Every company needs to refresh its web content from time to time. Whether you’re rebranding, integrating new features, or simply trying to prevent pages from becoming stale, your brand website is the central location that real-world customers and search algorithms alike will use to find out about your business. As such, these should always be up to date.
With that in mind, there are right and wrong ways to go about a redesign. A correctly implemented website refresh will revitalize your relationship with customers and attract new visitors. A poorly implemented update will harm SEO performance and leave customers frustrated with the changes. Here are some strategies marketers should embrace when refreshing a website or designing a new one from scratch.
Do: Remove out-of-date and inaccurate content
Most brands conduct some degree of website update every 18 to 30 months, or about the regularity at which you might consider upgrading to a new smartphone. While this timeframe feels short, that’s roughly how long it takes for web content to become outdated for most businesses. For example, if you work for a tech or tech-adjacent brand, your entire field may undergo regular transformations that render your content obsolete.
Auditing your content for relevance and freshness every couple of years is vital, and a website refresh is the perfect time to make adjustments. Evergreen blog posts and support pages should be updated with new copy. Any pages rooted in inaccurate or out-of-date information should be removed — or at minimum, relegated to website archives. Even a simple paragraph and URL link directing customers to retired pages is beneficial. Doing so ensures that customers have access to relevant information while letting the website itself appear more vibrant and active.
Of course, there is one major exception when removing branded content.
Don’t: Replace high-traffic pages
A webpage’s search rankings are at least partly dependent on age. A URL that has seen regular traffic since 2010 will rank higher than a post published last week. This poses a significant risk when redesigning your website: if you completely restructure existing content, you’ll have to rebuild your search rankings as well. In many instances, your site will ultimately lose traffic that would have been fulfilled with organic searches.
While it’s crucial to weed out inaccurate content periodically, don’t be so thorough that you delete high-traffic pages entirely. You should maintain as many URLs with associated keywords as possible, even if other content on the page has changed. Consider everything from your most popular blog posts to the standard “Contact Us” and “About Us” pages.
Preserving your search rankings is particularly challenging if you are completely redesigning a website. The same principle applies when you migrate to a new CMS that might use its own unique URL structure. In these instances, be sure to set up automatic redirects and crawl the entire website for broken links post-launch. The smoother this transition is, the easier it will be to reach new customers.
Do: Share your new website
Why would anybody visit your new website if they don’t know it’s changed? Never assume that just because you have existing customers, they’ll spread word about your new site organically. It’s a good idea to treat the launch just like a marketing campaign — especially following a redesign that includes new features or services.
While marketing for your new site shouldn’t supersede products and services, merely directing users to your site has benefits. When deployed effectively, it will boost website traffic and increase search rankings during a period when that attention is crucial. Pay particular attention to the amplifying power of social media and consider any promotions that might bring lapsed customers back into the fold.
Do: Test your website well before launch
Your website isn’t just a series of impressively-designed visuals rendered through a CMS — it’s also made up of technical details like HTML code, specialized tags, and formatting conventions. This adds up to many potential hiccups when redesigning a website from scratch.
The ideal solution is to prepare your test site several weeks in advance. Set up a test subdomain where you can run the site and quickly iterate new versions. Don’t forget to test the site on mobile and desktop browsers, as these platforms have wildly different design considerations.
Don’t: Forget to test to your website again after launch
Even if your site performs well during testing, you shouldn’t stop there. There’s always the possibility that users will pick up on something that slipped through the cracks. What’s more, if launch traffic is higher than expected, there could be additional errors and design flaws you weren’t prepared for.
While launch problems of one kind or another are likely, they can be addressed. Just make sure to conduct additional testing after launch and have a QA team collect user feedback. After all, just because your site is brand new doesn’t mean there won’t be areas to improve.
Conducting periodic website redesigns is necessary, but it’s not without risk. Even during a successful launch, it’s common to lose up to 10% of web traffic for a short time. The good news is that a carefully planned redesign doesn’t just maintain your traffic — it can help your brand grow and thrive.