How to Redesign Your Website Without Losing Your Google Rankings

A redesign is one of the best opportunities a business has to improve its website. It is also one of the easiest ways to lose search traffic that took years to build. Most of the time that is not because the new site is worse. It is because something important was lost in the move.

The good news is that it is almost entirely avoidable. Search engines cope well with redesigns when the old and new sites are connected properly and the content that earned your rankings comes across with you. This checklist covers what to do before, during and after launch.

Why rankings drop after a redesign

When traffic falls after a new website goes live, the cause is usually one of a handful of things:

• Page addresses changed without redirects. Search engines, bookmarks and links from other sites still point to the old addresses, and find nothing there.
• Content was removed or cut back. A cleaner design sometimes means fewer words, and the paragraphs that answered people's questions go with them.
• Important pages were merged, buried or dropped from the navigation, so they are harder for search engines and visitors to find.
• Titles and headings were rewritten without considering what the old pages ranked for.
• Settings from the test site came across, such as a "noindex" tag or a robots.txt rule telling search engines to stay away.

Each of these can be prevented with a little planning. Our guide to why websites do not rank on Google covers the wider picture.

Before you start: know what you have

You cannot protect what you have not measured. Before any design work begins, make a record of the current site:

• Every page address. Your XML sitemap is a good start, and a crawling tool such as Screaming Frog will find pages the sitemap misses.
• The pages that bring visitors from search. The Performance report in Google Search Console shows clicks and impressions for each page, and the searches behind them, for up to sixteen months.
• The pages that bring enquiries, from your analytics or simply from asking customers how they found you.
• The pages other websites link to. The Links report in Search Console lists them. Those links are valuable, and they point at your old addresses.

Keep this list. It becomes your checklist for everything that follows.

Decide what to keep, merge or retire

A redesign is a good time to tidy up, but be deliberate about it. Pages that attract search traffic, links or enquiries should come across, improved where possible but not stripped back. Several thin pages covering the same topic can often be merged into one stronger page. Pages that are genuinely out of date can be retired.

The one thing to avoid is deleting pages simply because they do not fit the new design. If a page earns visitors, find a place for it.

Map every old address to a new one

The most important step of all is the redirect map: a simple spreadsheet listing every old page address alongside the new page that replaces it.

• Use permanent (301) redirects, so search engines know the move is for good and pass the old page's standing to the new one.
• Send each old page to the closest equivalent new page. Redirecting everything to the homepage is easy, but it throws away much of the value.
• Avoid redirect chains, where one redirect leads to another. Each old address should go straight to its final destination.
• Remember PDFs, images and old campaign pages that other sites or emails link to.

Better still, keep page addresses the same wherever you can. The best redirect is the one you never need.

Carry your content across carefully

A new design should not quietly change what a page is about. For the pages that matter most, keep or improve:

• The main topic, and the wording people actually search for
• Page titles and meta descriptions
• Headings that describe each section
• Internal links between related pages
• Image alt text and any structured data

Improving the copy is fine, and usually a good idea. Just compare the old and new versions of your key pages side by side before launch.

Test everything before launch

Build the new site somewhere search engines cannot see it, ideally behind a password, so the test version never competes with your live site. Then test it as both a customer and a search engine would:

• Check the redirects against your list of old addresses, so every one lands on the right page
• Crawl the new site for broken links and missing titles
• Try the important pages on a phone, not just a desktop
• Check loading speed on the pages that matter most
• Send a test enquiry through every form

On launch day

• Remove any "noindex" tags and password protection carried over from the test site
• Check robots.txt is not blocking search engines
• Make sure canonical tags point to the live addresses, not the test site
• Switch on the redirects and spot-check them on the live site
• Submit the new XML sitemap in Google Search Console
• Check that analytics and any conversion tracking are recording visits

After launch: what to watch

Some movement in rankings is normal for a few weeks while search engines recrawl the site. What matters is the trend. In the first month or two:

• Check the page indexing report in Search Console for errors and pages that cannot be found
• Look for 404 errors and redirect any old addresses you missed
• Compare clicks and impressions for your key pages with the same period before launch
• Leave the redirects in place for the long term. Google recommends keeping them for at least a year, and there is rarely a reason to remove them

If you are changing domain name too

Moving to a new domain at the same time as a redesign adds risk, because search engines have to transfer everything to an address they do not know yet. If you can, change one thing at a time. If you need to do both, redirect every old page to its new equivalent, keep the old domain registered so those redirects keep working, and use the Change of Address tool in Google Search Console to tell Google about the move.

The short version

A redesign does not have to cost you your rankings. Record what you have, keep the content that earns traffic, redirect every old address to its closest new page, test before launch and keep a close eye on Search Console afterwards.

If your current site is showing its age, our guide to the signs you need a website redesign is a good place to start, and redirects and content planning are part of every website redesign we take on.