How to setup a fresh web site without losing SEO power

by Sun Laack

How to Redesign your Web Site Without Losing Your SEO Mojo Was your old site was starting to look a little stale? Now for a lot of people a website re-design can do a great deal to increase conversion rates and reduce bounce rates, but if you don't do it correctly you could wind up losing your precious SEO rankings and losing major traffic consequently. This means you have to make sure to follow all the necessary steps to make sure you don't lose any rankings!

As Tampa SEO experts, we replace entire websites with spanking new installs of WordPress with brand new themes and information without one drop in rankings for target keywords.

Included here are the steps we follow to make sure our SEO efforts will not be lost:

You can do this yourself in case you redo your site flying solo or at least make sure the company you hire is doing this. We occasionally see prospects decide on lower bidders only to find out that their companies simply take the shortcut (a simple 301 redirect for the entire site!), and we get the call to help fix things after its too late.

Step 1: Develop your new site in an environment that Google Cannot Crawl

This is a step that lots of people overlook, but can have unwanted effects on your rankings prior to the new site has gone live. In our case we setup a new WordPress on a separate extension, then we then added the following text to our /robots.txt file: Disallow: /v2

Now what this does is tell Google not to crawl our new site while we develop it, unfortunately this may not always ensure that your site doesn't get crawled (and a lot of times it does actually get crawled). So we will also need to add the following code to the <head> part of the Header.php file of the wordpress theme you are using for your new site <meta name="robots" content="noindex" />

This should ensure that your new site is now not crawled during development which is extremely important because if Google sees duplicate content on a bunch of new pages on your site you might get hit with a penalty even before you finish the new site :/ Whether you are a trying to make a local (like in the Tampa area), or a national site, and you are using WordPress to build your brand-new site we would also recommend highly you employ Under Construction plugin on the development site so that peering eyes aren't getting to jump on your site.

Also - Be sure to take out the no index meta tag to your site once you have successfully launched your new website.

Step 2: Understand the pages on your site that are ranking and indexed in Google.

Firstly trying to determine which of your pages are ranking in Google isn't a very cut and dry process and there are a couple of tools that help with this process, namely Google Analytics & Google Search.

First open up a blank spreadsheet in Excel. You can name it anything, like "Tampa SEO results" (yes, we are in Tampa, FLâ€¦). Let's Start with Google Search:

Now we're going to do a search in Google to see every page on your site in their index, go to Google.com and type this:

site:www.yoursite.com with "www.yoursite.com" obviously being substituted for your site's url

This is going to illustrate every page Google has indexed of your site, note all of these and add them to a spreadsheet in Excel.

Moving On To Google Analytics:

First Make your Dates in the top right as far back as they go. Go to Content>Site Content>Landing Pages:

This is will give you a list of all the pages that people have landed on your site coming out of Google search, note all of these urls and start gathering them in the spreadsheet as they will be used for possible 301 redirects in the future.

Step 3 - The Spreadsheet

Now that we have harvested all URL's that are both indexed in Google and are bringing your website traffic now we will need to make sure that all of those are redirected to the appropriate page on your new site and we can commence adding those new URL's to our master spreadsheet.

We are going to employ this spreadsheet to make sure that every one of our indexed/ranking URL's in Google are redirected to the new page after the site is re-designed.

Step 4 - How To Set up the Old Ranking (And Non Ranking) Pages on the New Site

So now that we have our new site being developed in a "sandbox", where Google has not yet seen us, and we have also gathered all the important Web addresses on our old site we can begin to create the pages on our site that are ranking (and not) so that when Google checks out our site for the first time our site they don't find huge differences in tags or content that might cause them re-assess and drop our sites rankings.

The first step is to export all Blog postings on the old site (This part is exclusive to wordpress or other blogs/cms) Do this by going to the WordPress Dashboard and finding Tools>Export and selecting Posts and downloading the xml file that resulted. Go to the Dashboard on the new site and go to Tools>Import and imported that xml file, putting all your old blog posts/comments on the new site.

You can follow the exact procedure with all the pages but because of the fact that the pages on your old site could formatted with a bunch of shortcodes or stuff unique to the old design and because of the fact that the pictures were all in the old storage gallery and may not be used, Almost everyone will simply recreate those old pages using the new themes shortcodes and re-uploading all the images to the new site.

When you re-create the web pages on the old site, make certain to keep the site extensions, content, title tags, & meta data EXACTLY the same as they were on the other site.

So if I had a page on my old site that was /tampa-seo-company with the title tag " Tampa seo company", the extension on the new site for the same page was /tampa-seo-company with the same title tag "tampa seo company". Also make sure that the content and meta tags were exactly the same so that the pages would be almost indistinguishable in Google's eyes. To make certain that is the case, use the "All in One SEO Plugin" and just copy and paste all tags from the old pages to the new pages.

