Transcript
Hi guys. And welcome to another edition of Zupo SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation is SEO considerations for when you're updating your site, especially updating the URLs of your site. This is a really important conversation because when people are redesigning their website, they often don't realize what they're doing on the backend. They really only think about on the front end, which means the design side and the consumer facing side. But there's a lot of implications for SEO when redesigning a site, if you're not paying attention to the backend. So, that's what we're going to talk about today.
But before we jump on in, this is the Zupo SEO Talk & Tea, so we're going to introduce the tea we have today. Today we have a Darjeeling black tea. Black tea, and these Darjeeling black teas are pretty commonly used for a lot of Boba milk tea. So if you've ever had a Boba milk tea, the classic ones, they usually... The base is black tea. So I'm going to... Usually when I drink this, it gives me some flashbacks to my Boba tea days. Well, anyways, let's go ahead and jump on into this conversation about updating URLs and everything.
So when you are updating the website, this error happens a lot, even with my clients and I completely understand why. When you are updating your website, it is your website. So you can... You want to update the look, you want to update the feel. But oftentimes people move pretty quickly and just think about the front end, but they don't really think about the backend. And there are a lot of implications when you don't think about the backend for websites. Because I have worked with websites where they completely redesigned the website where they used to rank fairly well, but because they redesigned the website, weren't paying attention to the backend, they actually lost some of their rankings because they didn't pay attention to that backend.
So it isn't to say don't redesign a site. I would say that's foolhardy. What I would say is there are just checks and things you want to put in place on the backside when you're redesigning a site or changing the URL structure so that you can ensure that you do the best job to ensure SEO continuity. So let's just start. First things first, when you're redesigning a site, oftentimes people will change the URLs unknowingly. That can become quite common. There's many different reasons. One, I don't know I was just moving pretty quickly and I was just designing and I didn't even know I changed the URL. Very common. I don't blame you for those either.
Two, the site navigation has changed a bit. Where we used to have pizza.com and the navigation, we had ingredients. We decided to remove the ingredients on the navigation menu, and we just don't even have it there no more. That's another common example that can change URL structure, right? So then the reasons are many. And I'm not going to go to the nitty gritty of all the reasons. No matter what the reason is, there is one thing that we really want to make sure when you're redesigning the site. You really want to make sure that if URLs are changing, that you have a redirect map in place, right?
So if your pizza.com/pepperonipizza page, for some reason, got changed to pizza.com/pepperoni. You really want to make sure that the 301 redirect when the new site is up is redirected from the old URL to the new URL. The big thing about URL... I mean about website updates is URL mapping. You want to make sure that no matter how the site is redesigned and everything, that the URLs are going to be redirected, if they're going to change. Now, the second thing I would say is I would like more sites to do this. But I know it's not the most liked by the design teams is when you're changing your website, there are a lot of moving parts. And if your site already ranks, you really want to make sure that you minimize any risk of you dropping out of rankings.
So normally what I do is, of course, number one is those URL maps. That's the number one deal. But second, let's say you want to update the site again to pizza.com. And what you used to have is pizza.com/pepperoni-pizza. And you know you're going to redirect to pizza.com/pepperoni. So what I would do first is on the new redesign and the new content, what I would first do, first, put the new design up, but keep the same content. That way you can [inaudible 00:04:14]. So what I mean by that is if you're going to redirect it, that's fine. But go to pizza.com/pepperoni, redirect to that page. Put the new design up, but have the original content on there. And if you're going to update the content, do that first. Monitor it for a week or two. Did the ranking say the same? Good.
If so, then change the content out. Do it in steps. Because what I will tell you is if you do it all in one fell swoop, you redirect it, you update the design and you update the content. What I will tell you is that if your ranking has dropped, you won't know why. There might be three reasons and you could just reverse all three of them. But typically, if you really want to do it in a low risk, methodical manner, you want to do it in steps. So what I would actually recommend, if you could do it this way, if it's possible, update the design first, then change the content and then redirect. That's how I would do if I had my perfect instance. But I always understand there's different operational needs for design the client and SEO.
So what I would just do is do your best to kind of separate the steps out. A lot of times design teams just want to do it all in one fell swoop because that's what was best. You can look at one beautiful, final looking site and they can give it to you and deliver it that way. But, for SEO considerations, I do want to remind people, it is good to be able to do it in steps so that you could always revert back quickly if needed. So again, it doesn't truly matter that much, but I would do it in steps. You want to update the content first and then the design, and then... That's fine. Just make sure, if you can, do it in steps.
And then when you are updating URLs on your side, just make sure that you keep a running track. I have another video where we talk about redirect chains. Oftentimes when people are updating their sites... And it might not be their first time. It might be the third or fourth or fifth time. What can happen is redirect chains can become something that comes out of nowhere. Where all of a sudden your pizza.com/pepperoni-pizza URL is now redirecting to the pizza.com/pepperoni. Well, you forgot that two redesigns ago, you already had redirect set up. So now you have like a four to five redirect chains. You want to get those fixed up too. So it is worth it for your SEO or web teams to go review all the redirects that have ever been implemented and just cross-reference them with new... the redirects you're planning on to see if there's any redundancies or chains to be had.
So really though, when it comes down to SEO and updating URLs, it's the redirects, the mapping, avoiding redirect chance, and just ensuring that the site move of redesigns or updating everything can be done in a methodical step-by-step manner so that you can easily minimize any risks. So again, this is all for minimizing risks. I've seen many sites do all the changes in one night and do everything at once against my wishes and the rankings didn't move. That can happen and that's totally okay. I'm not saying that it will happen if you don't do this. All I'm saying is if the ranking is a [inaudible 00:07:10] for your business's bottom line, then you don't want me messing around too much with those. So do it in a methodical manner, step by step. So you can minimize the amount of risk that is had by doing this kind of stuff.
But I hope that it kind of goes into a little bit more detail about all this stuff about site migrations or redesigns. It can be quite a complex topic, but I think it's very important for people to understand this when working with their own sites. But I'm going to go ahead and start pouring my tea out. If you guys found this video valuable and you liked it, please like, and subscribe. I'm going to go ahead and enjoy my black tea now. And I hope to see you guys again soon. Thanks everybody.