Website Update Tips

When updating your website there are a few things you should remember so as not to loose visitors or organic ranks within search engine results.

Updating a website

Small Business Web Design

Beginners SEO

Search engine info

Link Management

Q & A

File structure

If you endeavour to keep your file names the same there should be no problems encountered when search engine spiders re-crawl the updated site especially if you have also maintained similar linking. Visitors bookmarks won't return error messages either thus you should be able to preserve established traffic.

If it is not totally possible to maintain your file/page addresses then ensure you redirect all old or changed URL's to the appropriate new pages.

Keep your title tags the same as much as possible in order to preserve your existing search engine rankings.

Keeping up apprearances

Having spent the effort to provide your visitors with a new updated site consider creating a tailored 404 page so if an error does occur they are presented with something in tune with your new design instead of something that could make them feel your new site isn't working.

Double check all your links to make sure that they are working – some of your older links out could just possibly be pointed to now closed sites and you may want to update links you have into your site, especially if you have changed domain or pages, as you certainly wouldn't want to lose any existing back links!

There are those visitors who don't like to see a lot of change and could even become confused with your updated site so ensure an easily accessible site map to try and assist this kind of visitor.