Unfortunately, there are things that are going to be forgotten during the redesign process. This could mean placing remarketing tags on your new site, or updating all your this destination URL’s for your email marketing campaigns. The only way you’ll find out that you forgot to do these when you stumble across them weeks later when customers alert you that there’s a problem, or you personally see something broken yourself.
Here is a checklist that you can follow as a resource to help you make sure that your site redesign go smoothly and your online marketing remains relatively unscathed.
SEO
In the realm of site design, SEO could be an entirely separate article. Keep in mind that a redesign is not simply about making sure your content matches your targeted keywords, it’s about being sure that each and every internal link still works correctly. You will need to make sure your canonicals are in place if needed, and your robots.txt doesn’t block your site. Of course, making sure your sitemap.xml is fully updated is also important. There are other things to keep in mind as well.
Unless you are an SEO specialist, it’s a good idea to consult one during a site redesign so you can be sure that your site retains its search engine value. Once your site redesign is finished, you should review the site. This is to help confirm that you’re still ticking all the boxes. Here is a checklist you can use in this situation.
It’s very important in terms of SEO to ensure that all of your old pages 301 redirect to the most relevant new page. By doing this, all the history that the old pages possess will be passed on to the new pages.
Google Tag Manager – Update!
When performing a total site redesign, you should keep in mind that updating all of your online marketing tags, you want to use the Google Tag Manager. An example of marketing tags you’ll want to use include Facebook Tracking and Google Analytics Conversion Tracking.
Google Analytics
If you are using Google Tag Manager, get into it and place your analytics tag in it. If you’re not, don’t forget to put your analytics tag site-wide on the new site.
Other things to remember to do:
Update all your goal URLs
Put Event tracking links onto your relevant buttons/downloads/links
Setup Ecommerce Tracking
WebMaster Tools
Remember to verify your site in webmaster tools. Are you considering moving the site to new domain? If so, you need to let Google know when you do it. You can also utilize webmaster tool in order to test any rich snippets you may have set up. It is an ideal time during a redesign to add them – see www.schema.org for more information. In you want to see if the developer has implemented the code correctly, you can use Google’s rich snippet test to be sure.
Adwords
When dealing with Adwords, link redirects should be sufficient enough to insure all of your ads will be directed to the correct pages. But, you will eventually have to change the destination URLs in the AdWords interface. Make sure that you change links in these locations:
Ad destination URLs
Keywords destination URLs
Site extensions
Placing your remarketing tags on you site is something to not be forgotten. Don’t forget to update the URL’s in your ‘audiences’ if you are segmented in traffic by page.
Other Paid Ads
Update destination URLs in all your other paid ads. Don’t forget:
Facebook
Yahoo
Bing
Update Product Feeds
Are you an online retailer? If so, you may have product feeds going to multiple fights period don’t forget to update these.
If using Google Product Listing Ads is your thing, you’ll need to update your feed in Google Merchant Center.
Social Profiles
If you have any social profiles that link to any pages with a change to destination URL, be sure to update them in your profile. These profiles can include.
Twitter Bio
YouTube Channel
YouTube in-video
Facebook About page
Facebook tabs
LinkedIn
GooglePlus About page
GooglePlus – linked authored articles
Pinterest
Keep in mind that the list provided isn’t a complete one. There are more social profiles that you can find that will help reach out even further.
Email Marketing
To put it simply, make sure you update your email marketing templates. Also, update the footers in all of your emails.
Heat Map / Click Tracking
Putting amount tracker on your site after a redesign, is a great way to see if users are using the pages the way did you design them to be. You can get a free 30 day trial for this.