A website redesign is the perfect time to not only refresh the look and feel of your website, but also audit, update and reorganize your content. If one of your main website goals is to optimize your content and continue to rank on Google, it’s important to create an SEO strategy early in the redesign process.
Lumicor, a resin panel and wall tile manufacturer, came to SiteCrafting to help update their website. One of their top goals was optimizing their content for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to connect with customers and grow their business.
Some of their concerns with a website redesign were:
- Losing or having to re-do SEO optimization work they had previously done with a different company.
- Knowing that the current navigation needed a significant overhaul
- Switching CMS platforms from Joomla to WordPress
These are all major changes and ones we know often cause a drop in organic traffic after the redesigned website launches.
Knowing these challenges, our digital marketing and content strategy team created an SEO plan to help Lumicor ensure their search engine rankings and organic traffic didn’t tank as soon as the website launched. Here’s how our team helped ensure this client improved SEO during a website redesign.
Starting Early with Keyword and Content Recommendations
We conducted an SEO and content audit as well as a competitive analysis during the discovery phase to identify technical issues, content opportunities and keyword strategies that would inform future phases of the redesign project.
During discovery we also worked closely with our UX research team to create a simplified navigation and updated terminology to make categorizing products and materials easier. Keeping the new navigation in mind, our team re-wrote the title tags and meta descriptions for Lumicor’s top 50 organic search pages and implemented the content on the new website.
By planning ahead, the Lumicor team was also able to rewrite and optimize on-page content with our SEO and content recommendations.
We launched the website and then held our breath for six weeks. Why six weeks? Glad you asked. Watching the metrics for a significant length of time post-launch helps us determine a trend vs. a website’s new baseline. It can take a few weeks for search engines to recrawl and index websites and have found six weeks to give an accurate snapshot for performance.
Smashing Success for Lumicor’s New Website
The numbers after Lumicor’s new website launched were something I’ve rarely seen before. We expect — and prepare client expectations — to see a decrease in traffic for at least three to four weeks after a website has launched. For a website’s organic traffic, we usually see an initial decrease of five to ten percent Lumicor, however, only experienced a drop of 2.15 percent in organic traffic, a difference of just over a hundred sessions.
Overall, we saw increases across the board for the new Lumicor website in the six weeks post-launch:
- An increase of 8.7 percent in average pages per visit
- An increase of 2.4 percent in average visit duration
The website also focused on lead promotion and large images for product display. The ability to add more valuable content to the website helps accomplish the goal of connecting designers and architects with the Lumicor team.
- 1,582 percent increase in pageviews on the Request a Quote page
- 278 percent increase in pageviews for featured Kuvio product pages
- 6,101 users visited the website after launch, an increase of 10 percent compared to prior to launch.
By focusing on SEO and content early in their website redesign, Lumicor was able to retain and increase their organic traffic and keyword performance. Their Request a Quote page and many of their Product pages experienced significant increases in pageviews and average time on page.
Are you looking to improve your SEO? We want to help. Email us and we’ll schedule a time for a free 30-minute SEO consultation.
