Insights · 5 min read
How to redesign your website without losing your Google rankings
By Austin Hunter ·
The most common way a new website loses traffic isn't the design. It's that old page addresses stop working, so the links and search results pointing to them lead nowhere. With a little planning, a redesign can keep, and often improve, the search traffic you already have.
Before you start
- Make a list of every page on the current site. Your sitemap and Google Search Console's Pages report are good places to start.
- Note which pages bring the most visitors and which have links from other sites. Those are the ones to protect most carefully.
- Save a copy of the current page titles, descriptions and main text, so nothing important is lost by accident.
During the build
- Keep the same addresses where you can. If a URL has to change, map the old one to its closest new page.
- Set up permanent (301) redirects from every old address to its new one. Don't send everything to the homepage.
- Keep the content that ranks. Rewriting a page that does well is fine, but keep what it covers.
- Give every page a clear title and description, and use real headings.
- Keep the new site off search engines while it's being built (a staging address with indexing blocked), and remember to remove that block at launch.
Launch day
- Test the redirects: open a sample of old addresses and confirm they land on the right new pages.
- Make sure the site can be indexed and the new sitemap is live, then submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Check that analytics is recording visits on the new site.
The first few weeks
Watch Search Console for pages that return errors, and fix any missed redirects. Some movement in rankings right after a launch is normal; a steady drop on a particular page usually points to a missing redirect or missing content.
We can handle it
When we rebuild a website, we start with a URL inventory and a redirect map, and we check the search data after launch. If you're planning a redesign, we can review your current site first and tell you what to protect.