Step 5 - Backing Up Everything

Before we begin the process of actually replacing the old site with the new site we get to one of the most crucial parts of this process - BACKING UP ALL NEW AND OLD FILES. This is a step that no one should ever ignore when you build a new site as it can rescue you from any screw ups that could happen along the way. In WordPress this means backing up the database for both the old and new site as well as downloading all the site files for both sites. So now we have the new site totally made with the same pages, content, meta-tags, url format, & title tags as the old site we merely need to trade out the old site with the new one.

There are various ways to get this done, if you are using WordPress, you may create a new database in MySql and then importing the database from the new install into the database we just built in PHPMyadmin. We then just need to alter the wp-config file in the new site files to mirror the fresh database information and we are prepared to upload our new site!

Step 6 - Going Live & 301 Redirects

Before we eliminate the old site files in our server and swap it with the new ones we want to ensure that we have the proper 301 redirects in place just in case any of our pages have changed names during this process. This is when our big spreadsheet of old and new URLs comes in place. Let's pull our spreadsheet up and start constructing some 301 redirects.

If you use WordPress there are 2 options for you:

If you are not using WordPress, or you prefer to do it the old fashioned way because that's the way you are, then we will make a .htaccess file to write these redirects. This is done by crafting a new file in a text editor adding the necessary redirects in this file using this format:

Redirect 301 /theoldpage http://www.yoursite.com/thenewpage Redirect 301 /theoldpage2 http://www.yoursite.com/thenewpage2

Once you write all the necessary redirects save the file as .htaccess (no file extension) and save it in the root folder of your site.

The most popular option is the redirection plugin which does all the heavy lifting for you, that's why we use it (did we mention it's free?). The plugin effectively adds redirects from old URL's to the new ones using this plugin and that is why we use it. If you do elect to use this option you would first eliminate all your old site files (after backing them up of course), then just upload the brand new site files and add the important redirects with this plugin.

So Now that you have recreated all pages on your site and you have set up the necessary 301 redirects, you'll delete all the old files and upload the new site files with the .htaccess in the root folder. (if you don't see the .htaccess folder in your browser you should be able to see it in your FTP client because it is by nature a concealed file type).

BAM! Now you have an exciting new site design with all the same SEO power and clout as your old design, but devoid of the high bounce rate.

About the Author

How to Redesign your Web Site Without Losing Your SEO Mojo Was your old site was beginning to look slightly stale? Now for a lot of people a website re-design can do a great deal to increase conversion rates and lower bounce rates, however if you do not do it correctly you could end up losing your precious SEO rankings and losing major traffic as a result. This means you have to make sure to follow all the necessary steps to make sure you don't lose any rankings!

As Tampa SEO experts, we upgrade entire websites with brand new installs of WordPress with brand new themes and information without one drop in rankings for target keywords.

Here are the steps we follow to make sure our SEO efforts would not be lost:

You can do this yourself when you redo your site on your own or at least make sure the company you hire is doing this. We sometimes see prospects decide on lower bidders only to discover that their companies simply take the shortcut (a simple 301 redirect for the entire site!), and we receive the call to help fix things after its too late.

Step 1: Develop your new site in an environment that Google Cannot Crawl

This is a step a number of people forget about, but can have ill effects on your rankings prior to the new site has gone live. In our case we set up a new WordPress on a separate extension, then we then added the following text to our /robots.txt file: Disallow: /v2

Now what this does is tell Google never to crawl our new site while we develop it, unfortunately this may not always ensure that your site does not get crawled (and lots of times it does actually get crawled). So we will also need to add the following code to the <head> portion of the Header.php file of the wordpress theme you are using for your new site <meta name="robots" content="noindex" />

This should make certain that your new site is now not crawled during development which is extremely important because if Google sees duplicate content on a ton of new pages on your site you may get hit with a penalty even before you finish the brand new site :/ Whether you are a trying to make a local (like in the Tampa area), or a national site, and you are using WordPress to build your brand new site we would also recommend highly you use Under Construction plugin on the development site so that peering eyes don't get to jump on your site.

Also - Be sure to take out the no index meta tag to your site when you have successfully launched your current website.

Step 2: Determine all pages and posts on your site that are ranking and indexed in Google.

First of all finding out which of your pages are ranking in Google is not a very cut and dry process and there are a couple of tools that assist with this process, namely Google Analytics & Google Search.

First open up a blank spreadsheet in Excel. You can name it anything, like "Tampa SEO results" (yes, we are in Tampa, FLâ€¦). We begin with Google Search:

Now we will do a search in Google to see every page on your site in their index, head to Google.com and type this:

site:www.yoursite.com with "www.yoursite.com" obviously being substituted for your site's url

This is going to illustrate every page Google has indexed of your site, note all of these and add them to a spreadsheet in Excel.

