SEO
It’s Easy To Mess Up A Site Revamp
Google’s John Mueller answered a question about the SEO effects from making user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) changes to a website, advising that it’s better to plan in advance because it takes longer to fix problems if the changes break the SEO.
User Interface (UI) And User Experience (UX)
The UI and UX are major elements of a website that affect how easy it is for site visitors to accomplish what they are there for, ultimately affecting user satisfaction.
User Interface elements affect how site visitors interact with a website such as navigational, input forms, and informational icons.
User experience elements are a wider range of considerations that relate to accessibility, consistency in design, mobile responsiveness, readability, site speed, usability, and many other elements that in a well considered design have a positive impact on user satisfaction.
This can affect SEO ranking from technical issues related to how Google crawls the page to on-page ranking considerations such as how content is displayed and consequently understood on a webpage.
Making sitewide changes to the UI and UX changes, in addition to adding new webpages, is a major undertaking and should not be considered lightly.
Google Office Hours Site Changes
Google’s John Mueller read the submitted question:
“Anjaney asks: We’re preparing to launch a new website design for my company, involving UI/UX improvements and new pages.
Is it better to change the page design one at a time?”
Mueller answered:
“One complexity is that a relaunch can mean so many different things, from just shifting a website to a new server and leaving everything else the same, to changing domain names and all of the content as well.
First, you need to be absolutely clear what’s changing on the website.
Ideally map out all changes in a document, and annotate which ones might have SEO implications.
If you’re changing URLs, we have some great guidance on handling site migrations in our documentation.
If you’re changing the content or the UI, of course that will affect SEO too.
If you’re unsure about the effects, I’d strongly recommend getting help from someone more experienced – it’s easy to mess up a bigger revamp or migration in terms of SEO, if it’s done without proper preparation.
Even with everything done properly, I get nervous when I see them being done.
Fixing a broken migration will take much more time and effort than preparing well. In any case, good luck!”
Related: How to Avoid SEO Disaster During a Website Redesign
Plan Before Making Changes
As Mueller recommends, it’s wise to create a plan for how the changes will roll out. Of particular importance is to document the state of the website before any changes are made, create a backup and use a staging environment.
1 – Crawl The Website
An important thing to do prior to making major changes to a website is to crawl it with an app like Screaming Frog. Crawl the website in the original form and then crawl the updated version (preferably before it goes live).
The crawl data can be used to identify a range of possible issues that can be fixed before the site goes live.
Things that can be checked:
- Spot missing pages
- Catch misconfigured links
- Missing meta and title elements
- Review changes to linking patterns
- Catch 404 errors
- Check that 301 redirects are in place and properly functioning pages
2 – Create A Backup Of The Website
Always have multiple backups of a website. There are so many things that can go wrong with a website backup. I’ve learned the hard way to have multiple redundant backups.
For example, a consultant who was working on my server downloaded the images using the wrong transfer type, corrupting hundreds of thousands of images. Fortunately, I had backups on my desktop and duplicate backups on the server itself, so the images could be recovered.
I have over 20 years of experience managing my own websites and dealing with client websites. The value of making multiple backups, including backups of backups stored on separate media, cannot be overstated.
3 – Stage The Website
It’s a best practice to stage the new website so that any changes can be reviewed before they make it to the live server.
The live version of a site is referred to as the production environment and the non-live duplicate version is called the staging environment.
Website staging refers to the best practice of creating a duplicate version of a website (also known as a “staging environment”).
Ideally the staging environment is on a separate server or at least on a separate location on the server so that there is no chance of changes on the staging environment accidentally making it to the live (production environment).
The staging environment is used for development and quality assurance testing before changes are implemented on the live website. The main goal of staging a website staging is to identify and fix issues, technical bugs, or errors before they are carried over to the live version of the website (the production environment).
More Website Migration Resources
Managing Successful SEO Migrations
Enterprise-level Site Migrations
Essential Steps For A Seamless Website Migration
Mistakes To Avoid With Site Migrations
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Roman Samborskyi
SEO
Executive Director Of WordPress Resigns
Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of the WordPress Project, officially announced her resignation, ending a nine-year tenure. This comes just two weeks after Matt Mullenweg launched a controversial campaign against a managed WordPress host, which responded by filing a federal lawsuit against him and Automattic.
