A new website should bring in more business than the old one. Yet a redesign is one of the most common reasons a company’s search traffic collapses. The new site looks better, launches on a Friday, and by the following month the phone has gone quiet.
It is almost always avoidable. Search engines know your site as a set of addresses, each with a history. If the addresses change and nothing tells Google where the pages went, that history is thrown away. This is the checklist we follow to make sure it isn’t.
Before you design anything: record what you have
You cannot protect what you haven’t measured. Before any design work starts, collect:
- Every URL on the current site. Combine your sitemap, a crawl of the site and the pages listed in your analytics. Old pages nobody remembers are often the ones still earning visits.
- Your best pages. In Google Search Console, export the pages with the most clicks over the past twelve months. These need the most care.
- Pages other sites link to. Search Console’s Links report shows them. A link to a page that no longer exists is wasted.
- A baseline. Note your current traffic, enquiries and the searches you appear for, so you can tell afterward whether anything changed.
- Titles and descriptions. Save the existing page titles, meta descriptions and headings. They are easy to lose in a rebuild.
Keep your URLs if you can
The safest redesign changes how pages look and leaves their addresses alone. If /services/roof-repair/ ranks well today, the new site should have a page at exactly that address.
Sometimes addresses must change, because the structure is being cleaned up or the platform builds them differently. That is fine, provided every old address is redirected.
Build a redirect map
A redirect map is a two-column list: every old URL, and the new URL that replaces it. Each pair becomes a permanent (301) redirect, which sends both visitors and search engines to the new page and passes the old page’s standing along with them.
- Redirect each page to its closest equivalent. The old roof repair page goes to the new roof repair page, not to the home page.
- Don’t send everything to the home page. Google may treat an irrelevant redirect as a missing page, and the old page’s value is lost.
- Avoid chains. A should point straight to C, not to B and then on to C.
- Decide deliberately what to retire. If a page has no replacement and no traffic, let it return a proper “not found” response rather than redirecting it somewhere unrelated.
Carry over what already works
Redesigns often cut content to make pages look cleaner. Be careful with pages that rank: the text on them is the reason they do.
- Keep the substance of your best-performing pages, even if the layout changes completely.
- Keep page titles and main headings close to the originals unless you have a specific reason to change them.
- Keep internal links between related pages.
- Keep structured data and image descriptions.
Build in private, launch in public
The new site should be built at a separate preview address that search engines cannot see. Password protection is the most reliable way to do that.
The classic launch-day mistake. Preview sites are often hidden with a “noindex” setting or a robots.txt rule. If that setting is copied to the live site, Google is told to drop every page. Checking that it has been removed is the single most important item on the launch list.
Launch-day checklist
- Redirects are live, and a sample of old URLs has been tested by hand.
- No “noindex” tags and no robots.txt rule blocking the site.
- The new XML sitemap lists only new URLs and has been submitted in Search Console.
- Canonical tags point to the new addresses.
- Every page loads over HTTPS.
- Analytics and conversion tracking are recording.
- Every form has been submitted and the message arrived.
- The “page not found” page works and helps people get back on track.
If the domain is changing too
Moving to a new domain at the same time raises the stakes. Redirect every page on the old domain to its match on the new one, then use the Change of Address tool in Google Search Console to tell Google directly. Keep the old domain registered and the redirects running for at least a year, and longer if you can.
After launch: watch closely for a month
- Search Console’s Page indexing report. Look for a rise in “not found” pages or pages excluded by noindex.
- Missing pages people are still requesting. Each one is a redirect that was missed. Add it.
- Your top pages. Compare their clicks and positions with the baseline you recorded.
Some movement in the first few weeks is normal while Google re-reads the site. A steady decline that continues past that point means something specific is wrong, and the sooner it is found the easier it is to reverse.
The short version
Record everything before you start, keep addresses where you can, redirect every address you change, keep the content that earns your traffic, and check on launch day that search engines are allowed back in. If you are planning a redesign and want a second pair of eyes on it, that is what our migration planning is for.