Many new websites fall victim to common SEO pitfalls. This guide and accompanying template will help you sustain and enhance your SEO efforts. When websites undergo redesigns, they frequently fail to boost SEO in fact, they often harm established rankings and create obstacles for SEO teams striving to regain lost traffic. This decline can significantly impact business visibility, lead generation, and revenue.
I’ve been tasked with optimizing many newly launched websites only to find that extensive damage has been inflicted, requiring considerable time and effort just to restore previous traffic levels. While there are numerous articles focused on website SEO and retaining traffic during redesigns, as well as helpful books and frameworks for website planning, few resources provide a cohesive strategy for integrating effective site planning with the objectives of retaining and enhancing SEO.
In this article, we will explore how to strategically plan a new website to maintain existing traffic while laying the groundwork for improving your overall SEO performance.
Website Planning and SEO:-
To ensure that your new website enhances and maintains its SEO performance, it’s crucial to establish a well-defined SEO strategy that is documented in a straightforward SEO plan.
One of the biggest challenges in website design projects is encountering unexpected issues or changes during the development phase.
Having a comprehensive plan with input from all stakeholders can significantly reduce these disruptions. More importantly, if the client decides to make changes or if the project scope inevitably expands (as it often does), you will have a reference document to outline the original scope and justify any necessary fee adjustments.
I can’t count how many times we’ve been asked to evaluate a nearly completed site only to discover that SEO considerations had been overlooked, potential success.
Recently, we managed a six-figure project for a business heavily reliant on organic traffic, which risked undoing years of hard-won SEO efforts.
This oversight resulted in several months and likely another six figures in PPC expenses to compensate for lost organic traffic, not to mention additional SEO work and redevelopment. It’s an issue you definitely want to steer clear of.
We’ve witnessed situations where the damage to a site’s SEO traffic was so severe that the only viable solution was to revert to the previous site.
In summary, preserving your SEO traffic while paving the way for future improvements cannot be left to chance.
The process outlined here combines a conventional approach to website planning, which, if executed properly, will save substantial time, money, and stress, with the necessary steps to maintain existing SEO traffic while laying down a solid foundation for ongoing SEO development.
The result of this process should be a document that serves as the basis for the website brief or is integrated into a conventional brief.
Note: If the SEO brief and website brief are created separately, I always recommend reviewing the final website brief to ensure the SEO components are incorporated before the project begins.
Here are five essential steps to follow in order to create your SEO-friendly website blueprint:
Leverage Google Search Console:-
Google Search Console is an invaluable resource for SEO insights, providing you with essential information about your rankings and traffic patterns. Here, you can discover high-opportunity keywords and pages that receive many impressions but few clicks.
To access this information, navigate to Search Console and go to Performance > Search Results. The key data you need is located in the queries and pages tabs, which can be sorted by clicks (indicative of traffic) and impressions (indicating opportunity). Analyze this information carefully and document your findings.
Crawl Data and SEO Tools:-
Utilize a web crawler, such as Screaming Frog (available for free for sites under 500 pages), to crawl your website and save a copy of the results. This enables you to verify links to pages and makes it easier to address potential issues once the new site goes live.
Consider using various SEO tools for rank tracking. However, I recommend relying on Google Search Console and Google Analytics for this purpose, as they provide accurate, real-time data and actionable insights, unlike many conventional SEO tools that might present misleading extrapolations.
Setting SEO and Website Goals
Establishing clear goals at the beginning of a project is essential. Goals help clarify your objectives, guiding you toward an effective path forward and serving as a framework for decision-making throughout the project.
Evaluate each action based on whether it contributes to your goals. If it does not align, reconsider its necessity. For instance, you might have a primary goal for the website: to generate more leads. Supporting this, you might define sub-goals like enhancing SEO and boosting conversion rates. Insure that your SEO objectives are specific and measurable by adopting the SMART criteria. Here is an example hierarchy of goals:
SEO Goal:-
Boost rankings for upper funnel marketing content. It can also be beneficial to identify “anti-goals” or aspects to avoid in the new site; Understanding what you want to steer clear of is just as important as knowing your targets.
For example: Anti-goal: Avoid creating a site that is indistinguishable from our competitors. Document these goals in your website plan template and proceed with your project.
Audience and Customer Segmentation:-
It’s essential to clearly define your target audience(s) while also considering your competitors. In marketing, aiming to reach everyone often means reaching no one at all. However, you can successfully target multiple audiences, as long as you thoughtfully consider each group’s unique characteristics and incorporate this into your website’s structure and segmentation.
We should focus on understanding the goals, challenges, and needs of our target audiences to ensure that our business objectives, website aims, and the needs of those we serve are all aligned.
Identifying Audience Segments:-
Begin by listing the various audience segments, such as men, women, students, Gen X, Millennials, etc.
