Whether you manage a B2B, B2C or D2C business, at some growing stage, you’ll redesign your site to improve user experience, performance and brand image.
Post-redesigning, if you get more leads and sales (which happens once in a blue moon); you’ll see your decision as the right move. But, what if things started happening entirely different from your anticipation? Like, Organic traffic drop and rankings loss, which is something no site ever wants, not even in dreams.
With an objective to helping all the sites that are about to or have already redesigned and bearing the loss, we have covered specific sections in our blog, which are:
- Pre-launch checklist: for those who are yet to do redesign.
- Best recovery techniques: for those who are eager to learn recovery techniques, directly.
- Our approach when we faced this situation: for those who are interested in knowing what challenges we faced and how we resolved the issue.
Pre-Launch Checklist: 5 Essential Steps That Every Site Should Take in Advance (Insights Gained After Reading 500+ Case Studies) Before Redesigning the Website
It’s wiser to set the alarm before the fire starts, rather than waiting for the smoke to fill the room. Right?
You are absolutely on the right track as you want to know the actions you can take beforehand to avoid the situation. Well, let’s get started, then!
1. Identify Pages with Good Organic Traffic and Rankings
The very first step starts from here. Perform an SEO audit using reliable tools known for identifying site issues.
Note down well-performing pages, both in terms of generating traffic and rankings. You can use tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs for executing the audit, as we use the same for our clients and get the accurate findings.
2. Create a URL Inventory
You are going to redesign your website and if changes in site hierarchy or page names are part of your plan, then creating a list of all the URLs is the best you can do.
You better document all the existing URLs of your site along with their performance metrics in one document. This will help you later in efficient page redirect management and ensure valuable content maintenance during the redesign.
3. Plan 301 Redirects (for Both Old and New URLs)
While redesigning, if you are going to remove some pages, implementing page redirects will help guide search engines to the new URLs.
But yes, develop a strategy for implementing 301 redirects beforehand. Remember, you would have old redirects as well. So, while strategizing, you better consider both new and old URLs. This is the mistake most agencies commit, they keep new directs in their mind but forget the old ones.
However, planning both for old and new URLs’ page redirects will end up the worry for broken links, loss of traffic, drop in search engine rankings and ensure effective internal linking. Also, it helps preserve link equity and guide users and search engines to the new URLs smoothly.
4. Back Up Key SEO Elements
A webpage or a blog post ranks when every aspect associated with it informs search engines as well as users the most clear way.
Be it its content, meta information, relevancy with search intent and loading speed. So, before redesigning, make sure you back up key SEO elements of all the top-performing pages.
Here are the important aspects that you should store beforehand:
5. Set Up Trackings and Analytics
The fifth and the most important step, that is going to help you post redesign is- setting up the Google Analytics tool. This will help you monitor traffic and performance post-launch.
With this, we have shared the steps that every site should take before redesigning their website. But, for those, who already have implemented these actions and despite doing everything right facing the issue, our next segment is definitely going to help you identify its cause.
Here are Some Possible Reasons If You Still Face the Traffic Drop After Taking All Precautions Mentioned Above
If you are someone who stayed proactive during the whole process, took steps in advanced and executed the process cautiously, still experiencing traffic drop, here is why it is happening to you.
But, before discussion, we would like to inform you of one established fact which is, losing traffic for some time after redesigning is unavoidable and expected.
If the traffic drop is quite high and staying for a long time, it is a matter of concern. Usually, algorithm update, content’s irrelevancy with current intent of users, competitor sites being better providers, keyword cannibalization, duplicate content page issue and leveraging AI-content (which is the most popular reason sites are losing results) are the reasons for traffic and rankings loss in this case.
In our article – Google ranking dropped dramatically, you can read all these issues in detail. Why these happen and the right way to identify the causes behind them.
Now, Let’s Discuss How You Can Resolve the Identified Issues to Regain Website Traffic After Redesign
These are the tried-and-tested solutions we’ve implemented for our clients who were experiencing issues after website redesigns.
Update the Robots.txt File
During a redesign, sometimes developers disallow certain sections or pages of a website from crawling temporarily. As a result, search engines cannot access those pages, resulting in crawling issues. So, to cope up with this situation, here are the steps you have to execute:
- First, visit Google Search Console dashboard of your site.
- Review the robot.txt file there, ensure no critical pages or sections are accidentally disallowed.
- In case, you have updated URLs as a part of redesigning, ensure the new structures are well-reflected in the robots.txt file.
