Website Revision

PhotographerSteve

Hi all~

We are completely remaking our website: www.containmydog.com.

I believe we have a good handle on the visual aspects of the redesign. What are the backend or behind the scenes (probably not using the technical term) things that need to be done so search engines know where things are. For example i know we are not going to remove some pages , change were some pages are on the site and add new pages.

Is there a checklist that lists the important things to do when designing/redesigning a website? If there is not a checklist what are the things I should be asking the web person we hire?

MoosaHemani

I am actually happy that you are not one of those who believe that the importance of website is nothing but a company display! When you are redesigning your website this time you probably should consider the following things in-mind regardless of what CMS systems you use and what kind of design you have.

- It should not take 3 to 5 seconds for your website to display its first page to your target audience.

- Design and navigation should be easy enough for a visitor to continue their journey on the website instead of bouncing right after landing on the website.

- Clear call to action so that he can easily convert in to lead and customer if he wants.

There are more ideas as well. Here is the checklist from hubspot that you should consider important when redesigning your website. http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/53/file-13220778-pdf/docs/ebooks/10-step-checklist-website-redesign.pdf

If you managed to create your website using this checklist not only your search engine visibility gets better but it will also help you increase your conversion rate as well as your website will be much more user friendly as it is at the moment.

Hope this help!

BlueprintMarketing

When you are redesigning the website and you already have a handle on the design part meeting the aesthetics.

You need to remember about the developer who will be implementing that new look.

I like to start off with a site map where you can create the navigation for your website. This will obviously matter quite a bit because you want the URLs to point like a pyramid I will show you in a photo.

I cannot stress how important it is to 301 redirect URLs that are changing with the old version of the rewritten URL or the most relevant. Please remember if it's not relevant and it does not have back links it can be 404ed or better 410ed

I strongly suggest you purchase deep crawl or screaming frog I believe the combination is ideal but take a look at them.

http://deepcrawl.co.uk/use-cases/site-redevelopment & h
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
Use this with the tools above
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide/

reachability is important you need to have a site architecture that does not take the user to many clicks away from the home page. alexa.com $49 not bad.

better illustrated here

http://moz.com/blog/site-architecture-for-seo

in case the photograph is too small here is a larger URL so you can read the tips the bottom one that's cut off is very important