A new website should bring in more business, not less. But it’s common for a redesign to cause a sharp drop in search traffic the week it launches, and the cause is almost always the same: old pages disappeared, and nobody told Google where they went.
The good news is that it’s completely preventable. Here’s the process we follow on every redesign.
1. Inventory every URL you have now
Before anything changes, crawl your current site and export every page. Then pull your top pages from Google Search Console and analytics. This list tells you which pages earn traffic and links, so you know what must be protected.
2. Map old pages to new pages
For every old URL, decide where it lives on the new site. Most will map to an equivalent page. Some will merge. A few might be retired entirely, but even those should point to the closest relevant page.
3. Set up 301 redirects
A 301 redirect permanently sends visitors and search engines from an old URL to its new home, and passes most of the old page’s ranking value along. Every URL on your map needs one. Avoid redirect chains (A to B to C) and never send everything to the homepage.
4. Don’t throw away content that ranks
It’s tempting to trim copy for a cleaner design. But if a page ranks well, its words are part of why. Keep the substance of high-performing pages, even if you rewrite and restructure them.
5. The launch-day checklist
- Remove the “noindex” setting from staging. This single forgotten checkbox has tanked more launches than anything else.
- Confirm titles, meta descriptions and structured data carried over.
- Submit your new XML sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Check that analytics and conversion tracking fire on the new site.
- Update your Google Business Profile and other listings if any URLs changed.
6. Watch closely for the first month
Some movement in rankings after a launch is normal and usually settles within a few weeks. Check Search Console for crawl errors and 404s every few days, and fix anything that slipped through.
Planning a redesign? See how we design and build websites.
Founder and lead developer of DigitalRocket in Syracuse. Jon has spent more than 20 years building websites and software, including over a decade at Syracuse advertising agencies, and now helps Central New York businesses put AI to work, connect their tools with custom software, and run fast, secure websites.