Websites have a shelf life of a couple of years and a successful redesign of a website is essential for any company that relies on the internet for business. There are many different facets of a website redesign, but the impact of a redesign on search engine optimization is often overlooked.

Think about the reasons for redesigning a website. They typically include an updated look and feel through new graphics and a change in the navigation of the site to allow visitors to more easily find information and increase sales. Changing the navigation can have unintended consequences, especially when not handled correctly. Often, page urls will change when the site is redesigned and search engines and past visitors who bookmarked the url will be left wondering where the page went. If these old pages had inbound links coming into them, you will lose the benefit of said links for search engine optimization purposes.

To overcome this, you should create a site map (a list of all pages on your site) of your current site and a proposed site map for the new site and look at the differences in pages and urls. Then, use a 301 redirect to map old pages to the corresponding new page. If you have thousands of pages and redirecting all of them is impossible, you can use an online tool, such as Yahoo Site Explorer, to find out what other sites are linking to your site. Visit those sites and find out which of your pages they are linking to and redirect the top 20 most linked pages.

Another common pitfall is using the same title and meta description tags for every page. You are redesigning the site, and thus actively working on each page, so take the extra couple of minutes and create a unique and relevant page title and meta description for every single page on your site. If certain sets of pages are powered by a database, such as products pages, have a programmer create dynamic titles using the information in the database.

Finally, create a helpful error page. This is less for search engine optimization and more for visitors, but it is well worth doing. Your error page should contain a friendly message saying the page could not be found and have a sitemap, links to commonly requested pages or a search feature.