Moving On To Google Analytics:

First Make the Dates in the top right as far back as they go. Then go to Content>Site Content>Landing Pages:

This is will give you a collection of all the pages that people have landed on your site originating from Google search, note all of these urls and start getting them in the spreadsheet as they will be used for possible 301 redirects eventually.

Step 3 - The Spreadsheet

Now that we have harvested all URL's that are both indexed in Google and are bringing your website traffic we're going to need to make sure that all of those are redirected to the pertinent page on your new site and we can commence adding those new URL's to our master spreadsheet.

We are going to utilize this spreadsheet to ensure that all of our indexed/ranking URL's in Google are redirected to the new page after the site is redesigned.

Step 4 - How To Set up the Old Ranking (And Non Ranking) Pages on the New Site

So now that we have our new site being created in a "sandbox", where Google has not yet seen us, and we also have gathered all the important URLs on our old site we can begin to build the web pages on our site that are ranking (and not) so that when Google checks out our site for the first time our site they won't find huge differences in tags or content that might cause them re-assess and drop our sites rankings.

The 1st step is to export all Blog posts on the old site (This part is exclusive to wordpress or other blogs/cms) Do this by going to the WordPress Dashboard and finding Tools>Export picking Posts and downloading the xml file that resulted. Then go to the Dashboard on the new site and go to Tools>Import and imported that xml file, putting all your old blog posts/comments on the new site.

You can follow the very same process with all the pages but due to the fact that the pages on your old site could formatted with a bunch of shortcodes or stuff unique to the old theme and because of the fact that the pictures were all in the old media gallery and may not be used, Most people will just recreate those old pages using the new themes shortcodes and re-uploading all the images to the new site.

When you re-create all pages and posts on the old site, ensure to keep the site extensions, content, title tags, & meta data EXACTLY the same as they were on the other site.

So if I had a page on my old site that was /tampa-seo-company with the title tag " Tampa seo company", the extension on the new site for the same page was /tampa-seo-company with the same title tag "tampa seo company". Also make sure that the content and meta tags were exactly the same so that the pages would be almost indistinguishable in Google's eyes. To ensure that is the case, use the "All in One SEO Plugin" and just copy and paste all tags from the old pages into the new pages.

Step 5 - Backing Up Everything

Before we begin the process of actually replacing the old site with the new site we get to one of the most crucial parts of the process - BACKING UP ALL OLD AND NEW FILES. This is a step that no one should ever ignore when designing a new site as it can rescue you from any screw ups which could happen along the way. In WordPress this means backing up the database for both the old and new site as well as downloading all the site files for both sites. So now that we have the new site totally made with the same pages, content, meta-tags, url format, & title tags as the old site we just need to trade out the old site with the new one.

There are several ways to get this done, if you are using WordPress, you may create a new database in MySql and then importing the database from the new install into the database we just created in PHPMyadmin. We then just need to alter the wp-config file in the new site files to mirror the new database information and we are prepared to upload our new site!

Step 6 - Going Live & 301 Redirects

Before we get rid of the old site files in our server and switch it with the new ones we want to make certain that we have the right 301 redirects in place in case any of our pages have changed names during this process. This is when our big spreadsheet of old and new URLs comes in place. Let's pull our spreadsheet up and begin writing some 301 redirects.

If you are using WordPress there are a couple of options for you:

If you are not using WordPress, or you simply want to do it the old fashioned way because that's the way you are, then we will create a .htaccess file to create these redirects. This is done by making a new file in a text editor adding the necessary redirects in this file using this format:

Redirect 301 /theoldpage http://www.yoursite.com/thenewpage Redirect 301 /theoldpage2 http://www.yoursite.com/thenewpage2

As soon as you write all the necessary redirects save your file as .htaccess (no file extension) and save it in the root folder of your site.

The most popular option is the redirection plugin which does all the heavy lifting for you, that's why we use it (did we mention it's free?). The plugin very easily adds redirects from old URL's to the brand new ones using this plugin and that is why we employ it. If you do elect to use this option you'd first eliminate all your old site files (after backing them up of course), then just upload the newest site files and add the necessary redirects with this plugin.

So Now that you have recreated all pages on your site and you have set up the necessary 301 redirects, you can delete all the old files and upload the new site files with the .htaccess in the root folder. (if you don't see the .htaccess folder in your browser you should be able to see it in your FTP client due to the fact that it is by nature a concealed file type).

BAM! Now you have a completely new site design with all the equivalent SEO power and clout as your old design, but devoid of the high bounce rate.

Check out this resource for more information: Easy methods to set up a new website

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