Website redesign SEO checklist: how not to lose your rankings

Why redesigns lose rankings

Google knows your site as a set of addresses, each with a history. A redesign often changes those addresses, drops pages that “nobody looked at” and rewrites the copy. Unless the old addresses are redirected and the valuable content is kept, that history is thrown away.

When we rebuilt this website, every address from the old one was listed first (295 of them) and each was kept, redirected to its closest equivalent or deliberately retired before the new site went live.

Before you start

• List every address on the current site, from the sitemap and a crawl.
• Export the pages and searches that bring visitors, from Search Console.
• Note which pages have links from other websites.
• Record current rankings for your most important searches.
• Decide which pages stay, which merge and which go.
• Keep the existing addresses wherever you can.
• Write a redirect map: every old address to its new one.
• Make sure content that ranks is carried over, not rewritten away.

While building

• Keep the test site hidden from search engines.
• Carry over page titles and descriptions that work.
• Keep headings and internal links meaningful.
• Check the new pages are fast on a phone.
• Rebuild structured data and tracking.

On launch day

• Switch indexing back on. This is the step most often forgotten.
• Check the robots file is not blocking the site.
• Test the redirects: old addresses should reach the right new pages in one step.
• Submit the new sitemap in Search Console.
• Test every form and the phone links.
• Confirm analytics and conversion tracking are recording.
• Update the website link on your Google Business Profile if it changed.

In the weeks after

• Check Search Console for pages not found, and redirect them.
• Watch impressions and clicks against the figures you recorded.
• Check the important pages are indexed.
• Ask sites that link to old addresses to update them, where it is easy.
• Leave the redirects in place. Google advises keeping them for at least a year.