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If it ain't broke, don't fix it, is sage advice - trouble is, it's not always that straightforward. Take your website's performance in the organic or natural search engine results as you plan the evolution or even the redesign of your entire site for instance.
Adding relevant content can only be beneficial. As each Vertical Leap campaign matures it will fast become evident which keywords and phrases are generating the most visits and just as importantly, which are not, through the monitoring of the Search Analytics module within Apollo, by your appointed Campaign Delivery Manager.
However, although changing the design and improving usability - targeting your site more closely to visitors and helping them to navigate it better - are obviously key to improving its value to your business, it is vitally important to plan for the implications in search engine marketing if a stalled or even terminally declining ranking positions are to be avoided.
Imagine: your Vertical Leap campaign is beginning to bite, but you want to evolve or even redesign the site. What are the implications for those hard fought for rankings in the main search engines? An unplanned change in a site's architecture, the deletion of existing pages and the launching of new ones can all add up to dire consequences for those rankings.
However, with a little planning it is possible to relaunch with the knowledge that a small blip in rankings can be accepted now in anticipation of a grand leap in the future: think of it as a kind of investment.
As well as evaluating usability and design, it is crucial to establish which pages are the most popular on your site - and which are the least. To maximise conversions, visitors want immediate answers to their queries and if that means they can find those answers by going straight to a specific page that helps them, you stand far more chance of retaining their interest, so this should be encouraged. Search engines react positively to relevant, targeted content and eventually these pages may even rank higher than your home page - great!
Once you have established how the new site will be structured, you'll need to list the new pages as well as those which are to be dropped. Over the months the search engines will have indexed your site page by page and so if you simply relaunch the site there could be dozens of pages, either new or renamed that simply no longer be found by the engines, unless you take the appropriate steps.
Wherever possible it is a good idea to keep the new page titles the same as before. For renamed pages, you'll need your webs designers to build in 301 permanent page redirects. These are perfectly legitimate signposts to the search engines that these pages have changed their names and until they are reindexed they act as a forwarding address.
Get your web team to build a custom made 404 Page Not Found. Apart from a server hiccup, hitting a brick wall like this is the worst thing that can happen to a visitor on your relaunched site, but at least a custom made version will be able to explain what is going on and can redirect them back to the home page is a friendly and business-like manner.
The most important piece of advice from Vertical Leap is that you don't have to plan evolution or a redesign in isolation. Vertical Leap's Campaign Delivery Managers have the experience to advise and suggest ways of making this transition run as smoothly as possible.
Clients in their second and third year of working with Vertical Leap know that effective managed search engine marketing is a long term commitment. The benefits and opportunities improve and grow every year as the campaign becomes ever more successful. Ultimately Vertical Leap is concerned with fostering long term relationships and so effective website evolution and redesigns can be effectively managed with the minimum of fuss - if Vertical Leap are involved!
Your website is a living, breathing entity and evolution is a natural part of its life. One of the unexpected benefits of Apollo, Vertical Leap's unique campaign management software, is that it helps bring a campaign to life. Because you will actually see the performance of your campaign in real time - the actual search queries used through to the benefits of the link building campaign, very often you get to see how your website could evolve perhaps in terms of content, to attract more motivated visitors from search engines.
The most important piece of advice is to keep everybody in the picture. Vertical Leap's fully managed search engine marketing service means to have access to a wealth of knowledge in how to make a site redesign run smoothly. Vertical Leap is as keen to make your site evolution run as smoothly and as successfully as possible. As part of the fully managed service there is no extra charge for this input and remember, Vertical Leap are 100% focused on maintaining and improving results and thus maintaining your confidence for the future. Vertical Leap is in for the long term.
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