Last week I met with a small business owner who is launching awebsite redesign in Word Press. He asked me how can webest preserve his existing SEO and makes sure he doesn'tlose any search ranking in the transition.

Right away I replied that this was an important question. We then chatted about common mistakes that occur and how we can prevent them from happening with this website redesign work.

Here is the scary part about this conversation: I rarely am asked about this until the website is redesigned and launched and thedamage is done. It's only then that I receive a website inquiry on the Facebookpost asking for assistance.

Sadly, that is way too late inthe process to protect your SEO, your ranking in search, and your website traffic. By the time you notice a dip in ranking and traffic, the damage is done and it's really hard to fully recover.

Since this is such an important topic and one that is many times ignored, I thought I would write about it and create a handy The Professional Website RedesignSEO Checklist that can be downloaded and used by website owners and developers.

The Professional Website Redesign SEO Checklist…

The bestSEO checklist will blend content planning and execution with technical aspects like code and schema. You can't have solid SEO without combining traditional content marketing with a solid processand a very strong codebase.

You'll seemy below list combines multiple elements before and after the go-live to make sure website owners have thoroughly reviewed the new website and validated that the existing SEO will survive the transition.