She posted an upbeat notice on her personal blog, reaffirming her belief in the open source community as positive economic force as well as the importance of strong opinions that are “loosely held.”
She wrote:
“This week marks my last as the Executive Director of the WordPress project. My time with WordPress has transformed me, both as a leader and an advocate. There’s still more to do in our shared quest to secure a self-sustaining future of the open source project that we all love, and my belief in our global community of contributors remains unchanged.
…I still believe that open source is an idea that can transform generations. I believe in the power of a good-hearted group of people. I believe in the importance of strong opinions, loosely held. And I believe the world will always need the more equitable opportunities that well-maintained open source can provide: access to knowledge and learning, easy-to-join peer and business networks, the amplification of unheard voices, and a chance to tap into economic opportunity for those who weren’t born into it.”
Turmoil At WordPress
The resignation comes amidst the backdrop of a conflict between WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and the managed WordPress web host WP Engine, which has brought unprecedented turmoil within the WordPress community, including a federal lawsuit filed by WP Engine accusing Mullenweg of attempted extortion.
Resignation News Was Leaked
The news about the resignation was leaked on October 2nd by the founder of the WordPress news site WP Tavern (now owned by Matt Mullenweg), who tweeted that he had spoken with Josepha that evening, who announced her resignation.
He posted:
“I spoke with Josepha tonight. I can confirm that she’s no longer at Automattic.
She’s working on a statement for the community. She’s in good spirits despite the turmoil.”
Screenshot Of Deleted Tweet
Josepha tweeted the following response the next day:
“Ok, this is not how I expected that news to come to y’all. I apologize that this is the first many of you heard of it. Please don’t speculate about anything.”
Rocky Period For WordPress
While her resignation was somewhat of an open secret it’s still a significant event because of recent events at WordPress, including the resignations of 8.4% of Automattic employees as a result of an offer of a generous severance package to all employees who no longer wished to work there.
Read the official announcement:
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Wirestock Creators
SEO
8% Of Automattic Employees Choose To Resign
WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO announced today that he offered Automattic employees the chance to resign with a severance pay and a total of 8.4 percent. Mullenweg offered $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever one is higher, with a total of 159 people taking his offer.
Reactions Of Automattic Employees
Given the recent controversies created by Mullenweg, one might be tempted to view the walkout as a vote of no-confidence in Mullenweg. But that would be a mistake because some of the employees announcing their resignations either praised Mullenweg or simply announced their resignation while many others tweeted how happy they are to stay at Automattic.
One former employee tweeted that he was sad about recent developments but also praised Mullenweg and Automattic as an employer.
He shared:
“Today was my last day at Automattic. I spent the last 2 years building large scale ML and generative AI infra and products, and a lot of time on robotics at night and on weekends.
I’m going to spend the next month taking a break, getting married, and visiting family in Australia.
I have some really fun ideas of things to build that I’ve been storing up for a while. Now I get to build them. Get in touch if you’d like to build AI products together.”
Another former employee, Naoko Takano, is a 14 year employee, an organizer of WordCamp conferences in Asia, a full-time WordPress contributor and Open Source Project Manager at Automattic announced on X (formerly Twitter) that today was her last day at Automattic with no additional comment.
She tweeted:
“Today was my last day at Automattic.
I’m actively exploring new career opportunities. If you know of any positions that align with my skills and experience!”
Naoko’s role at at WordPress was working with the global WordPress community to improve contributor experiences through the Five for the Future and Mentorship programs. Five for the Future is an important WordPress program that encourages organizations to donate 5% of their resources back into WordPress. Five for the Future is one of the issues Mullenweg had against WP Engine, asserting that they didn’t donate enough back into the community.
Mullenweg himself was bittersweet to see those employees go, writing in a blog post:
“It was an emotional roller coaster of a week. The day you hire someone you aren’t expecting them to resign or be fired, you’re hoping for a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Every resignation stings a bit.
However now, I feel much lighter. I’m grateful and thankful for all the people who took the offer, and even more excited to work with those who turned down $126M to stay. As the kids say, LFG!”
Read the entire announcement on Mullenweg’s blog:
Featured Image by Shutterstock/sdx15
SEO
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