This will help fix issues like server errors or blocked resources.
Ensure Proper Sitemap Configuration
Sitemaps help search engine understand your site structure and after redesigning, if you have added new pages, it becomes essential to update them there.
The moment you update the XML sitemap, ensure submitting it to the Search Console so that Google can efficiently crawl and index new pages.
Fix Not Found Pages (404’s)
One of the reasons behind bonce rate is the presence of 404 errors. It really frustrates users. To resolve 404 errors, first identify them and then implement 301 redirects to the relevant content page.
Test the New Design for Speed and Mobile-Friendliness
The sites, whose redesigning strategy includes addition of visuals, usually face slow loading speeds as they upload unoptimized images or videos. But, it’s not like this is the only reason.
Apart from this, if the new design uses inefficient code, include too many third-party scripts like chatbots, social media widgets or analytics tool, loading speed slows down.
Using Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix, you can analyze load times and identify the element that slows down your site, whether large images or unoptimized scripts.
Correct Pagination for Better Indexing
Correct pagination ensures that search engines can crawl through paginated content (e.g., product pages or blogs). Use rel=”next” and rel=”prev” tags or review pagination settings to avoid content indexing issues.
Here’s How We Regained Our Website Traffic (Our Own Case-Study)
It happened once with us as well. For a few keywords, we lost rankings and thereby traffic. It was disheartening for us, but we knew it was not the time to take stress, rather to take the right step. Let’s discuss the whole situation in-depth.
How We Encountered the Issue?
When we compared our site’s Domain Authority (DA/DR), it came out to be the same as it was 3 years ago. The DA score was neither deteriorating nor improving.
However, we saw a fall in rankings for a few targeted keywords. After auditing, we came to know a couple of reasons behind the low ranking and stuck growth.
The Steps We Took to Resolve the Issue
Based on audit findings and strategy created by our experienced team, we made a lot of changes. In this section, we are going
to discuss the changes related to website redesign. However, if you are interested in knowing our complete strategy step-by-step, click here
For those who want to know how we did website redesign, here are the steps:
- Design & Layout Adjustments in Blogs: To give a good reading experience, we implemented the following strategies:
- Deleted table of content section for better user experience
- Changed the font
- Adjusted the ratio of featured image and blog content
As a result, we saw a good improvement in bounce rate. Users started spending more time on our site and the average session time also increased.
- Content Optimization: We started first with optimization of our existing content. In that too, we didn’t touch blogs with high traffic, rather we picked the ones that were already ranking on 3rd or 4th page.
Here’s what we did:
- Included the latest information, while preserving their meta information in one document.
- Reviewed internal links on old pages. Ensured working of each link and adjusted them if their URL structure has been changed.
- Added eye-catching, optimized visuals.
- Updated each content piece with EEAT standards.
Refreshing the old content helped us improve the SEO value of old content during the redesign.
- Updated Core Web Vitals: We optimized our site’s performance in response to Google’s update and ensured a smoother user experience for all visitors.
As you can see, its current score:
Results We Got After Making Changes
After implementing these strategies, within a few months, we started getting leads and traffic growth. Our Domain Authority (DA) score also increased, as you can see in the following screenshot:
Not only DR, but we improved organic traffic as well, which you can check through the following screenshot:
That’s how, we coped with the situation and emerged as an SEO agency with better performing metrics. Now, we are generating more qualified leads than before.
Wondering How Long Your Site Will Take to Recover? Here’s the Answer
Well, it all depends on a few factors related to the issues. If it is a minor issue (including small technical SEO error or speed related problem), it will get resolved within a few weeks.
However, if it is a major issue (like broken redirects, improper URL structure or significant traffic loss), then it will take a few months. As it involves re-crawling, indexing and restoring traffic levels.
Other than this, speed of implementing fixes, website size, redirect strategy, content, on-page optimization and external factors (algorithm update) also decides the timeline of results.
Based on our experience, we can give you an estimate time-period, 2–4 weeks for initial improvements and 2–6 months for full-traffic recovery, specifically for sites impacted by major SEO issues.
Final Thoughts
Organic traffic drop is the biggest worry for the sites who are dependent on Google search for generating leads. The steps we have mentioned (before+after) redesigning will ensure minimal negative impact on your site.
Whether you change domain name, site architecture, content, any on-page element or technicality related aspect, our shared approach will certainly support your decision and will not lead to downfall in traffic.
In case, you want to discuss your special case with us and need guidance, contact us. We are always here to help you.
