A complete update of your site is somehow a tricky experience. At some point in time, you will be required to update your website. However, when you do, you run the danger of your traffic decreasing. As a website owner, maintaining and upgrading your site is a hard task, and many questions are bound to arise during this time. What will occur once the website is launched? How will people rate your site? How will it perform in the search engines? These are among the many queries a site owner always asks himself/herself. But to avoid all the worries that come with redesigning your site and gaining traffic, below are the necessary steps you need to take to increase more traffic to your website:

Don’t go offline for an extended period

Don’t ever try to go offline for a long time, unless you are forced to shut down your site for a few seconds. This is if you are resetting or launching your new website design. When online users visit your site and get a message displaying “Sorry we are maintenance “for several days, traffic goes down before even you launch the new site.

Optimize all data

It is recommended to review data on every page before updating your site. Some crucial information may get changed for instance: Titles may be changed, Meta descriptions may be discarded and SEO marginalized. Don’t allow this occur to you. On the contrary, ensure to optimize all the data on every page. One top reason many websites lose massive traffic after reset or update is that their data has been de-optimized. This is far from the norm. Instead, concentrate on optimization that is: adding new content, calibrating page titles, and building and enhancing everything you can.

Create a comprehensive 301 URL redirect mapping strategy

Almost every review of the website will have a few pages assigned to another area. And to redirect each page, it is vital to do an overall configuration. Each of the modified URLs must possess a 301 redirect. Below are some strategies you should use in implementing your mapping technique:

  • Do not use 302s

Avoid using 302 redirects, since they don’t add any value for SEO. They are just a temporary fix for what ought to be a long term technique.

  • Do not erase pages

It will not be a smart idea to remove pages. If you are not interested in a page, you can modify the data on the page or redirect it to another page.

  • The rare 404 case

There are some occasions when you do not need 301 redirects, for instance, if a considerable accumulation of deeply toxic links is directed to a particular page. If this is the scenario and the page is not a simple landing page, discard error 404 and avoid redirecting it. The moment you redirect a page, it moves the negative and positive connection juice into the root domain. If you leave it with 404, the deadly juice will affect the rest of the site in a limited way.

Configure tracking codes

You are advised to put your analytics tracking code at the page source, in case you are sure everything is ready. Conversation greeting pages must as well be followed with significant codes. You will require information as soon as the website is ready to start. If you make a mistake of not installing tracking codes, you will miss the chance of analyzing the number of guests visiting your site and performance.

Conclusion

If you are running a wordpress site, traffic is crucial as it enhances your site and pays bills. Hence, you need to implement different techniques to attract new guests to your site and maintain old guests engaged. To learn more how to redirect WordPress on yourwebsite, visit WordPress 301 Redirects for more information.