Website redesigning has become a popular practice in cyberspace. Because the world wide web is constantly evolving, it is important for your website to reflect the latest trends and technologies. This would portray a professional image of your business in front of your audiences and show them that you keep pace with the changing times.

However, website redesigning often involves taking down the entire website and revamping it completely. Often websites seek to move from HTML to CMS. This involves taking down all the web pages and restructuring the whole architecture of the website. This means all the credibility gained by the web pages till present would be scratched down to zero if you are changing the URLs of the web pages! No wonder then, there is a fluctuation in the search engine ranking of the website. However, with careful planning and adhering to key considerations, you can redesign your website and preserve its ranking on the search engine results.

Google's Matt Cutts recently gave some valuable tips on his blog about the same. Here are some things he said would ensure that you don't lose your search rankings after the redesign process.

Avoid Launching a Total Revamped Version

The idea here is to test the waters before taking the plunge. Total revamp of your website would definitely prompt some fluctuations but if you go slow and steady, you can escape that. For example, if you have to change the layout of your web pages for the new CMS, you can mock that up. A good idea would be to change your HTML thus, that it looks the same way it would look from the content management system. This way you can make sure there are no changes in the search engine rankings.

One Step at a Time

One of the most common mistake website owners make is to change a lot of things on your website over an extended period of time and then launch it all at once. No wonder then they are at loss of what to do if there is a change in the website's search engine rankings. If you make a lot of changes and launch all of them at once, you would never be able to figure out what caused the search rankings to fluctuate, was it because of the change in HTML layout or was it because of the new CMS or was it because of something else altogether. This is why it is important to take one step at a time and include monitor the effects of changes as you go through the redesigning process.

Change one Directory at a time

To gauge the effects of the changes that you make on the website, you can try changing one directory first. Here are some ways you can test the pitch.

A/B Testing
This is the process of testing two or more versions of web pages to see which one brings the maximum and the best results. It involves creating a couple of mock ups of the potential web pages with different combinations of layouts and elements in order to get an idea about what brings the most desirable results.

User Testing
This involves presenting a redesigned version of the web pages to certain segment of users and see how they react to the new look. Based on their feedback, you can implement new changes and correct any flaws that may be present in the existing design.

The idea is to play safe and make sure your redesigning process is a success by following a step by step approach!

Maneet Puri is a director of LeXolution IT Services, a premier web development company based in India. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, he leads his team of web designers & developers to create powerful web solutions for their clients.