The Importance of SEO Audit While Re-Launching of a Website

It is often seen that people redevelop and re-launch their website. This is a much-needed thing. However, there is one important thing to remember here, and that is the importance of SEO audit before launching it. This will ensure further safety and security. A useful SEO audit identifies important SEO pitfalls before the launch. Thus, they give people the time to fix their issues before replacing the present website.

An overview of the SEO audit for website re-launches

Unlike the normal SEO audit on the website, an audit that is needed for re-launching the website is quite different since it’s about looking and comparing two fully different websites i.e. the old site versus the newly developed site. Re-launch audits have their individual set of challenges.

Much of the tools that are used for performing an audit need a website to be available on the internet to scan the website. However, while doing redesigning, the newly developed website may have hidden password gates or perhaps internal servers that cannot be accessed by such tools. There are two types of re-launch audits namely, the pre-launch and post-launch audits.

What is the pre-launch audit?

People can wait after the re-launching for performing the SEO audit. However, it would be better to view most of the SEO mistakes before the introduction of the new site. If people do not catch the SEO issues before the re-launch, then people can face some additional costs post re-launch to fix the newly discovered SEO issues.

So, in a pre-launch audit people can tackle most of the issues. Under, the content management system, the images, files, and more such things are being edited. It is very careful as well as an efficient approach. A pre-launch audit should contain the following things.

• Analytics review

While re-launching the website, people need to be sure that their web analytics continue to effortlessly track from the old version of the website to the newly developed version. People need to make sure that their analytics tracking code is on all pages of the newly developed site, and that is rightly programmed. There is also the availability of the Google tag manager (GTM), and when added for the first time, people need to remember every Google Analytics code from the website and rather add it through the GTM. After re-launching the site, while using Google analytics, people need to be sure to add annotations for easily identifying the date of the re-launch while looking at the graphs.

• Technical review

Various technical issues can plague SEO. One may know how their existing site will work with SEO, but they do not know how the layout, design, code, images, and layout will work. One of the most common technical problems related to SEO pitfalls with such re-launches is new page load times. Page speed can be quite impactful. If the test site is available on the internet, people are encouraged to test it by using the Google Page Speed Insights tool for evaluating the page load times before the launch. In the case of people who are thinking to change their servers with a re-launch, they must know one important thing, not every server and web host is equal, and few of them are not fast enough to start the loading of pages. There are various options for testing this.

• Content review

One of the most common issues that people find on their websites in the size of the image. At times when the CMS is utilized, the people who are updating the content of the website are not web designers. That is the utility of the CMS. It is helpful to everyone in the organization. However, this can lead to major problems later for page speed due to image uploads. But there is a useful way for this. CMSs at present have plugins for addressing this particular issue. Some things which people should think about while rewriting their site content are keywords reviewing. There are keywords that people want to optimize, but there is not the availability of any proper page on the present site. People, who take the help of CMS, will be designing as well as dynamically updating their XML sitemap.

• Link review

If there is no change in domain, then inbound linking may not be such a major issue with re-launches. However, people need to be sure that they optimize their internal links from one page to another on the website. This can be done after the launch is done, but it is better that they are not left for later but rather done before the launch. This will ensure a successful launch.

What is a Post-launch audit?

After the re-launching process is done with, there is an SEO audit that is needed to done post the launching of the new website. This audit is done to measure any change that has happened in organic traffic as well as rankings. Most website owners love to run a check internally for every day for a time period of two weeks and make sure that everything that is on the right track.

If people see losses or dips, then they need to diagnose them fast. If there is any problem related to receiving organic traffic, then the 301 redirect need to be checked for that particular page. Is there any drop in organic trafficking or ranking when compared to the set limit? Then the website owners need to determine what changes have taken place on that page, whether it is the loading speed of the page or the size of the image.

Even if people need to delay their re-launch schedule, they must do it as this will ensure that the redesigned site will be launched in the most friendly way that will ensure the traffic, as well as rankings, work just like before. People can hope that their launch will be a successful and hassle-free one that will ensure their modified products serve in the same manner as their previous one.