How to keep SEO performance high during a website redesign

A website redesign is a great way to shake things up, and bring new people to your brand. It’s also the perfect chance to refresh your brand and enhance your user experience.

However, as beautiful as your new design may look, there can be some really significant risks, from an SEO-point of view, of course.

Many businesses launch a beautiful new website only to watch in horror as their hard-earned search engine rankings plummet, taking organic traffic and leads with them. However, you’re in luck – that nosedive doesn’t have to happen.

During a re-design, ranking drops are the result of neglecting the technical foundation that is so important for visibility. Ranking loss doesn’t have to be your story. So why do redesigns tank your rankings, and what can we do to prevent it?

Why website redesigns often affect rankings

Search engines like Google put a lot into crawling your website’s content. They map your URLs, follow your internal links, and assign authority based on backlinks pointing to specific pages. A website redesign often throws this established map out of the window.

When URLs change without proper forwarding, when valuable content that favoured your rankings is removed, or when the site’s technical performance degrades, this throws your rankings into confusion.The user journey that search engines once understood is broken, leading to a loss of trust in your website and, consequently, a drop in rankings.

The importance of a great tech SEO strategy

If you want to prevent ranking drops, you need to treat technical SEO as an integral part of the re-design process. By understanding how the changes will affect search engine crawlers and users, you will be able to develop solutions to prevent any issues. By creating a new, improved map for search engines to follow, you can make sure that the web-redesign preserves your authority and trust, and enhances the user experience. By making technical SEO the focus of your redesign plan, it can turn from a risk into a strategic opportunity to fix old SEO issues and build a stronger foundation for future search engine visibility.

Part one: Pre-redesign

Success is determined long before the new website goes live. This initial phase is about meticulous planning, auditing, and strategy. So while you’re thinking about how pretty your new site is going to look – you also need to be thinking about the nuts and bolts under the surface.

Get your baseline with a site audit

Before you can build and change your website’s foundation for the future, you need to get an idea of how the website is doing currently. A comprehensive SEO audit serves as your baseline. By getting a snapshot of your current performance, you will be able to use it to guide your decisions and serve as a benchmark for post-launch analysis. To begin, crawl your entire live website using tools like Screaming Frog.

Make sure that you’re documenting key metrics: organic traffic, current keyword rankings, bounce rates, conversion rates, and the number of backlinks as well as any other technical changes of every page. Pay close attention to high-performing blog posts and service pages.. This audit will also uncover existing technical issues like broken links, redirect chains, or slow page speed, giving you a list of issues you will need to fix with the new design.

Define your redesign strategy

With your baseline report done, you can build a forward-looking strategy. Make sure you are defining the goals for the new website, ensuring SEO is considered on every page.

This is the best opportunity to refine the content throughout your website. Conduct new keyword research to ensure you’re in line with your business goals, and map these keywords to your planned new site structure. Plan your new URL structure to follow logical path (for example, our website (tal-agency.com/content-hub/) follows a logical path, sending signals to Google that the website is in working order.

Part 2: Build for SEO success

With a solid plan in place, the development work begins. This phase is about executing your strategy with precision on a secure, non-public platform, ensuring the new website is technically sound before it ever sees the light of day.

The staging website: Your SEO sandbox

A staging website – which is a clone of your new site on a private server – is essential. This is your SEO ‘sandbox’, a safe environment where you can build, test, and optimize without affecting your live site’s rankings. Make sure that the staging site is blocked from search engine indexing. Use a “noindex” tag, or password-protect the server directory. If you accidentally index the staging site, it can create duplicate content issues that are difficult to resolve. Use this sandbox to ensure all the technical SEO implementations are working before launch day.

Plan and create your redirect map

This can be the most critical task in the entire process – albeit one of the longest. A redirect map is a blueprint that tells search engines where to find old content at its new location (like a sign outside a shop that says our new location is at…). Create a spreadsheet that lists every URL from your pre-redesign audit in one column, and its new URL in the next.

The goal is to implement permanent 301 redirects, which will pass the authority onto the new page. Map URLs on a one-to-one basis wherever possible; an old page about “keyword research” should redirect to the new page about “keyword research.” Avoid the approach of redirecting all old pages to the new homepage, as this destroys relevance and misdirects your users, resulting in high bounce rates.

Technical SEO implementation for the new site

On the staging site, you can build a technically flawless website from the ground up. This includes:

• Page speed optimisation: A fast website is essential. Research by Demand Sage found that 40% of users will abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. Compressing images and minifying CSS and JavaScript are all part of improving page speed. 
• Mobile-friendliness: Mobile traffic accounts for over 60% of all web traffic – so a mobile-friendly design is essential. Make sure that your new design responds appropriately and is optimised for mobile users.
• XML sitemap: Creating a clean, updated XML sitemap that lists all the canonical URLs you want search engines to index on the new site is essential if you want to build trust and improve your rankings.
• Robots.txt file: Configure your robots.txt file to guide search engine crawlers (sometimes called spiders), ensuring they can access all important pages, while staying away from pages that you don’t want to be seen. 
• Schema markup: Implementing structured data (schema) helps search engines better understand your content, which can lead to rich snippets in search results.

