Redesign without losing your search traffic.

A new website can quietly erase years of search visibility. Most losses come from a few avoidable mistakes made in the last weeks before launch.

A redesign is a chance to modernise everything. It is also the moment when many sites lose visibility in search, sometimes for months. The good news is that the causes are well known, and they can be prevented.

Take an inventory first

• List every page that receives visits from search, and every page other sites link to.
• Note the searches each important page appears for.
• Keep a copy of current titles, descriptions and content.

Map old addresses to new ones

Every important page that changes address needs a permanent redirect to its closest equivalent. Sending everything to the homepage, or leaving pages to fall into errors, wastes the trust they had built.

Do not throw away what works

Pages that rank well usually do so because their content answers a need. Rewriting them is fine, but keep the substance, the headings and the questions they answer. Removing content to make the design cleaner often removes the reason the page was found.

Check before and after launch

• Keep the staging site hidden from search engines, and remove that block on launch day.
• Test redirects, titles, structured data and the sitemap.
• Submit the new sitemap in Search Console.
• Watch errors, indexing and traffic closely for the following weeks.

A new design should carry your reputation forward, not start it from zero.

Planning a redesign? Tell us about your project through our estimate form: we will reply with an estimate and the next steps.