A redesign is one of the few marketing projects that can leave you worse off than when you started. Sites routinely launch looking far better and immediately lose a chunk of their search traffic, because the visual work was planned carefully and the technical continuity was not planned at all.
The good news is that this is almost entirely preventable. What follows is the audit to run before anyone starts designing.
Before Anything Else: Write Down Why
"It looks dated" is a valid reason, but it is not a brief. Get specific about what the new site must do better:
- Produce more enquiries from the same traffic
- Work properly on phones
- Let you edit content without a developer
- Load faster
- Support services you now offer and did not before
- Stop looking less credible than your competitors
Write the reasons down and rank them. Every later decision gets easier when there is an agreed answer to "what is this for".
Part One: Inventory What You Already Have
1. Export a full list of your URLs
You cannot preserve what you have not counted. Pull every URL from your sitemap, your CMS, and Google Search Console. Sites almost always have more pages than their owners think.
2. Identify your best-performing pages
In Search Console, sort pages by clicks over the last twelve months. In Analytics, look at which pages precede enquiries.
These pages are the most valuable assets you own. They get protected at all costs. Redesigns go wrong most often when a page that quietly generated business for years is deleted because nobody realised it mattered.
3. Find every page that has external links pointing at it
Links from other websites are difficult to earn and easy to lose. Any page with them either keeps its URL or gets a permanent redirect.
4. Decide keep, merge, rewrite or remove for every page
Be honest, but be conservative. If in doubt, keep the URL alive. Removing pages is the highest-risk action in a redesign and should always be a deliberate decision with a reason attached.
Part Two: The URL and Redirect Plan
5. Change URLs only when there is a real reason
Every URL change costs a little authority and introduces a chance of error. Cosmetic tidying of URLs is rarely worth it.
6. Build the redirect map before launch, not after
A spreadsheet with two columns: old URL, new URL. Every single old URL appears in it. Not an approximation, not a catch-all.
7. Redirect to the equivalent page, never the homepage
Mass redirects to the homepage are treated as soft errors and lose the value you were trying to preserve. If there is genuinely no equivalent, a proper 404 is more honest and less damaging.
8. Use permanent redirects
301, not 302. Temporary redirects do not pass authority the same way and are frequently used by mistake.
9. Check for redirect chains
Old URL to intermediate URL to final URL wastes crawl budget and dilutes the signal. Point each old URL directly at its final destination.
Part Three: Content and Metadata
10. Carry over your titles and descriptions
If a page ranks, its title is part of why. Copy titles and meta descriptions across deliberately rather than letting a new system generate defaults.
11. Do not lose body text you cannot see
Designers reasonably want shorter pages. But text that looks like clutter in a mockup is often the text that made the page rank. Where a page needs to look cleaner, restructure it with headings, accordions or tabs rather than deleting the substance.
12. Preserve heading structure
One H1 per page, describing that page. H2s for main sections, H3s beneath them. Do not let a new template turn every heading into a styled div.
13. Keep image filenames and alt text
Image search sends real traffic to some businesses. Renaming every file to a random string throws that away.
14. Re-check internal links
Links inside your own content will point at old URLs. Update them to the new ones rather than relying on redirects to catch them.
Part Four: Technical Checks
15. Confirm canonical tags on every template
Every page should declare its own preferred URL, on the correct hostname, with or without www consistently.
16. Check the robots meta and robots.txt
The single most common launch disaster is a staging site's noindex going live with the new build. Check it on launch day, then check it again the day after.
17. Generate a new sitemap and submit it
Only valid, indexable URLs on the canonical hostname. Submit it in Search Console immediately after launch.
18. Verify structured data still validates
Organisation, LocalBusiness, Article, FAQ — whatever you had, confirm it survived the rebuild and still passes testing.
19. Test on real mobile devices
Not just a narrowed browser window. Tap targets, form fields, sticky headers and popups behave differently on actual phones.
20. Measure performance before and after
Record your Core Web Vitals before launch so you can prove whether the new site is faster. New sites are often heavier than the ones they replace.
21. Check accessibility
Colour contrast, keyboard navigation, form labels, focus states. Easier to build in than to retrofit, and in several markets it carries legal weight.
Part Five: Tracking and Conversion
22. Reinstall analytics and verify it fires
Losing your tracking code during a launch is common and creates a permanent gap in your history that cannot be backfilled.
23. Test every form
Submit each one and confirm the email arrives, including to spam. Broken contact forms can go unnoticed for months, and the only symptom is silence.
24. Check phone numbers and addresses
Click-to-call links, map embeds, opening hours. Confirm they match your Google Business Profile exactly.
25. Re-test the whole enquiry path
Walk through it as a customer would, on a phone, from a Google result. The gap between "the form works" and "the path to the form works" is where enquiries disappear.
Launch Day and the Weeks After
| When | Check |
|---|---|
| Launch day | Robots meta, redirects, forms, analytics, HTTPS, sitemap submitted |
| Day 2–3 | Search Console coverage report for new errors |
| Week 1 | Crawl the site for 404s and broken internal links |
| Week 2–4 | Compare clicks and impressions against the same period before launch |
| Month 2–3 | Expect fluctuation to settle. Investigate anything still down materially. |
A short dip in the first few weeks is normal while search engines re-crawl and re-evaluate. A sustained drop after two months is a problem, and it is nearly always redirects, blocked indexing, or deleted content.
Summary
Protect what already works before improving what does not. Inventory every URL, identify the pages that earn you business, map every redirect, carry your metadata across, and verify indexing on launch day. Do that and a redesign is an upgrade rather than a reset.
If you are planning a rebuild and want the search side handled properly alongside the design, talk to us before the design work starts — it is considerably cheaper than fixing it afterwards.
Discuss a Redesign Our Services
Frequently asked questions
Will a redesign hurt my Google rankings?
It can, and usually does when redirects and metadata are treated as an afterthought. Inventory every URL, map each old address to its equivalent new one with a 301, carry your titles and descriptions across, and check indexing on launch day.
How long does a drop in traffic after a redesign last?
A dip of a few weeks while search engines re-crawl is normal. A drop still there after two months is a problem, and it is nearly always broken redirects, an accidental noindex, or content that was deleted rather than restructured.
Should I change my URLs during a redesign?
Only where there is a real reason. Every change costs a little authority and adds a chance of error. Tidying URLs for cosmetic reasons is rarely worth it.
