A new website should bring in more enquiries, not fewer. Yet a redesign is the most common reason we see a site lose half its search traffic overnight. The good news: almost every loss is avoidable with a little planning.
1. Audit what you have before you change anything
Before anyone opens a design tool, export a list of every page that brings in visitors today. Google Search Console and your analytics tool will tell you which pages earn clicks and which keywords they rank for.
- Export the top 500 pages by clicks from Search Console
- Note the pages that other sites link to most
- Keep a copy of every page title and meta description
2. Build a redirect map
Every old address that changes needs a permanent (301) redirect to the closest new page. Not to the home page: to the page that answers the same question.
/services/booking-engine → /travel/booking-engine
/blog/2019/student-portal-tips → /blog/what-a-student-portal-should-do
/about-us → /aboutA redirect to the home page is treated much like a missing page. Match like with like.
3. Check the new site before launch
Run a crawl of the staging site and compare it with the old one:
- Every page has one clear heading and a unique title
- No important page is blocked by robots.txt or a noindex tag
- Internal links point to the new addresses, not through redirects
- Pages load quickly on a phone
4. Watch the first 30 days
Submit the new sitemap on launch day, then check Search Console every few days. A small dip in the first week is normal while Google re-crawls. A drop that keeps growing after two weeks usually means missing redirects, so check the coverage report for pages returning errors.
The short version
Keep the content that works, redirect everything that moves, and test before you launch. If you’d like a second pair of eyes on your plan, talk to us.
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