SEO and 4 other reasons to consider a website redesign

If you’re like many other businesses, you probably tightened your belt during the recession, spending only what was absolutely necessary to keep your website up and running. As a result, your website may have been operating with a bunch of virtual Band-aids for some time and might not be performing as well as it once was.

Now that the business climate has begun to improve, it’s time for you to consider a website redesign as one of the “must-haves” for next year.

Here are 5 reasons why it could be time for a website redesign:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are so many factors that search engines, particularly Google, now use to determine how they will rank sites, that a website redesign needs to factor in SEO right from the start. If your site is more than three years old and you haven’t done any SEO-related updates, then you’ll want to get an SEO firm involved in your project during the planning stages.
2. Mobile devices. If your site is more than three years old, chances are it may not display very well on some of the newer mobile devices, including smart phones or IPads. This is particularly true if you had any Flash video added to your site. Flash is incompatible with Apple technology, so for 61% of global tablet owners, your videos may not be viewable. A conversion of these videos to another format or a redesign to de-emphasize Flash will help make your site more user-friendly for all mobile users.   Additionally, you’ll want to review your site’s structure to see how easily your site can be read and nagivated on mobile devices.
3. Screen resolutions. If you own a newer laptop, you know that screen resolutions have changed from being almost square (remember 800×600) to very rectangular shape (1366×768, for example). As a result, your older site may not be making the best use of the altered real estate. But, don’t go crazy with that horizontal design. You’ll want to make sure it renders properly in mobile devices.
4. Site speed. How fast your site downloads has become one of the factors that Google uses to determine how your site will rank in its search engine. A slow site is going to get penalized or it won’t be indexed as often. New site coding techniques (namely, CSS) can improve your site speed by displaying to Google the content first and graphics and other coding last.
5. Content, content, content. Corporate websites continue to evolve and, although sites 10 years ago were acceptable as digital brochures, prospects today expect your site to be more like an industry portal, offering a blog, whitepapers, analysis, data sheets, news and more.

For more info, read our Tips for SEO Content Writing.  Also, check out this related article on Why to Outsource your Website to a Website Design & SEO Firm.