Tag: onpage seo

The Complete SEO Checklist for Website Redesigns

Posted on by bigjawdigital

Redesigning your business’s website is something you might eventually want to do. Whether you’re doing it to update its look, improve user experience, or enhance its other features, you should carefully approach the process so it doesn’t end up affecting your website’s search engine rankings.

In this comprehensive SEO guide, you will learn how to accomplish your website redesigning project while preserving your site’s search ranking. This checklist will cover general website SEO, technical SEO, and crucial steps like SEO audits to ensure your site remains search-engine-friendly from the beginning to the completion of the process.

That said, here are steps you should never ignore during the website redesigning process:

Set clear SEO goals

You should define your SEO goals before jumping into the redesign process. Having clear objectives helps guide your redesign strategy and ensure that SEO remains a priority.

Here are sample goals and what you should do:

  • Improve organic traffic by focusing on keyword research and optimizing your website’s content.

  • Boost local search visibility by optimizing local SEO elements like Google Business Profile, local citations, and customer reviews.

  • Improve mobile performance by ensuring mobile-friendliness and fixing page loading speeds.

Ensure everyone involved in the redesign project is aware of your website SEO goals and works towards achieving them.

Conduct a thorough SEO audit

An SEO audit ensures you know where your website stands before you make any changes. It helps you identify what’s working well, what requires improvement, and what errors might exist. Make sure your audit covers the following:

  • On-page SEO. Review your content, meta tags, headers, and how keywords are used.

  • Technical SEO. Check the site’s structure, page speed, and mobile-friendliness.

  • Backlink profile. Evaluate the quality and number of backlinks to your website.

An SEO audit provides a foundation for necessary changes, so its importance cannot be overstated.

Mind the site’s URLs and redirects

Redesigning the website can affect its URL structure and, possibly, its search ranking. If you need to change any URL, make sure to set up 301 redirects to inform search engines that the old page’s contents have been permanently moved to a new location. This helps you preserve your pages’ SEO equity and prevent broken links.

Tools like Screaming Frog can crawl your website and identify all existing URLs, making it easier to map out redirects.

Prioritize SEO-friendly content

Your website redesigning project must never sacrifice SEO-friendly content in favor of aesthetics. Take this opportunity to refresh and optimize your content for your target keywords by following these steps:

  • Keyword research. Find relevant keywords using tools like Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest and incorporate them into your page titles, headings, meta descriptions, and content.

  • Content optimization. Ensure that each page’s content is unique, aligns with user intent, and provides value to site visitors. Make sure your content is readable, and avoid keyword stuffing.

  • Internal linking. Check and fix internal links to smoothen user experience and ensure search engines crawl your website more effectively.

Remember that search engines want to give users high-quality content. Failing to prioritize SEO-friendly content can negatively impact your website’s search rankings.

Improve mobile optimization

Half of all web traffic is currently generated by mobile devices, so having a mobile-optimized website helps your business reach as many potential customers as possible. It also improves user experience and helps your site rank higher.

Your mobile optimization strategy should focus on these factors:

  • Responsiveness. Your website’s layout should adjust seamlessly to different screen sizes.

  • Page speed. Reduce media file sizes and enable features that improve page loading speeds.

  • Mobile usability. Ensure that buttons are functional, text is legible, and navigation is straightforward even on smaller screens.

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test can help you ensure your site is mobile-friendly and all features work as intended.

Focus on technical SEO

Tech SEO forms the backbone of your site’s performance in the search results. During the redesign process, you should focus on your site’s technical aspects, such as:

  • Security. If your site isn’t already using HTTPS, a redesign is the perfect opportunity to do so. Increasing security makes your website more trustworthy to users and search engines.

  • Indexing. Your site should be crawlable by search engines; otherwise, it won’t be indexed properly and will not appear in the search results.

  • Site structure. Ensuring your website has a clear hierarchy and helps search engines make better sense of your content and improves user experience.

Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console let you track changes in traffic, rankings, and user behavior after making changes.

Update your XML sitemap

An XML sitemap helps Google and other search engines index your website’s pages more efficiently. During the redesign process, ensure that changes are reflected on your sitemap. These include new pages you want to be indexed and ones you don’t want to appear in the search results.

Additionally, review your robots.txt file—which tells search engine bots which pages to crawl and ignore—to ensure it’s updated with your redesigned site’s changes. Once done, submit your sitemap through Google Search Console.

Test and monitor performance

Just because your redesigned website is live doesn’t mean you can call it a day. You should monitor its performance using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console, looking for changes in traffic and rankings, as well as crawl errors.

Moreover, always check your site’s health using regular SEO audits. This can help identify emerging issues that could affect your website’s performance.

Website redesigning is an exciting opportunity to make your website more aligned with your brand, but it’s also a critical opportunity to address flaws and improve its SEO performance. As long as you’re conscious of your SEO goals and prioritize them throughout the process, you should end up with a website that looks and functions better while driving more traffic to your business.

