A website redesign is exciting — new look, better user experience, updated messaging. But it can also be one of the most dangerous moments in your site's SEO history if it's not handled carefully. Businesses lose years of accumulated search ranking overnight by making avoidable mistakes during a launch.
The good news: with the right process, you can redesign your site and come out with equal or better rankings. Here's exactly how.
Why Redesigns Kill Rankings
When a website is redesigned, several things often change simultaneously:
- URLs change — Old pages disappear or move to new addresses
- Content is removed or rewritten — Pages that were ranking get thinned out or deleted
- Site structure shifts — Internal linking patterns that Google understood get reorganized
- Technical setup changes — New platforms may introduce indexing issues
When Google's crawlers return to your site and find that previously-ranking pages are gone or inaccessible, your rankings evaporate. Some businesses see 50-80% traffic drops within weeks of a poorly planned launch.
Step 1: Audit Your Current Site Before Touching Anything
Before a single page is redesigned, document what you have:
- Export all URLs — Use a crawler tool like Screaming Frog or a free export from Google Search Console. You need a complete list of every URL that currently exists.
- Identify ranking pages — Pull your top-performing pages from Google Search Console (Performance > Pages). Note which pages are sending you the most traffic and which keywords they rank for.
- Document inbound links — Use a tool like Ahrefs or Moz to see which pages have external backlinks. These are your most valuable SEO assets — losing them is expensive.
This audit becomes your SEO preservation checklist for everything that follows.
Step 2: Map Old URLs to New URLs
If your URL structure is changing — and in most redesigns, it does — you need a redirect map. This is a spreadsheet that shows every old URL and its corresponding new URL.
For example:
/services/web-design.html→/services/web-design//blog/2021/06/local-seo-tips.html→/blog/local-seo-tips/
Every old URL that currently has traffic, rankings, or backlinks needs to redirect to its new equivalent. No exceptions.
Step 3: Implement 301 Redirects Correctly
A 301 redirect tells Google "this page has permanently moved here." It transfers the majority of the SEO value (link equity) from the old URL to the new one.
Critical rules:
- Use 301, not 302 — A 302 is temporary and does not pass full SEO value
- Redirect to the most relevant equivalent page — If there's no direct equivalent, redirect to the most relevant category or the homepage as a last resort
- Avoid redirect chains — Old URL → middle URL → new URL loses value. Go directly from old to new.
- Implement redirects before launch, not after — If the new site goes live with broken links, Google will crawl and index the 404 errors before you've fixed them
Work with your website design team to implement and test every redirect before the launch date.
Step 4: Preserve Your Most Valuable Content
Ranking content took time to build — don't casually discard it in a redesign. Before removing any page:
- Check if it's ranking in Search Console
- Check if it has inbound backlinks
- Check if it's getting traffic
If the answer to any of those is yes, keep the content. You can update the design and layout — just don't reduce the word count substantially, remove unique information, or change the topic.
If you must consolidate pages, redirect the removed pages to the surviving page. Don't just delete them.
Step 5: Technical Foundation for the New Site
The redesign is also your opportunity to fix technical SEO issues you've been living with on the old site. Before the new site launches, verify:
- Page speed is improved — A redesign that results in a slower site is a step backward. Read our website speed and SEO rankings guide before setting technical requirements for your new build.
- Mobile experience is genuinely excellent — Not just "responsive" but fast, usable, and conversion-focused on actual mobile devices.
- Schema markup is implemented — The redesign is the ideal time to add local business schema markup that you may have been missing.
- Internal linking is rebuilt intentionally — Map out how your most important pages link to each other before the developer starts building.
Step 6: Check Your Crawl Budget and Indexation
After launch, your first priority is making sure Google can find and index your new pages:
- Submit your new sitemap to Google Search Console immediately after launch
- Check the Coverage report in Search Console for any new errors or excluded pages
- Use the URL Inspection tool to check that your most important pages are indexable
- Monitor crawl stats — an unusual spike in crawl errors is a signal that something went wrong
For larger sites, Google won't re-crawl every page immediately. Check back weekly in the first month to catch issues as they emerge.
Step 7: Test Before You Go Live
Never launch a redesign without a staging environment test. Before the public launch:
- Walk through every important page and confirm content, forms, and links work
- Verify all redirects are returning 301 status codes (not 302 or 404)
- Test site speed with Google PageSpeed Insights
- Test on mobile — not just desktop
- Confirm Google Analytics and Google Search Console tracking codes are installed correctly
One overlooked item: make sure your robots.txt file is not blocking Googlebot. It's embarrassingly common for a staging site to have crawling disabled, and then that setting accidentally carries over to the production launch.
What to Expect After Launch
Even a well-executed redesign will typically see some ranking fluctuation in the first 4-6 weeks. Google is re-crawling and re-evaluating your site. This is normal.
If rankings drop sharply and don't recover within 60 days, investigate:
- Are redirects working correctly?
- Has content been substantially removed from ranking pages?
- Are new pages being indexed properly?
- Has site speed decreased significantly?
Most post-redesign SEO problems trace back to broken redirects, missing content, or indexation issues — all preventable with the process above.
Planning a website redesign? Don't leave your rankings to chance. At Amble Media Group, we help small businesses in Frederick, MD redesign their websites without sacrificing the search rankings they've worked hard to build. Contact us for a free consultation — we'll audit your current site and build a launch plan that protects your SEO equity.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to recover rankings after a website redesign?
Even a well-executed redesign typically causes 4-6 weeks of ranking fluctuation while Google re-crawls and re-evaluates your site. Most rankings recover within 60 days if redirects and content are handled correctly.
Do I need 301 redirects if my URLs aren't changing in the redesign?
If your URLs stay identical, you may not need redirects. But if your CMS, platform, or URL structure is changing at all — even slightly — a full redirect audit is essential before launch.
What is the biggest SEO mistake during a website redesign?
Removing or substantially thinning content from pages that were already ranking. Many redesigns strip detailed service page text in favor of cleaner aesthetics, unknowingly destroying the content signals those pages depend on for rankings.
At Amble Media Group, we help small businesses in Frederick, MD redesign their websites without sacrificing the search rankings they've worked hard to build. Contact us for a free consultation — we'll audit your current site and build a launch plan that protects your SEO equity.