For each segment, consider the following:
Audience Name
Demographics (age, sex, location)
Key Problems or Goals
Preferred Online Spaces for Information
The insights you gather will guide you in structuring your site to meet the distinct needs of each audience, making the optimization process much easier.
To delve deeper into each customer segment, you can utilize the SEO Value Proposition Template and the SCAMPER technique, which will help you understand your customers better and outline the necessary content to achieve your objectives.
It’s important to remember that Google prioritizes helpful, user-centric content. This means you must truly understand your audience to ensure your writing resonates with them.
Investing time to truly comprehend your audience segments will significantly enhance your SEO efforts. Document everything in your website planning template and proceed with confidence.
Structure and Sitemap:-
A sitemap serves as a clear snapshot of your new site and can be referenced against existing goals.
For example, the new sitemap should include high-traffic pages from the current site that contribute to business performance.
Creating a sitemap facilitates feedback from all stakeholders and encourages open dialogue during the planning phases. Addressing potential issues early on can avert challenges later regarding delivery, timelines, and budgets.
I advocate for thorough discussions at this stage; solid ideas can be strengthened while less viable ones can be discarded before they incur costs in the development phase.
Crafting Your Sitemap:-
To start, draft a straightforward bullet point sitemap, such as the following:
Home
About Us
Category A
Sub Category A1
Detail Page
Category B
Sub Category B1
Detail Page
Resources
Article A
Article B
Contact
Consider documenting this in a spreadsheet for clarity and organization, as this will be valuable in the subsequent steps.
You can use your preferred drawing tool to create a visual sitemap. Draw.io offers a variety of templates, including different types of maps that can be saved to Google Docs.
A visual representation of the sitemap can facilitate discussions with stakeholders regarding the major categories and sections of your site.
The primary goal is to develop a sitemap that is categorized by target audiences while aligning with your overarching marketing objectives.
If your SEO goals include retaining traffic and optimizing website structure, this is the time to evaluate those elements.
Key pieces of identified content should be reimagined on the new site within an optimized structure that encourages growth.
Remember, the hierarchy established here will inform your website’s folder structure, providing clarity for every document.
This, in turn, will assist in organizing your keywords from broad, high-level terms to more specific categories and long-tail keywords relevant to your products or services. The organization of this structure is critical, so take your time until you achieve a layout you are satisfied with.
Page Scoping:-
The next phase of the planning process involves defining the content for each page. Depending on the depth of detail you wish to provide, you can either expand the columns in the spreadsheet sitemap you previously created or delve deeper into specifics.
For each page, it is essential to include the following components:
When adding a new page, it’s best to minimize drastic changes to the existing structure this helps maintain consistency.
We need to analyze each page’s goal and confirm that its functionalities and content effectively support this intention.
Some common objectives for pages may include:
- Increasing exposure through SEO for remarketing efforts.
- Generating leads.
- Directing users to product pages.
- Take the time to outline each page’s goal and accompany it with supporting content, updating the website planning template accordingly.
SEO Considerations:-
While planning is vital, documenting specific SEO elements is necessary to ensure effective implementation:
Maintain the old site on a temporary URL if feasible.
Prepare a list of redirects from the old pages to the new ones.
Transfer content, page titles, and meta descriptions from high-performing pages.
Update external backlinks where possible.
Monitor performance post-launch (rankings, traffic, impressions).
Addressing these five areas will cover the key SEO aspects.
Your Website Plan:-
By now, you should have a detailed yet succinct outline of all requirements for your new site.
Your plan should encompass:
Current rankings and traffic.
Project goals.
Target customer segments.
Website structure and sitemap.
Page scoping.
SEO specifics (including redirects and more).
Many fail to complete this step, opting for a minimal brief and relying solely on web developers.
However, remember that developers may lack insight into your business needs. It’s imperative that you invest the necessary effort to ensure the new site not only retains but enhances your SEO performance, while also addressing various objectives that stem from management to marketing.
Though it may feel like an extra layer of work, thorough planning ultimately saves time, money, and frustration, boosting your results—a true win-win.
In summary, conducting proper research and planning will lead to superior results.
Launch and Beyond:-
The final considerations involve monitoring the launch and establishing your marketing and SEO KPIs to gauge success. Expect some bumps along the way, but keeping a vigilant eye on the Search Console and your KPIs will allow you to quickly identify and resolve any issues.
SEO-Friendly Website Planning for Sustained Traffic
Many websites could benefit from improved planning.
By following these straightforward steps, you’ll surpass 99% of other website projects in your pre-design planning efforts, putting you in the top 1% of companies that achieve remarkable results.
Make sure to comprehend your current successes and define your future goals. Integrate these insights into your planning for the new site and prepare for success.