It seems that most company executives don’t like their own sites. And let’s face it with the way things are changing so rapidly it’s no wonder that the constant need to have the latest and greatest is always a challenge.
The main rationale for new site design seems to be to integrate multi and social media. Having video inventory on your site is a great way to engage users. While updating your site is always a great idea the one thing that most developers and designers forget is the impact on ranking and search engine optimization (SEO).
The specific impact is on backlinks. One of the ways that Google measures the value of a site is by how many backlinks they have. In fact they have a special ranking system that measures every web page called PageRank. In a nutshell, PageRank is a score out of 10 that evaluates how many links a site has and how relevant they are to the subject matter of that site. Of course links are the roadways of the Internet. We navigate from page to page and site to site by clicking on links. So if suddenly the destination page of a link doesn’t exist anymore then you end up on a “page not found”.
So once a site has achieved a lot of backlinks and by extension potentially a high PageRank there is a real danger of losing that PageRank if you don’t put some SEO processes in place. The process to use is remarkably like what we use when we sell our bricks and mortar houses. What’s one of the things we do to tell everyone we moved? Send out Change of Address cards. The online equivalent is called a 301 redirect and essentially it tells search engines and anyone trying to find that web page that it has moved from one URL web address to another. This way backlinks and PageRank are maintained. It sounds easy however you may decide to lose entire sections of a web site when re-designing. In that case a redirect to the Home Page is usually the best strategy. Of course this is just one of many SEO issues that you need to worry about when you re-design your web site. It’s never a bad idea to contact search engine optimization specialists to help you on your journey.
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