If you don’t know how to start and where to focus during your website redesigning project, don’t hesitate to consult SEO experts.

Core Web Vitals in 2024: Why Page Speed and UX Still Matter for SEO

Posted on by bigjawdigital

There was a time when search engine optimization (SEO) was all about keywords and backlinks. If you wanted your website to appear on the search engine results page (SERP) and get clicks, all you had to do was stuff the right keywords and links into your content.

But today’s SEO is far more nuanced and complex, with Google increasingly emphasizing user experience (UX) and websites’ technical health. One key driver behind this shift is Core Web Vitals, which are metrics measuring how users experience the speed, responsiveness, and stability of your website.

For small and medium business owners, keeping up with the latest SEO updates in 2024 might feel overwhelming, with constantly changing algorithms and new concepts being introduced. However, having a basic understanding of Core Web Vitals and how to improve your site’s performance can help your business stay competitive in the search results.

What are Core Web Vitals?

Google introduced the metrics known as Core Web Vitals to assess three important aspects of a webpage’s performance:

  1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures the time it takes for the largest element—usually a large image, video, or block of text—to load and become visible to users. Google recommends an LCP of 2.5 seconds or faster for a good user experience.
  2. First Input Delay (FID) tracks how long the website responds to the first user interaction, such as clicking a link or tapping a button. An interactive and responsive site has an FID of under 100 milliseconds.
  3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures how much a webpage’s layout shifts as it loads. A big shift could result in users accidentally clicking on the wrong elements, causing a frustrating experience. The ideal CLS score is 0.1 or less.

A high score on these metrics ensures that users have a smooth and positive experience when they visit your website.

How do Core Web Vitals impact SEO?

Google integrated Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor in its algorithm, which means your site’s performance directly affects its ranking in search results. Of course, exceptional content and high-quality backlinks are still critical, but your website could still end up ranking low because of poor page loading speeds and clunky user experience.

Visitors expect websites to load within about two seconds, with 53% of mobile visitors abandoning a site that takes longer than three seconds to finish loading. They also expect a smooth user experience; otherwise, 79% leave and go to a competitor instead. In fact, 88% of online consumers refuse to buy from a business whose website offers a negative experience. For Google, such user behavior is a clear sign that your site does not meet user expectations, and over time, this can harm your search ranking.

Why does page speed matter in SEO?

Page speed has been and continues to be an important ranking factor in SEO. Google downright prioritizes websites that load quickly because users value speed. If users abandon your site because your content takes forever to load, your bounce rate will rise. This measures the percentage of people who leave your site after viewing just one page. High bounce rates indicate a poor user experience, and Google will take notice.

Additionally, as mentioned above, mobile users are especially demanding regarding page speed. This is critical for two reasons. First, half of all web traffic today comes from mobile devices. Second, Google’s mobile-first indexing prioritizes a website’s mobile version when determining its ranking in the search results.

Why is UX important in SEO?

User experience is closely tied to page speed. Even if your page loads quickly, confusing navigation, unresponsive elements, intrusive pop-ups, and other hallmarks of bad UX design can frustrate visitors and cause them to leave. Imagine how you’d feel if, the moment you land on a webpage, you are bombarded with multiple ads and pop-ups before you can even read the page’s contents.

Google and other search engines want to provide users with the best experience possible, so sites that deliver good UX are more likely to rank higher in the search results. Therefore, improving your website’s usability should be a key component of your SEO strategy.

How can you improve your site’s Core Web Vitals?

Here are tips to ensure your website delivers a top-notch experience to users:

Optimize images

Visual elements can keep visitors engaged, but large images slow down your site’s loading speed. Compress images to reduce their file size and reduce their impact on loading time.

Implement lazy loading

Lazy loading can help you achieve a good LCP score. It’s a technique wherein images and heavy elements like videos are only loaded when they are visible on the user’s screen.

Minimize JavaScript and CSS

JavaScript and CSS are used to style and make your site more interactive, but excessive use can slow down your site. Minimizing their use can make your site faster and more responsive.

Regularly monitor performance

You or your SEO agency should regularly monitor your website’s Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console. The detailed reports in Google Search Console tell you how your site is performing and alert you to any issues that may affect your rankings.

Prioritize mobile-first design

Ensuring your website is optimized for mobile devices is crucial to your technical SEO strategy. Use a responsive design and test your website’s mobile performance to make sure it loads quickly and provides an excellent experience for mobile users.

Core Web Vitals are more than just a technical requirement—they are a key component to delivering the best possible user experience and maintaining strong search rankings. Achieving high scores in these metrics can help you stay competitive, drive traffic to your website, and help grow your business. If you’re unsure where to start, consider reaching out to an experienced SEO agency that can guide you through the process and keep you updated on the latest Google ranking tips.

By focusing on technical SEO and providing a better user experience, you’ll be well-positioned to succeed in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

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