It is an inevitable reality at some point: your website will become obsolete. Brands, blogs and businesses from all walks of life sooner or later find themselves behind the times in terms of both functionality and aesthetics, requiring a major revamping of their website.

While it is easier than ever to build or rebuild a website, the fact is that transforming an existing website into a modern-day solution isn’t as quick and simple as many may think. There are numerous concerns and considerations that should first be assessed. What are these concerns exactly?

Continue reading to find out what you need to know before you change that out-of-date website design.

SEO Functionality Can Be Impacted

Whenever a major overhaul to any website occurs, it shouldn’t be surprising that there can be technical issues that affect how search engines and other platforms index or perceive your content. Whether it’s reading meta data or pinging URLs, search engines in particular can find any new changes alarming.

There are many reasons for this, but know that an upheaval of your website can temporarily cause major drops in organic search engine traffic. It may take days or even weeks to partially recover, with  it potentially be a months-long recovery to reach your pre-change levels of traffic.

Backups Are a Must

Any time a major website change occurs, there is always a risk for mistakes. While most mistakes aren’t life-threatening in terms of your website’s viability, tweaking with design, navigational and content-based elements can pose serious risks to your website. As such, always make sure to utilize a backup service before beginning any changes (as well as in between each major update).

By keeping multiple backups of your website available, you’ll be able to revert to any stage prior to that potentially costly mistake you just made.

Be Aware of Any URL Changes

Arguably the biggest disruptive factor in website redesigns – whether it be to your SEO efforts or simply for ensuring all links and pages continues to work – is URL structure.

Depending on whether you change content management systems, the default URL structure associated with your new design may be totally different. This means that you will need to take the appropriate actions to update the entirety of your website’s URL structure. Thankfully, many CMS solutions come with utilities that allow this to be done easily, but it is nevertheless a prime concern before any updates are made (if you want to ensure you’re pinging URLs and links that actually work).

Consider Professional Services

If all of this seems a bit too complicated, then perhaps the best course of action would be to enlist professional editing and design assistance. Many website designers are available who understand the nuances of SEO, site structure and overall aesthetic appeal. By using their services, you can avoid the headaches altogether and ensure your new website works as intended!

Throwing together a website might be easy at first, but redesigning a longstanding one takes a lot of work and consideration. We hope you’ll use this information to decide whether or not a redesign is right for you, and whether you’d prefer to tackle it yourself (or leave it to professionals).