Hi guys, let me first appologise for my recent lack of posts and social visibility of late. Anyway, down to business – I have been asked many times by clients and co-workers if simple redesigns effect SEO? I have recently worked on one particular client who luckily consulted me on what they should look at and consider from an SEO perspective.

There is still an abundance of creative designers who do not realise that any site changes WILL effect search rankings. It doesn’t matter how small these changes might seem, they will all contribute to the ranking factors of search engines. Each search engine uses different algorithms to determine how relevant a website is matched with a users query.

From my experience there are at least 4 levels a website may be categorised in whereby site changes will effect rankings in different levels.

For example:

Level 1 – A new site can make multiple changes to content and design and not see dramatic changes either positively or negatively.

Level 2 – A newly established website under a year old may see medium to long tailed keyword ranking changes but the highly searched terms will not be greatly effected.

Level 3 – An established website, usually over 2 years old, any changes in design or content can greatly effect positive or negative ranking changes.

Level 4 – A big daddy or industry leader, these sites have so much trust and link visibility that design changes or small content changes can go fairly unnoticed. In fact if done in the right way you can rank for other top terms very easily.

Factors to always consult an SEO on before making site changes

1. Meta Data – This should be managed by your SEO department or agency so you or the client should never decide to make “your message” more focused to your consumer.

2. Headers – A lot of in house copywriters love changing these to match new branding ideas or products but changing these can destroy rankings in highly searched keywords. These can include headers for sections of a site that may seem completely irrelevant to SEO but every header counts.

3. Navigation – If you don’t like the text or the order of the pages consult your SEO. Deciding to put links to your company history or contact pages before key products will ultimately lessen the value of those pages. It will also push the desirable keywords deeper in to the page code that the search engines read.

4. Images – Removing or adding an image is another red flag. The images will need to be optimised properly before added to a site, if more images are included this can present possible opportunities. A common problem is if the site logo is changed and added without being optimised, the company logo is often one of the first pieces of readable data a spider will come across.

5. New pages – If you have a new product it should always be looked at by your SEO team. The page should be optimised and placed in the correct place in your overall site architecture.

6. Content – Even a simple sentence change can effect search rankings, especially in the first two paragraphs. Make sure that keyword density is continued as to a previous design or you will see fluctuation in rankings between your top targeted keywords. If there is a new brand message find out which phrases need to be included that will benefit your current keyword strategy.

Overall if you want a new look or feel and want to maintain your current rankings then you should try and keep the site looking the same to the search engines, i.e. the website code. Ignoring the factors I have discussed will lead to shifts some may be positive but others will suffer which will mean more design and more money.

1.    Website Content

• All content should be written in the targeted language in the commonly spoken dialect of each country. Translations are NOT as effective as rewriting text from scratch.
  • New keywords should be allocated to each page written in the new language. Often, keywords’ meanings change with each language.
  • The physical address of the company should be listed on a dedicated page or on the contact page. Ideally there should be an address for each country that is to be targeted.

2.    Keyword Research

• Keyword research should be done using Google Adwords in each language separately.
  • Keyword research should be carried out with the help of a native speaker.
  • Translations of keywords sometimes miss local slang which can provide better search results based on search volumes.

3.    Domains and Hosting

• Domain names should be registered in the country being targeted.
• Domain extensions should cover all variations of each language i.e. for France – www.domain.fr
  • If not the primary domain name then a second domain name should be bought and optimised
• The DNS server should be based in the country that is being targeted. It’s normal for the top performing websites for each country to be geographically based in that territory.
• The IP address for the site should be located in the country being targeted

4.    External Text Links

• External text links should come from country specific sites matching the appropriate language and industry relevance.
• The external links are chosen by analyising potential websites to match to Vivid Limes foreign language criteria.
  • Any text links from internal sites should be written in the target language as well.

5.    Local Search

• The site should be listed in all local and language directories
  • Local search listings should be activated in the country itself – using a local address.
  • Adding a local search listing will give the site priority in searches conducted geographically near the company.

6.    Videos and Images

• Any videos or images used on site should be tagged in the target language
• Videos should contain the foreign language in dialogue or if the video is a slide presentation, each slide should be created in the targeted language.

A recent project for a client made me think that an actual design of a Wordpress theme can hold SEO benefits, which a lot of the time are overlooked.

1. Make sure your theme is widget compatible – The free downloadable widgets provide great value to a blog and can help increase links and RSS subscriptions. Of course if you are a coder and want to add this separately the same results can be achieved but this will add time to the final cost.
2. Make sure the blog title is search engine readable – I know again you would think this is standard but I’ve seen many that only offer background or images for the header section.
3. Include RSS feeds in your design – Sounds like common sense but make sure then entries and comments are coded in the theme design, preferably near the top fold of the page. The basic blog feed, not feed burner or other feed websites, the bare basics.
4. Give people space to breathe – Ok, so not directly SEO related but the design should encourage the client or end user of the theme to include a sufficient level of customisation, be this adsense, MyBlogLog or other synthetic extras.
5. Site architecture – When deciding where to put your pages, categories or recent posts consider could enhance your design. Ideally put your pages at the start of the readable code i.e. in the header file, I personally like to see categories next in readable code from a search engine perspective, this will increase the speed of crawling throughout your site, thus keeping everyone happy!