Want to build a new website, but worried you'll lose your hard-earned pagerank after you launch? Have you heard horror stories of companies losing hundreds of leads every month after launching a new website because they lost their search engine credit with a new site?

Without a highly-skilled web development company looking out for SEO when launching a new site, you might actually be doing your internet marketing efforts more harm than good with a new site launch. After all, how good is a new site if no one is looking at it? Here are my top tips for keeping your search engine credit when you're launching a new website.

1. Create a list of all existing site URLs, and redirect all existing URLs to new URLs. Using a 301 redirect, redirect your existing site pages. The key here is ensuring that your users (and search engines) don't see 404 errors when you're moving to a new site. Don't move your entire site at once; test one subdomain at a time to make sure your new site pages appear in search engine results.
2. Conduct a comprehensive SEO analysis of your current site, and figure out why your current site is (or isn't) being found through search engine results. Optimize your new site before you launch. Analyze your site's current keyword usage and frequency, use of page titles, alt text, number of links going to your site, meta information, etc. When launching your new site, make sure you can do the same (or better) on your SEO efforts immediately after launch.
3. Create a new sitemap, and submit the new sitemap to search engines. This step will let search engines know that you've got a new site.
4. Check all internal and external links to your site. Contact the webmaster for all external links going to your site, and have them redirected to your new URLs if possible. Ensure all internal links now go to your new site URLs.
5. Test and review all links post-launch. Do a manual review of your site post-launch and check all internal links. Review crawl errors weekly to ensure that your 301 redirects are working correctly, and look out for 404 errors.

The second consideration when writing your website copy is understanding your target audience (who is going to your website and why). You'd be shocked to learn how few companies actually take their target audience into consideration when writing website copy. Here are important questions to ask yourself before you start writing copy for your website:

• How many target audiences does my website have?
• Who is my target audience, and what are they looking for?
• What questions do my target audience need answers to?
• Will my target audience prefer to read industry jargon, or should I write in non-technical terms?
• What products or services is my target audience searching for?
• How many products or services do I really have, and how can I segment these?
• What terms will my target audience recognize for my products or services?
• During which part of the "buying process" will my target audience find my website, and how can I help them to the next step of this process?

Understanding your target audience and writing website copy tailored to your audience is the key to conversion. If your target audience doesn't understand your website copy because it is too technical or they don't understand what products or services you're selling, your target audience will leave your website. No amount of keyword loading will keep a confused prospect on your site.

After your write your first draft of website copy, I recommend placing your website copy on a test site and asking a sample prospect to visit this page for the first time. Do they understand who you are and what products you offer? Do they understand the terms you're using to describe what you do?