In this instructional video, Hernan Vazquez explains that any website redesign will inevitably affect SEO because Google’s crawlers rely on the site’s HTML. He acknowledges that a temporary dip in rankings is normal, but offers a set of practical strategies to minimize the impact and potentially improve rankings after the redesign. The key recommendations are: (1) anticipate and plan for ranking fluctuations, using short‑term PPC or email campaigns to cushion traffic loss; (2) ensure the new design is mobile‑friendly, as Google now prioritises mobile‑first indexing; (3) when URLs change, implement precise 301 redirects for every page (avoiding 302s) to preserve link equity; (4) fully develop, test, and stage the new site on a password‑protected subdomain or otherwise block bots before making it public, then monitor closely after launch to fix any missed redirects or missing pages. He concludes by encouraging viewers to comment, like, and subscribe.
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Hey everybody, what's up? On this video I'm going to show you how to redesign your website without fucking up your SEO. Hey guys, what's up? Hernan Vazquez here. Welcome to another video and thank you once again for watching this video. Today I decided to change a little bit the background. I'm still in my home office. In fact, the computer is over there. But, you know, I decided to go ahead and change a little bit the background so that you guys don't get bored and you start sending me hate emails and all those kind of things, which I already get a ton for being a Latino. I'm just kidding. It's amazing the amount of support that you guys have been giving me. So thank you. I really appreciate you guys. And thank you for the comments. Thank you for pretty much everything that you have been giving me. It's been amazing. And let me— I wanted to let you know real quick that this is just the beginning, okay? This channel is just the beginning because I have a ton of ideas for this channel and how we're gonna progress, but that's gonna be in the future, right? So stay tuned because it's gonna be one hell of a ride. Now on today's topic, I just wanted to talk real quick on how to redesign your website without fucking up with your SEO, which is not small feature because this can apply for a brand new website redesign all the way to, uh, you know, little changes or a little cosmetic change or maybe even redesigning one page. Okay, and how you avoid screwing up with your SEO? Well, the short answer is you can't. That's the short answer, because the reality is when you're redesigning your website, you're switching templates, you're changing whatever you're changing on the website or the web page rather, Google spiders feed on HTML content. They do not feed on any other thing than HTML content, and when you are switching off the design, you're basically switching up switching up their meal, okay? You're changing their diet. So in short, what happens is that the spiders need to recrawl the entire website or the entire HTML design and then decide if your website is worth ranking anymore. So there's no easy way of you becoming or changing your design without screwing up your SEO. With that being said, let me tell you a couple of things that you can have in mind before starting the new website redesign so that the impact is as smooth as possible and in fact you can end up having better rankings than before. So if that's something that you want to do, let's dive right into the strategies right now. So strategy number 1 is to be aware that you're going to have an impact. It's super— you know, I had some clients in the past that the guys were super pumped about the new design, they were super pumped about their developers working as fast as possible, and then when they launched the new design, they noticed a dip in rankings. So what they want to do? They want to cut everyone's head off and go back to the old version. And let me tell you that that's completely normal. That's why I stated back in the video that it's not actually possible to not feel some sort of jaking in, or dancing rather, in your Google rankings because again, it's just a matter of the spiders crawling back your website, updating their cache, and basically feeding off of a new meal, of a new diet, HTML code. So that's that. Have in mind that you're going to suffer some kind of impact. Now you can brace yourself Whether it is like cranking up a little bit the PPC expenditure for the first month, launching some email campaigns for the first month, just having in mind that your website will shake, you may lose some rankings, but generally speaking, unless you really fucked up, generally speaking, you will gain those rankings back, okay? So step number 1. Be aware of that and do not worry. Step number 2, or strategy number 2, if you are opting for a brand new web design, try to do it as mobile-friendly as possible. There are a bunch of designs out there that they look beautiful, they look stunning on the desktop computer, but on the mobile they look like shit. Usually those are the templates that you can find on places like ThemeForest, and I love those templates, don't get me wrong, but in terms of SEO and in terms of actual mobile responsive— being mobile responsive, it's kind of, you know, they are kind of hard. So you need to have that in mind if you're choosing opt-in/out before actually having your website redesigned, or you're thinking on having your website redesigned. Have in mind that you need to be as mobile-friendly as possible. Facebook is turning a mobile platform, Google is turning a mobile search engine, and pretty much everyone and their grandma is on mobile right now. So just for the sake of not pleasing Google but pleasing your visitor, you need to have in mind mobile responsive templates. So talk to your designer and tell him that you want a mobile responsive template or web design. Step number 3, redirections. That happens only if you're ditching some pages or if you're switching the URL structure. So let's say that you have an e-commerce that you need redesigned, and the former e-commerce URLs for a product were something like, I don't know, yourdomain.com/123x7 50.php. That is not a friendly URL. If you're changing URLs, you will need to do redirects, 301 redirects to be exact. Do not do 302s, do not do any other kind of redirections, just do the good old 301 redirections. And that can be done within your .htaccess if you're kind of a— if you are techie and you like to manipulate those kind of things, or your web designer, your web developer should be able to do that. Okay, so basically you need to map out your entire URL structure right now and redirect all of the current pages to the new pages. And don't be lazy. It's not about redirecting the— just the categories to the new categories or whatever to you know, the homepage to the new homepage and that's it. Do not be lazy. Google will actually reward you if you have redirections from a product base or a page basis, okay? So try to be as specific as possible. If you are selling red shirts on this URL, redirect it via .htaccess or whatever to the new URL for that particular product. Do not be lazy. Trust me, Google will actually reward you on that case. Step number 4, wait until the web design is completely done, or at least is completely functional, before actually putting it out there. Because you're not only putting it out there, making it public for the visitor, but also you're making it public for the bots, okay, for Google spiders. Of course you can put them as noindex, nofollow, but that will bring troubles down the line. All right, so do not rush the process. Make sure you test, retest, and triple test the entire website and it's completely done before actually putting it into production. Now with that being said, there's like 95% probability that you miss something, which is completely fine. Even the big companies that have, I don't know, 50 people working for the new web design, they miss stuff, okay? So it's completely fine. Just make sure you follow up closely with the web design after, you know, little after you launch it, like over the first month or so, because there's some posts that are gonna be missing, there are some redirections that you didn't make. You know, it's completely normal and it will happen, okay? But make sure that you have maybe 98% of the new web design even before presenting it to the audience or presenting it or putting it on your main domain. My suggestion would be design on a subdomain that's completely blocked, even password protected if possible, from the visitor and also from the Google bots. Google will not go further than a password protected page. It can't. It won't try to brute force it. It can't. It will just go away. So if you can password protect your new design, that would be even a better idea. And that's it, my friend. There you have it, 4 simple steps that you can take today to avoid fucking up as much as possible with your SEO when you're trying to redesign your website. If you have any comments, any other experience, if you have any other steps— I'm probably missing a few— but if you have any other steps, just comment below. Let me know what you think. Hit the like button, okay, to really like this video. Hit the like button to dislike it as well. You know, it's a new trick that I learned from YouTube, okay? Dr. Joseph. YouTube told me if you hit the like button, you're gonna like the video. If you hit the dislike button, you're gonna like the video as well. Okay, and subscribe for more about me rambling all over your social media and your monitor, etc. All of those kind of things. Thank you guys for watching, and I'll see you on the next video. Bye-bye.
