Website Revamp? Questions to ask your Website Designer

When revamping an existing website, ensure that links in to your website pages from other websites and search engines are retained.

Websites need updating every now and then - ideally, no longer than three or four years. Even if your products or services haven't changed, everything else has: search engines, browsers, your competitors, etc.

Now that you have decided to revamp your website and approved the new design, there are some other things that you need to consider so that you don't lose whatever ranking you have.

Here are a couple of important points to discuss with your website designer:

• There will be links to pages within your website, not just your home page. If the page name or the path changes when the new website replaces the old one, you will lose traffic. Ask your website designer to include a '301 permanent redirect' or similar for each of the removed URLs.
• If you have taken the opportunity to rewrite some of the content, ensure that the effectiveness of keywords is not diluted. Whether or not the visible content changes, there are code changes (both HTML and CSS) that need to be checked, especially: title tags, meta-descriptions, header tags and anchor text.

More information about optimising websites & legal considerations for website design.