A new website should bring you more business. Too often it does the opposite: the new site goes live, and over the next few weeks the enquiries from Google quietly dry up. The design was not the problem. The old addresses were.
Why redesigns lose rankings
Google ranks individual pages, each at its own address. When a redesign changes those addresses, or removes pages, Google finds broken links where your best pages used to be. Every link other websites gave you now points at an error page, and the trust those pages built up is lost.
Before you launch
- List every page on your current site, especially the ones that bring visitors from Google. Your Search Console account shows which pages get the most impressions and clicks.
- Decide where each old page will live on the new site. Every important old address needs a matching new page.
- Keep the content that ranks. If a page does well, improve it rather than replacing it with something shorter.
- Write a clear title and description for every new page.
On launch day
- Set up permanent (301) redirects from every old address to its new home. This tells Google the page has moved, and passes most of its value across.
- Mark old system files and pages that have no replacement as gone (a 410 response), so Google drops them quickly instead of retrying them for months.
- Submit your new sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Check that the new site is not blocked from search engines. A setting left over from the test site is a surprisingly common mistake.
In the weeks after
- Watch the Pages report in Search Console for "Not found (404)" errors and redirect any old addresses you missed.
- Make sure each page can only be reached at one address. If your home page loads at both "/" and "/index.html", pick one and redirect the other.
- Compare clicks and impressions week by week. A small dip right after launch is normal. A steady fall is a sign something was missed.
Do not forget the basics
A redesign is also a chance to fix what was holding you back: slow pages, missing descriptions, thin service pages and no articles that answer customer questions. Get these right and the new site should outperform the old one within a few months.
We follow this checklist on every website we build. If you are planning a redesign, talk to us before you switch anything off.