Website Relaunch Checklist: Maximizing Organic Traffic with SEO

A website relaunch is a vital opportunity to make significant improvements to your online presence. Whether you're updating your company's visual identity or adding an e-commerce store, the relaunch process should integrate search engine optimization (SEO) requirements at every stage. After all, even if your website generates revenue through channels other than organic search, your website will still be the first stop for customers looking to learn more about your brand. In this article, we'll explain why SEO is essential for website relaunches and outline a checklist to help you achieve optimal results.

Why SEO Is Crucial for Website Relaunches

Organic search traffic plays a crucial role in most business models. Therefore, it's hard to imagine a relaunch scenario in which SEO is not of great importance. Even if your website generates revenue through other channels, your website is still the first stop for customers looking to learn more about your brand. Hence, your website must be well-positioned in search engines, particularly for branded keywords and keywords related to your business or industry sector.

When and Where to Consider SEO

SEO requirements must be met within the website relaunch phase, but when and where? SEO has several dimensions: structural, technical, and content-related. Thus, SEO requirements must be integrated when setting up or choosing the Content Management System (CMS) (technical), when conceptualizing the categories of the website and the navigation (structural), and when writing texts and uploading images (content-related). These three SEO dimensions are interwoven, and structural and technical requirements must be respected when creating content and vice versa. Therefore, SEO is crucial for the new website to reach its performance goals, such as go-to-market or growth.

SEO Checklist for Website Relaunches

To optimize your website's organic search potential after a relaunch, you must focus on the following aspects:

Keyword Research

Perform keyword research to determine what people are searching for within your market. Identify search terms that have shown an increase in search volume over time. A keyword research analysis usually reveals a lot of untapped search potential. This information means there may be many keywords closely related to your offer, but you've never targeted them before.

Keyword Mapping

Cluster the relevant search volume keywords and assign them to pages on your website. Every page should have a main keyword and several secondary keywords, if reasonable. This usually leaves keyword gaps that require creating new pages to address these searches. Based on the keyword mapping, create a plan for optimizing and creating new content.

Sitemap, URL Structure, and Navigation

Use keyword mapping to create a sitemap that defines the structure of categories and subcategories on your website. Ideally, more general keywords should form the categories, and more specific keywords should form the subcategories. The website's URL structure should follow these different levels of the sitemap to show search engines and users a logically built and easily understandable website. The top navigation structure should be derived from the sitemap, and the most important landing pages should be placed as high as possible in the navigation structure. All relevant landing pages should be accessible with few clicks via the top navigation.

User-Friendly Page Structure

Organize the structure of pages to be understandable and clear to users, with logical heading structure, easy-to-grasp paragraphs, bullet points, graphics, and other elements where appropriate. Pure "SEO texts" are outdated with the latest Google updates.

Keyword-Optimized Content

Keywords should appear in body text and headlines, particularly in the H1 heading. Pay attention to a natural, user-friendly keyword density. This is the most intuitive measure.

E-E-A-T

Google's E-A-T criteria are as important as keywords. The acronym stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Communicate this information in