Include an SEO Firm in Your Site Redesign
Many companies operate under the misguided notion that a simple facelift or “freshening up” will improve traffic and leads to their web site. Although having a fresh look and new content are important to site credibility, a site redesign alone won’t improve your site’s performance on the search engines or get more eyeballs to your site.
As you begin your next site redesign, be sure to include an SEO firm in the process. An SEO firm will help make sure that the improvements you are making to your site at the minimum won’t hurt your search engine positioning and at best will improve it.
For example, although Flash adds a lot of pizzazz to a site, building a site entirely in Flash will render the content virtually invisible to the search engines, making it nearly impossible to gain top performance on important keywords. An SEO firm will help guide you on the best ways to use Flash so that it’s graphically effective, not a hindrance to your site’s search engine ranking.
Here are some other important factors that a qualified SEO firm is more likely to help you with in the redesign process:
- Technology: Like Flash, there are technologies that can help make your site look and function better from a site visitor standpoint, but may interfere with search engine indexing. An SEO firm will guide you on the best way to use current technologies for site visitors and search engines.
- Site structure: From a search engine perspective, there’s a wrong way, a right way and a better way to set up a site. Traditional website designers don’t worry about whether a search engine can spider through your site and index your content; they’ll use whatever tools help get the job done in the least amount of time. An SEO firm will set the parameters for the structure of your site based on simplifying the search engine indexing process.
- Broken links: Once your site is redesigned, chances are that there will be dead links in the search engines to pages that no longer exist. An SEO firm will help you redirect those links so that you don’t lose any search engine traffic.
- Keywords: Adding content without a game plan for how you’ll get your site positioned on the search engines is a big mistake. It’s important to go into your site redesign process knowing which keywords are important for driving traffic to sites in your industry and then formulating a strategy to develop content around those keywords. An SEO firm will provide the research and plan on how to do this.
- Content: Getting visitors to your site is also a function of the type of content offered on your site. Take a look at sites that are performing well on important keywords. In many cases, you’ll begin to see a pattern of the types of content the search engines value when ranking web pages. Generally, content that performs well on search engines usually also is the type of content your prospects want to see. An SEO firm will help you determine the best strategy for developing high-value content.
- Prioritization and gut check: Most companies end up having a longer laundry list of things they want for their site than what they can afford. An SEO firm can help you prioritize these items according to which will give your company the best bang for the buck when it comes to improving site traffic and conversion.
- Post-redesign promotion: Once your site has been redesigned, it’s important to get it in front of as many prospects as you can. Online, that means top positioning on search engines. Your SEO firm will help you establish an incoming link strategy designed to generate qualified traffic and authoritative incoming links for search engine positioning purposes.
If you already have a relationship with a web designer you trust, make sure you also hire an SEO firm that can assist in the redesign process. If you’re starting from scratch on a redesign, contact SEO firms first and inquire about their web design capabilities. Many can provide both services at a lower cost than working with two firms because of project management efficiencies created by keeping all the work in one house.
Angela Charles is president of Pilot Fish, an Akron, Ohio web design and SEO firm that specializes in business-to-business web sites.
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