Ein Website Relaunch beinhaltet sehr viel mehr als „nur“ eine visuelle Auffrischung, die vielfältige SEO Services und Suchmaschinenoptimierung einschließt. Vielmehr geht es um eine strategische Neuausrichtung des Onlineauftritts mit vielfältigen Herausforderungen. Zum einen kann es sich um den Wechsel zu einem Content Management System, um URL-Änderungen, Design-Anpassungen, Optimierung der Navigationsstruktur bis hin zum Domainumzug handeln.
In addition to web design and web development, an SEO expert should also be involved in the planning process. Their early involvement ensures that the planned goals are achieved, improves the keyword ranking and usability - es there are many good reasons why close planning is necessary.
Our practical experience and support with many website relaunches have shown us that SEO is repeatedly underestimated in this regard. In this article, we would like to highlight some of the reasons why SEO experts need to be consulted long before the switch is flipped.
Whether e-commerce websites, blogs, online magazines or corporate websites, there are different challenges and goals when it comes to website relaunches. For e-commerce sites, product detail pages must be quickly accessible. Web tracking must be optimized after the live launch so that conversions and other SEO KPIs can be monitored.
Compared to blogs and online magazines, which are focused on keeping content up-to-date, website relaunches are often used to "clean up" outdated content and redirects. Corporate websites must rank optimally compared to competitors in the organic search channel and be present with essential money keywords.
In terms of SEO, there are a few pitfalls to consider when relaunching a website. Because after the website relaunch, the performance should be better than before. Here are some examples of how a website relaunch can really backfire:
Relaunches should always be carried out in a developer environment. This is a shielded area where web developers can test the website under real conditions without affecting the live website. SEO experts must also be able to check this environment. This ensures that the SEO metrics are also implemented correctly in the new version of the website. Anything that does not work in the developer environment will also perform poorly after going live.
Various SEO tasks need to be taken into account during a website relaunch:
A thorough analysis of the current situation shows which legacy issues exist and how to deal with them. The SEO analysis after the relaunch shows whether all data has landed in the right place.
Here you check all SEO metrics and whether all components have an optimal effect on web performance. Ideally, an SEO onsite audit is also created. The correct configuration of the SEO analysis tools (we use Screaming Frog) and password protection of the developer environment prevent accidental indexing of content in search engines.
In order to realistically assess the success of the website relaunch, you first need data - before and after the relaunch. By the way: Monitoring and evaluating SEO KPIs is not a one-off, but an ongoing process.
This gives you the opportunity to index old URLs at de and integrate them into a forwarding concept.
This redirect plan defines which old URLs are redirected to the corresponding new URLs. This is crucial in order to avoid ranking losses and maintain usability.
Ensuring that the technical infrastructure is SEO-friendly and that all clients communicate optimally with each other.
Clear and logical URL structures are equally important for search engines and users.
Ensure that the right pages are indexed by search engines.
BY THE WAY: We have often seen es in practice that after relaunches the start page was published with the noindex/nofollow tag. A small check mark that has a huge impact on all SEO metrics. So: After going live, an SEO onsite audit is a MUST!
Canonical tags are HTML elements that show search engines the preferred URL for duplicate content. When relaunching a website, they should be checked to avoid duplicates and SEO problems.
Hreflang tags help search engines to understand which language or country version of a page should be displayed. During a website relaunch, they must be checked so that the correct language version is displayed in the appropriate region. This is very important for user experience and SEO.
The Robots.txt file can be used to control crawler access. For example, directories that have no place in the digital public sphere can be excluded here.
An updated sitemap helps search engines to understand the structure of the new website. All important URLs (only with status code 200) are listed here. If a new sitemap is created, it should be submitted to the Google Search Console.
Conclusion
A website relaunch is an opportunity to improve SEO visibility and optimize website performance. All stakeholders - including SEO experts - must be given a permanent insight and overview of the project stages. Their early involvement in the relaunch process is helpful to ensure the continuity of SEO performance and to take advantage of new opportunities. Last but not least, the budget is unnecessarily strained because an important building block has been forgotten and the rankings have to be painstakingly rebuilt.
Author: fbaer