Website Redesign – Solutions for Fixing Traffic Drops
You have a great website that is doing well and traffic is high, but it is starting to look outdated or some of the features need revamping so you decide to redesign. The newly designed website is even better than before, the design is clean and it is easier to navigate but now you notice a drop in traffic. While some amount of loss in traffic is normal after a redesign, there are a few things you might want to consider to help increase traffic to your site.
Why website traffic drops after a redesign
During the redesign your website has undergone a few changes which have now made a difference to its search engine optimization. A new site map, different URLs and loss of keywords are all factors that could cause traffic to your site to drop. Let us take a closer look at some of these factors:
Update your Sitemap: Once the newly designed website is up and running the Google bots need to crawl the site and index it. If you haven’t updated your sitemap to include the new pages of your site, the bots are likely to miss something and give less than favorable results. A new website requires a new sitemap, so make sure to don’t overlook this detail.
Redirects: Your old website already had the desired traffic hitting hit and there is a good chance that regular users will visit the old site again. Unless you have kept all the URLs the same there is a good chance that your loyal following is going to miss the newly designed website altogether. The best way to overcome this glitch is to setup redirects. Setting up 301 redirects ensures that search engines know where the new pages of your website are located and are able to redirect traffic there. Make sure all your new URLs are 301 redirect so that your new pages get indexed by search engine bots.
Keywords: The content of your old site was the main reason for drawing traffic to it and this could have had a lot to do with having the right keywords. You will need to go through your old copy and identify which keywords were bringing in the traffic. Make sure to include the important keywords in the content of the new website as well. Using the right keywords well, can greatly improve search engine optimization results.
Updating Robots.txt: Robot.txt is a file which guides search engine bots on which pages need to be indexed. If this file has been disabled during the redesign make sure that it has been updated once the redesign is complete. The Robots.txt file has to be updated on the server before the launch of the new website. You can check the Robot.txt file to make sure all your pages are being allowed to be indexed.
Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that allows you to monitor and track traffic to your site. By signing up for Google Analytics you can get all the data you need to know how well your site is doing in terms of ranking and clicks. Google Analytics is a useful tool to keep track of rise and falls in traffic to your site, empowering you to take action when required.
Increasing Clicks: After going through all the mentioned points and taking all the required steps things might still be a bit slow. You might find that while your website is ranking well in search engine results you are still not receiving the number of clicks you would like. In this case you should consider rewriting your Meta description. The Meta description tag in HTML is a 160 character summary of what your website is about.
If for example your website sells pet supplies, a good Meta description would be; “Everything your pet needs, in one place, at the best prices”, this description lets a potential customer who is searching for a dog leash, know that this site is a good option to visit.
A website redesign is a small bump in the road for site traffic. The website might be down for a short while during the revamp which could cause traffic loss. As discussed there are a number of other factors as well that can lead to a drop in traffic after a website redesign. Luckily there is a solution for every problem and with a few tweaks here and there things can be back to normal. There is nothing worse than have a brand new website but have no one come visit it. With a little bit of analysis and insight you can figure out where your new website is falling short and quickly fix the problem. Always remember that there will be days when traffic is slow all over the internet and there is no need to panic.