Website Re-launch and Maintaining Search Rankings - Doing the While Shebang

If you're fortunate enough to be doing the whole shebang, congratulations and take warning: chances are you're going to look like a god after the re-launch. Your boss will be buying you lunch and children will be named after you. Your work on the redesign will be much more intensive, but the reward of children named after you is greater than a pat-on-the-back as well. Your SEO goal in the redesign: design a website structure that will enhance your website's search engine rankings; and smooth the transition for the search engine spiders.

Sometimes it's necessary to start anew. As a matter of fact, the majority of upgraded websites have to be reworked to some degree. This has been my experience; most organizations want enhanced features on their websites, new product lines, and more company information. This usually necessitates increasing the number of directories and pages on the website, but don't trash the old website just yet.

The old website usually has some structural features that can be retained. For example, directories which can work within the new website structure should remain. As well, the default directory documents should remain. That is, if the old website uses index.htm as your default document then you should attempt to retain that standard. This last point is not crucial, especially if the old website was a dog with little or no traffic. Moreover, if you're moving from a static website to a dynamic website, then the default document names are going to have to change. Don't fuss about this too much. Bottom line: if the search engines have your default documents within their caches, and those pages come up in search results, you don't want to create 404 errors by changing their names and not having a plan. We'll talk about a plan in a few minutes.

Next: Quick Points on Website Structure >>
 

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