TRAFFIC
managed. As you probably already know,
HTML titles and meta descriptions are key
element of any webpage in terms of SEO.
However, different front-end templates,
CMS systems and back-end solutions
handle these highly sensitive elements in
different ways, and sudden changes in them
can damage your website rankings and
CTR rates. Therefore, it is generally a good
idea to keep your metadata unchanged
during a website redesign.
As said, this is just a quick list of common
macroscopic mistakes one may make. Before
deciding on any new design, architecture
or platform it is always recommended to
perform a thorough SEO assessment of it.
Figure 2: URI’s response time breakdown in ScreamingFrog
3. Benchmark your old and new
design’s performance
optimize choice in terms of SEO. Search
engine spiders may encounter problems
in interpreting client-side languages
such as JavaScript and JavaScript-based
technologies such as AJAX. Therefore,
it is advisable to limit the use of these
technologies in key areas of the site,
making sure all relevant content and links
are accessible also in alternative ways.
Basing navigation on drop-down menus
and search boxes. During their discovery
process, search engine spiders browse from
page to page by discovering and visiting
HTML links they find. In most cases,
spiders may have problems in choosing
elements from drop-down menus or
filling in search boxes and complex forms.
Therefore, all information accessible only
via drop-downs and search fields may be
hard to reach for search engines and should
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be made available also via alternative
navigation paths based on HTML links.
Creating redundant sections. Keyword
cannibalization occurs when several
pages focus on the same set of keywords,
confusing both users and search engines.
For example, in the case your redesigned
site contains a few additional sections
dedicated to poker tournaments, probably
the best thing to do is to keep just one
generic section about tournaments and to
focus other sections on specific kinds of
these, so that each page and section makes
use of a specific set of mid- and long-tail
keywords. This way, both users and search
engine will know exactly what each section
and page is about and what is the best
area of your site for every specific kind of
tournament, without getting confused.
Changing the way in which metadata is
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iGB Affiliate Issue 55 FEB/MAR 2016
Once your new design is ready in a staging
environment (i.e. a test area) you should
make sure it is not slower than your
former one, as this can impact on your
users’ experience and ultimately also SEO
rankings5. As we mentioned in the first
section of this article, a redesign often
involves changes both in the front-end (i.e.
what HTML, CSS and JS code composes
your site) and in the back-end (i.e. how the
code composing your site is generated).
Therefore, before launching a new design it
is always advisable to test both back-end and
front-end performances extensively.
A tool which can help you get an idea of
how your new design’s back-end performs
in terms of speed is ScreamingFrog6, a
crawling software which can massively
“call” your site’s resources and show you
how long it takes before you server delivers
them (see Figure 2).
Another tool which can be extremely
helpful in determining the speed of your
new design (in both its back-end and frontend components) is Google Pagespeed
Insights7, which will also offer you specific
advice on how to improve your site.
After the new design’s performance has
been optimized and tested in a staging
environment, it is always advisable to
https://moz.com/blog/how-website-speed-actually-impacts-search-ranking
6
http://www.screamingfrog.com
7
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/