Launching a new website for your company or organization is supposed to be an exciting and joyous time. After all, you worked hard on all of that brand new search engine friendly content, you sat through meetings and brainstorming sessions, worked carefully with the developers, and made sure everything was just right. But shortly after popping the champagne you realize something has gone very wrong. In the days following the launch of your newly redesigned website you suddenly realize your traffic has taken a nosedive. Sales and inquiries have slowed and you’re left scratching your head. What happened?
Here are three of the most common causes of a drop in website rankings and traffic after launching a new website:
You didn’t do your research. Before launching a new website take a look inside your Google Analytics account to see which pages on your website received the most traffic (top landing pages). Make sure those pages still exist on the new website, even if you change the location and URL of them. If you purposely decide not to include them on the new website at the very least you should do the right thing and set up a 301 redirect to another page on the website. Which brings us to another consideration that can cause lost traffic and rankings.
You’ve mismanaged the 404’s. During a website redesign, it is often the case that some of your pages will no longer exist on the new site. Other times, they will exist but they will be located at a different URL. In either case, it’s important that 301 redirects are set up properly to accommodate. Additionally, you should be logging into Google Search Console in the days and weeks ahead to take note of any 404 (page not found) errors that arise. A large number of 404 errors is a bad indication to visitors (and search engines alike) and can lose you traffic and even search rankings.
You ignored the carry over. Many web developers get so caught up in the way the website looks and functions that they completely forget to carry over page titles, meta descriptions, meta keywords, ahreflang tags, and other important tags on the website. This is a step that should not be skipped as search engines use the content of these tags to help determine what a page and website is about. Ignoring or changing them will ruin your chances of maintaining your website’s traffic levels.
If you’ve ever lauched a redesign and taken a hit with rankings and traffic you know it can get very ugly. Make sure you take the proper precautions to protect the traffic your website has earned and keep that bottle of champagne open.
