In the previous post, we looked at the importance of making sure that we consider three major users of our website when we decide to perform and upgrade on our website.
- The current users of the website
- The stakeholders of the website
- The advertisers on the website
I would like to shift the focus onto another very serious aspect of consideration. This would be the technical aspect of the website that needs to combine simple tricks of the trade to make sure that you do not lose any traffic for search engines.
Ensuring your search engine traffic continues
Search engines save versions of your website on their own database. When people search for your website in a search engine like Google they are not searching the entire internet but rather a version of the internet that is saved inside the Google database. This means that when you do an upgrade of your website there are still older versions of your website that are searchable for a while. These older versions link to very specific website addresses and if you have deleted any pages during your upgrade or renamed any pages this traffic will not find your website.
Also remember that other websites may be linking to you and that if you change your website URL structure you may lose all the backlinks that are helping you to gain a good position in the search engines.
One of the more concerning aspects of all the broken links that can be created from a thoughless upgrade is that a website user may find themselves on a black pag with no-where to go. Make sure that you 404 Error Page is customised to direct lost traffic to the content they are looking for.
If you are still confused by this email and are contemplating a website upgrade please feel free to contact me on mike.a.saunders@gmail.com. Otherwise you can post your questions in the comments section below and I can answer them online so others can learn from your question as well.
