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Will a Website Redesign Affect My Search Engine Ranking?

When building a new website for your dealership, there is a risk of losing SEO traffic, which could harm your rankings and result in a dip in sales for your dealership. To avoid this, you must take certain measures while designing the new site.

All too often when dealers plan a new website, their sole focus is on aesthetics and user experience, and while these are highly important factors, thoughts about SEO get swept under the rug. When this happens, and websites are launched, they will notice a significant drop in traffic, and panic, racing to implement SEO tactics to help them climb back up the rankings.

By the time the issue is resolved, leads and sales will have already been lost, so preparations should be made well ahead of the launch. You will need someone with a good understanding of SEO to help plan the site migration.

Here are some of the things that you may need to consider during your website redesign and launch:

Gather Data

To ensure that nothing gets broken when your new site is created, make sure you have a record of the current structure. Conduct a website crawl to gather a list of page URLs and metadata. You can recreate this data to avoid losing the SEO rewards you’ve already earned.

Redirect

You should try to keep the URL scheme the same between websites, but if you do want to alter the URL of a page that you are transferring across, you can use 301 redirects. These tell search engines that the new page you are directing to is the equivalent of the old page, so that they can reassign the SEO value, rather than you having to optimise the page from scratch.

Changing Your Domain

Changing your domain is not the best idea in terms of SEO, but if you really feel that this is necessary, there are ways to reduce the impact. Just as you would file a change of address when moving to a new house, you must change your website address with Google. You will need to have Google Search Console set up and verified, head to the settings and select the appropriate option.

Request Action from Search Engines

As soon as your new website is launched, you will want it to be indexed. Set up the new site’s Google Search Console and select ‘Crawl’, followed by ‘Fetch as Google’, then click ‘Request Indexing’.

Have Your Website Made by Experts

When you have your website redesigned by Click Dealer, we will ensure that your rankings do not suffer. We offer a leading website platform designed with the help of our in-house SEM experts and a variety of SEO packages that will help you not only retain your traffic but boost it!

For more information about how Click Dealer can help with car and van dealer SEO, get in touch today by emailing marketing@clickdealer.co.uk, 01782 478 220 or via our contact page.



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