A new website should bring you more enquiries, not fewer. Yet redesigns are one of the most common reasons small businesses suddenly drop down Google, sometimes overnight.
It almost always comes down to the same few mistakes: page addresses changing without redirects, content that was ranking being cut, or the new site accidentally telling Google not to index it. All of them are avoidable.
We learned this first-hand. When we rebuilt our own website, a dozen of our old service pages were left returning “page not found” errors for months, because nobody had mapped them to the new pages. Here is the checklist we now use on every redesign.
Before You Start
1. Record every page on your current site
Make a list of every page address on your existing website. Your sitemap is a good start, and a crawl will catch pages the sitemap misses. Our free site structure visualiser shows every page and how they link together.
2. Find the pages that matter
In Google Search Console, open the Performance report and export your top pages and search queries. These are the pages bringing you traffic today, and they need the most care.
3. Benchmark your current position
Note your traffic, your enquiries and where you rank for your most important searches. Without a “before” picture, you can’t tell whether the redesign helped or hurt.
During the Redesign
4. Keep page addresses where you can
If a page’s address doesn’t need to change, don’t change it. Every address you keep is one less thing that can go wrong.
5. Map every old address to a new one
For every page that does change or disappear, choose the closest matching page on the new site. Put it in a simple spreadsheet: old address in one column, new address in the next. Don’t send everything to the homepage; send each page to its closest match.
6. Keep the content that ranks
If a page ranks well, keep most of its content, its headings and the questions it answers. Cutting a 1,000-word service page down to two lines for a cleaner design is one of the fastest ways to lose a ranking.
7. Carry over titles and descriptions
Page titles, meta descriptions and structured data on your best pages are part of why they rank. Move them across, then improve them.
8. Hide the test site from Google
Your new site will usually be built on a test address first. Protect it with a password and tell search engines not to index it, so Google doesn’t find a duplicate copy of your site.
On Launch Day
9. Switch on the redirects
Every old address from your spreadsheet should redirect permanently (a “301” redirect) to its new page. Test a handful by typing the old addresses in. Check both versions, with and without a slash at the end, because they can behave differently.
10. Remove the “don’t index” setting
This is the classic launch-day mistake: the setting that hid the test site gets carried over to the live site, and Google drops it. Check your live pages are indexable before you do anything else.
11. Tell Google about the new site
Submit your new sitemap in Google Search Console, and use the URL Inspection tool to request indexing for your most important pages.
12. Check your internal links
Links between your own pages should point straight to the new addresses rather than relying on redirects. Our free broken link checker will find any that are broken.
After Launch
13. Watch for errors for six to eight weeks
Keep an eye on the Pages report in Search Console for “not found” errors, and fix any old address you missed with another redirect.
14. Expect a small wobble
It is normal for rankings to move around for a few weeks while Google recrawls the new site. A well-planned redesign settles back and then improves. A sharp, lasting drop means something on this list was missed.
The Short Version
- List every page on the old site and know which ones bring traffic.
- Keep addresses where possible and redirect every one that changes.
- Keep the content and titles that rank.
- Hide the test site, and make sure the live site isn’t hidden.
- Submit your sitemap and watch for errors after launch.
Planning a redesign? Every website we build that replaces an existing site includes the redirect mapping and launch checks above. Already redesigned and lost traffic? Our £295 SEO audit will find what went wrong.