SEO implementation in the age of AI

As well as keeping in mind all the traditional tech SEO implementations, it’s also important to keep in mind the recent AI changes to the Google algorithm. Making sure that content is optimised to be picked up by AI programmes such as ChatGPT and Perplexity will only become more important as AI becomes more ingratiated into the search engine landscape.

On-Page SEO Optimisation

Migrating content is more than copy-and-pasting. You must review every page to ensure all content, images, and internal links are transferred correctly. This is also your chance to optimise the content that is already on the page. Review and refine titles, meta descriptions, and header hierarchies (H1, H2, etc.) for each page, making sure they’re in-line with your keyword research. Update all internal links within your content to direct towards your new URLs. This will help significantly when it comes to not losing rankings!

Part 3: Launch day

Launch day is where you will see all of your planning and hard work come to life. A methodical, checklist-driven approach is essential to ensure a smooth transition and minimise potential SEO disruptions.

Pre-launch final checks

Before you flip the switch, check the staging environment thoroughly. Run a final crawl to catch any last-minute issues. Check for broken links, mixed content warnings, and server errors. Double-check that all 301 redirects are implemented, so old pages can be redirected to the new ones. Make sure that any “noindex” tags have been removed, so that search engines can crawl the site post-launch. Verify that your Google analytics tracking codes are in place and working correctly – or you won’t be able to see the results you’re wanting!

The go-live moment: Critical steps

When the staging site has been checked properly, it’s time to go live. The process should be executed in this precise order:

• Launch the new website: Push the files from the staging server to your live server.
• Implement redirects: Ensure all 301 redirects are active the moment the new site is live.
• Update DNS: Point your domain to the new server IP address.
• Submit new sitemap: Log into Google Search Console and submit your newly created XML sitemap. This encourages Google to crawl and index your new URLs quickly.
• Use the change of address tool: If you’ve changed domains, use Google Search Console’s Change of Address tool to officially inform Google of the move.
• Run a final live crawl: Crawl the live website to confirm everything deployed as expected and there are no widespread errors.

Part 4: Post-launch

Unfortunately you can’t put your feet up with a brew just because the website is live (although we wish you could!) The post-launch phase is critical for identifying and fixing any unforeseen issues and validating the success of your redesign – and preventing any long-term SEO disruptions down the line.

Post-launch monitoring

The first few days can make or break a successful website redesign. Make sure to keep a close eye on Google Search Console for any crawl errors, 404s (page not found), or indexing problems. Use Google Analytics reports to monitor traffic and user behaviour. A significant, sustained drop in traffic could indicate a critical issue with redirects or indexing. Use a rank tracking tool (such as Ahrefs or SERP Robot) to monitor your most important keywords for any volatility. This is why your benchmark report is so important – so you can keep track of significant drops and fix them, before it’s too late!

Ongoing performance analysis

After the initial 72 hours, shift to weekly and monthly monitoring. Compare your post-launch performance against the baseline data you collected in your initial audit. Are organic traffic levels returning to normal, getting worse, or ideally, improving? Are your keyword rankings going up, or down? Analyse user engagement metrics like bounce rates and time on page. If bounce rates are high on a specific page, it might indicate a poor user experience or content that doesn’t match user intent. Use this data to make improvements to your content and technical roadmap, fixing issues that might come up.

What to keep an eye on post-launch:

Even with the best planning, minor issues can arise. Keep an eye out for these key errors to protect your website against traffic drops.

• Spike in 404 errors: Use Google Search Console to identify 404s. These are often caused by missed redirects or outdated internal links. Implement new 301 redirects or fix the links as soon as possible.
• Redirect chains: Sometimes, a redirect points to another URL that is also redirected. These chains slow down and reduce trust in your site. Fix these chains by pointing the original URL directly to the final destination.
• Canonicalisation issues: Ensure that each page has a single, correctly implemented canonical tag pointing to the definitive version of the URL to avoid duplicate content problems.

Your smooth redesign journey

A website redesign is a powerful tool for business growth, but its success hinges on a technically sound foundation. Technical SEO is not an isolated checklist – it’s the strategic backbone of the entire project. From the initial audit and content strategy to meticulous redirect mapping and vigilant post-launch monitoring, every step is an opportunity to protect and enhance your search visibility.

Ultimately, a well-executed redesign does more than just preserve your rankings – it sets the stage for your website and business to grow. A new website is your opportunity to keep your business fresh and user-friendly on the search engine landscape, attracting more users to your business’ website and growing your trust on search engines.

At TAL, we have helped so many clients successfully migrate their website and update their businesses on the search engine landscape. Overseeing a successful website migration, alongside the exciting results it can bring is one of the best parts of the job – when the technical SEO background is built properly, and effective monitoring is done throughout.

Don’t cut corners with a website migration – the positive results of a thorough website redesign plan are all worth it!

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