All Collections
SEO & Analytics
Optimize for SEO
SEO Checklist - Moving to Showit or a New Website Design
SEO Checklist - Moving to Showit or a New Website Design

What you can do to prepare for the transition from an old website to a new Showit design

Kylen Downs avatar
Written by Kylen Downs
Updated over a week ago

If you are in the process of moving over to Showit from a different web host or may be looking at completely changing your current Showit design to a new one, here are some tips that will help preserve any current SEO. If you do not already have an account with Google's Search Console, it's recommend you create one before continuing as this will help identify any SEO issues after launching the new design. 

Note: Any major change to your website will have an impact in your SEO. This is not innately bad but rather it is important to understand there are changes with your website in regards to due to the different structure and content when in comparison to your previous site.

Pre-Launch Checklist


When doing a major rework of your website, it's important to preserve as much info that Google or other search engines may already be aware about. This means if you have an existing web page called  "About Me" with the URL extension "example.com/about-me", it's recommend you recreate that web page inside your new Showit design in order to preserve that URL. If you do not recreate that web page, it can result in a negative impact on your SEO because search engines would still be trying to access and index a URL that is now no longer live. This article will show you how to add a new page to your Showit design: Add a Page

2) Add Redirects

If you are wanting to rename or restructure where content is found on your website and are not wanting to preserver some or any current URLs, setting up a redirect is the best way to inform search engines of those changes. If you have a current web page named "Contact Us" with the URL extension "example.com/contact-us", but are wanting to update the URL for your new design to instead be "example.com/contact", you will want to add a 301 redirect following the steps in this article for your website: URL Redirects in Showit, and this article for Wordpress-related redirects: URL Redirects in Wordpress.

It is important to add redirects for all know pages from your current website that you do not wish to recreate or use with your new design. 

3) Keep Content the Same or Similar

This option is dependent on the new design being a full rebrand of your website or just an update on the design and look. The more changes you make when updating your website, the more initial impact on SEO you may see. 

If you are looking at updating the look and design of your website but want to preserve as much current SEO as possible, try to keep the core content the same as your previous design. This includes but is not limited to text, images, and links.

If you are working on a full rebrand or redesign of your website, you may see some temporary drops in your SEO status initially until search engines are able to identify and index all the new changes. 

4) Build and Set Your Showit SEO

Showit provides multiple SEO options for setting information and descriptions of your website or content specifically for Search Engines. It is important to include this information as it sets a baseline for how Google may index the rest of your website content. This article includes information on the main SEO tools available with Showit: SEO Tools
​  

Post-Launch Checklist


After launching your new site it's important to keep tabs on your SEO status and rankings to identify pain point and make any necessary changes. It is important to remember SEO is no a one-time thing.

1) Inform Google or Other Search Engines to Re-index Any Changes to your Website

Any time you may have a major update to your website, it's always important to inform search engines and have them recrawl your website ASAP. Because search engines want to deliver the most valid information to search users, if they discover broken or missing content on their own, you will likely see some big negative impacts to your SEO and rankings. Keeping Google or other search engines informed about changes to your site and requesting a re-crawl allows them to update their indexing database in a healthy manner. This article will walk you through how to request a Google Recrawl: Fetch As Google

2) SEO Monitoring and Status

It's generally recommend to keep a close eye on your website's SEO status for the first 1-2 months after making big changes. This will ensure you are aware of any potential crawl or indexing errors in order to make any necessary changes to resolve the issues. Google's Search Console will provide ongoing insight on your website's health and status.

Information about improving your current SEO with your Showit site can be found here:

Did this answer your question?