SEO & Your Redesign: Don't Be a Flintsone

Published July 26, 2017 | Categories: SEO

If you’re reading this article on your desktop monitor, guess what. You’re a dinosaur, my friend. More than likely, there are far more people reading this article on hand held devices. Particularly those between the ages of 18 and 29*. But, since there are still holdouts like yourself, any website needs to account for this audience as well.

With that in mind, it’s time we talk about responsive website redesign. So, put those rocks down and follow me.  We’re going to cover a lot of ground in just a few words. We’ll look at some major SEO considerations with an added emphasis on mobile redesign factors.

Structured Schema Data & The Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes

A redesign is a great time to give your new website an organic visibility boost. By adding structured or schema markup, you can give search engines a little bit more help with interpreting your pages, thereby improving the quantity and quality of your traffic. Think of it as the secret handshake of Lodge brothers. You establish a familiarity on a higher level – it’s an engagement booster. And when better engagement metrics follow, so do better search rankings.

HTML tells the user’s browser how to display the information in the tag. Using a microdata format, schema markup tells the browser what the text within the tag means. There are markup types for different business categories, entertainment types, articles & review sites, products, and events. And those are just a few types of schema. You can see why schema markup is a great way to showcase your website content.

Yabba Dabba DON’T forget about page speed.

Page speed has always been important. With mobile devices, page speed is absolutely critical. Consider the numbers given earlier regarding mobile users. They’re young. Very Young. That means the average mobile user has an attention span similar to that of a common house fly.  Factor in questionable mobile connections and it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. There is no such thing as too fast.

Make sure you address page speed. If you can’t get a straight answer from your design partner regarding site speed, use Google’s Mobile Friendly Test to find out for yourself. It will measure mobile friendliness and compare the load times of your site on mobile and desktop. Additionally, the tool will suggest improvements. Take this handy little report and give it to your design partner.

CSS, JavaScript & The Great Gazoo

In the Jurassic days of website design (last Thursday), it wasn’t unusual to use JavaScript to ensure that your design renders as intended. Page speed was not as great a factor in the Google search algorithm as it is today and page speeds didn’t have to account for mobile use.

However, side by side analysis suggests overuse of JavaScript and CSS can be a big mistake. Recent split tests indicate that if one were to strip the JavaScript from a page and use CSS to render it instead, performance would improve. In fact, if one were to split test the JavaScript pages versus the pages not reliant on JS, the latter sees roughly 5% more organic traffic.

Like the character in the cartoon, CSS and JavaScript mean well but they they’ll likely create more problems than they solve.

They don’t use Flash down at the quarry anymore.

There are some good things about Flash. It’s great for course animations and online presentations. Now, let’s list a few of its limitations.

• It’s not supported on iPhone.
• Or Anything, really.
• Google has trouble crawling and indexing it. That means lousy search visibility.
• It isn’t easily updated. If you have very, very deep pockets, this isn’t a problem.
• It’s proprietary so Adobe can hold you hostage.

With the changing technologies, Flash simply should not be used any longer. Flash isn’t supported on mobile devices. If your redesign partner insists on using Flash in your new redesign, run for the hills.

Bold choice, Mr. Flintstone! You’ll go far in this company.

While all of the above must be considered in your redesign efforts, it all starts with your choice of a forward-thinking design and development partner. That’s where Beacon comes in. If you have any questions regarding SEO and your upcoming redesign project, I invite you to email me or call a member of our digital marketing team at 1.855.847.5440.

*According to the Pew Research Center