Sanity Through a Redesign!!! SEO and Staying Visible in Search Results.

Sanity Through a

Redesign!!!

Barbara CollSF 2014

@webmama

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Top Reasons for Redesign and #1 Effect on

Measurement, Visibility and Sanity

New SEO Company = Tactical changes too many to mention in this small box

New CEO/CMO = New brand agency, new web design

Repositioning of Company/products = New content, new keywords

Company Name Change/Acquisition = Domain Name Change. Every URL Changes

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Prepare for Redesign (1)

Keyword discovery research – what keywords define the company

Which content drives traffic into site (review landing pages) and set content/SEO strategy to maintain that content

Look at Page Authority (moz.com) and don’t kill pages with high page authority

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Keyword Category Domination

Company = VMware

Keyword = virtualization

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Instances of Keyword/Content

http://www.vmware.com/products/

http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/ *

http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/virtualization-basics/what-is-virtualization.html *

http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop-virtualization.html *

* URLs/Filenames the same as pre-redesign

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Internal Content Links Maintained

Footers

Imagery

Main Nav

Video

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Prepare for Redesign (2)The Tedious Part

WebMaster Tools – Queries, Keywords, Clicks - TAKE SCREENSHOTS!

What do search results look like today! TAKE SCREENSHOTS!

As much as I hate to say it – run ranking reports

Set up redirect file for .htaccess

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Little Things

Error Page in place?

Turned on the tracking code (since it was probably off on the beta site)?

Filtered out the design/development team (Search company too) from the analytics?

Connected Google analytics and Google Webmaster tools and have the same person looking at both

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Right about NowSpot check for redirect errors – click on organic

search results

Home page change? 3 hours

Sitelinks? 1-3 days

Old and new URLs at same time – yup – some overlap

DNS propagation – 4-5 days across world

Major ranking changes – 2 weeks

Launch

2-weeks

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What can you compare from previous site?

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Organic Search TrafficComparing Pre-Post LaunchTraditional Analytics

Full siteVisitsUnique VisitorsTime on siteBounce rate

Traffic to pages where URL has NOT changed

QuestionableNumber of Pages Viewed/visitForm completions

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Organic Search TrafficComparing Pre-Post Launch Queries, Keywords, Clicks

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What CAN’T you compare from previous site?

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Organic Search TrafficWhat you CAN’T CompareContent by page (unless you kept the URLs the

same) (ie. Visits to company/mgt/ceo would need to be mapped to company/management/ceo)

# of Pages visited

Path through site

Top content

Landing pages

Questionable Consumption of resources (whitepapers, etc)

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Go back and revisit your screenshots of search results prior to redesign.

-Did it work?

-Do the snippets make sense?

Question – when do you intervene?

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VisualSearch

Turns UpLots of Things

Barbara Coll

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