optimized structure.
#2 – Leaving the Title Tags and Meta Descriptions Behind
Don’t let your optimized title tags and meta descriptions get lost in the transition.
Title Tags: With title tags being one of the biggest SEO signals for search engines, not implementing your current site’s optimized title tags on the new website, or worse, not implementing any custom title tags, could have a detrimental effect on your website’s presence. If there are pages on your website that rank well for specific keywords, if those keywords are in the title tags for those pages they probably have a huge influence on those rankings. If all that gets removed, you can bet your rankings will too.
Meta Descriptions: While meta descriptions aren’t a direct ranking factor, at the very least, they play a crucial role in the click-through rate on a search results page. Having a well-worded, enticing meta description can be the difference between having a high or low click-through rate. Also, it’s hard to deny the value of having valuable keywords in a meta description. Google brings attention to those keywords by highlighting them in the SERPs. Just another way to show a searcher “this is what we do!”
Pro Tip! It’s best practice that each and every webpage has a unique, custom-written title tag and meta description.
#3 – Changing the Content
Internal Linking
This is more important than you think!
A strategic internal linking structure helps search engines understand the organization of the content on your website. Linking to and from the most important pages on your website is one of the ways that tell search engines which ones are most important.
If this was originally done by an SEO expert on your current site, it’s a tedious task, but well worth the effort to implement all the optimized interlinking on your new website as well.
On-page content
Changing content also means changing the optimizations on the page.
Very similar to title tags, the content on your page plays a large role in SEO signals to search engines. If the text, keywords, and overall message of any page on the new website changes, Google will re-evaluate where to rank your website in the SERPs.
Removal of existing content
Think twice when pairing down your current content.
There are two things to keep in mind when deciding not to transfer some pages or blogs to your new website:
- Are the removed pages or blogs getting traffic?
- Be prepared to see a decrease in website traffic if any high-traffic content is removed. Even with 301 redirects in place, once those pages are no longer indexed, your website will no longer show up for the search terms that were originally bringing that traffic in.
- Removing quality content about a topic could impact your rankings on that topic.
- For example, if a pest control company offers termite extermination services and the current website ranks well for it, removing termite-related sub-pages and informational articles decreases the topical depth of content around that topic—which could very likely impact rankings. In SEO, (quality) content is king!
Pro Tip! Strategically removing old, outdated, or low-quality content can be beneficial for your new website rankings.
#4 – Not Optimizing for Mobile
We’re now living in a mobile-first world.
For Users — As of November 2023, 56.2% of all website traffic comes from mobile devices. During a new website build, it’s not unusual for mobile design to get overlooked, such as content getting cut off, alignment issues, or elements too small or too close together. Since your website will be the online representation of your company, you’ll want to tailor your website’s mobile layout and features for smaller screens so users will have a seamless and intuitive experience.
For Search Engines — In addition to user experience, Google has shifted to mobile-first indexing. This means that Google uses the mobile version of a website’s content for indexing and ranking—prioritizing mobile-friendly websites in search results. Which brings us to the final item we’ll be discussing.
Pro Tip! You’ll want a sticky header on not just the desktop version of your new website, but on the mobile version too.
#5 – Overlooking Core Web Vitals
“I feel the need, the need for speed!”
In today’s world, people expect webpages to load almost instantly and quickly respond when interacted with, such as a click on desktop or a tap on mobile—these contribute to a good user experience.
Google Core Web Vitals measures a website’s real-world user experience using the following metrics:
- Largest Content Paint: the amount of time it takes for a page to load
- Cumulative Layout Shift: visual stability, measures any content shift while the page loads
- First input delay: the amount of time until a user can begin reacting to the page (click, tap, scroll, etc.)
According to Google, “[their] core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience.” If your new website is not built to pass these core web vital measurements, it could be a downgrade in terms of user experience.
Pro Tip! If a website is built with “poor” or “failing” core web vitals, it’s much more difficult to improve to “passing” status afterward. Building a website for speed is the best approach from the very beginning.
SEO Services + Website Development = Success
Over the years, I’ve seen a number of new clients come on board with us for SEO services with a freshly-built website that had one or more of these issues coming off development—sometimes the intent is to give us a fresh slate to work with and other times they are seeking help after seeing a drastic decrease in rankings and website leads.
While helping a website recover from rankings loss is something we excel at here at Dagmar, I highly recommend enlisting the help of an experienced SEO company as soon you are considering a new website build. Working with a team of SEO professionals during your new web dev project will ensure the mistakes discussed in this article don’t become a reality post-launch.
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