Website redesign: the order of work that keeps your Google rankings

Why a redesign can cost you your Google rankings

In the UK, “website redesign” is searched 480 times a month. What Google ranks is not your site as a whole but each address (URL) one by one, with the links and history it has built up. A redesign that changes addresses without telling Google throws that history away: the old URLs answer “not found”, the new ones start from nothing.

Google treats a redesign that changes URLs as a site move, and its rule is that it’s important to map your old site’s URLs to the URLs for the new site. A redesign that keeps every URL identical (same addresses, new look) carries much less risk: the work below then shrinks to the staging and launch checks.

• New addresses: /services/boiler-repair.html becomes /boiler-repair, or the blog moves from /news/ to /blog/.
• A change of platform (WordPress to Shopify, Wix to WordPress), which almost always changes the URL pattern.
• Merged or removed pages: three service pages turned into one, an old price list deleted.
• Rewritten titles, headings and text on pages that already ranked.

Google’s advice is to change one thing at a time: if you plan a new domain, a new CMS and a new layout, do them one at a time. When the redesign can be split, launch the new design on the same addresses first, and change the URLs later.

Step 1: list every URL and the traffic it brings

Before anyone designs a page, take a picture of what works today. Export a list of all the addresses of the current site, with what each one brings:

1. 1
   Search Console, Performance report, Pages tab, over the longest period available: every URL with clicks and impressions.
2. 2
   Your analytics tool: Google recommends that you check your server logs or analytics software for the URLs that get the most traffic.
3. 3
   Search Console, Links report: the pages that other sites link to. Those links are worth keeping alive.
4. 4
   Your current XML sitemap and your CMS’s list of pages, to catch the pages nobody visits but that still exist.
5. 5
   Images and PDFs: Google asks you to transfer images and downloads (such as PDF documents) that you host, since they can get traffic of their own.

Step 2: build the 301 redirect map

The redirect map is a simple two-column table: old URL, new URL. Every line of the inventory gets a decision:

1. 1
   Same content, new address: a permanent 301 redirect to the new page that answers the same question.
2. 2
   Several old pages merged into one: each old URL redirects to the merged page.
3. 3
   Content dropped for good, with no equivalent: Google asks you to make sure those URLs correctly return an HTTP 404 or 410 error response code on the new site. Do not redirect it somewhere unrelated.
4. 4
   Same address, nothing to do: note it anyway, so the launch check covers it.

Step 3: build the new site on a staging copy Google cannot see

The new site is built on a test address (staging.yourdomain.co.uk or a temporary address from the agency) that must stay out of Google while it is unfinished. Two ways to hide it: a password, which also keeps visitors out, or a noindex rule and a robots.txt block.

If you use the second way, plan its removal from day one. Google writes: if you use noindex rules during development, prepare a list of URLs from which you’ll remove the noindex rules when you start the site move. On the new pages themselves, check that each new URL should have a self-referencing rel=“canonical” <link> tag, pointing to the final address and not to the staging one.

• Titles, meta descriptions and H1 headings: carry over the ones that ranked, rewrite only those that did not.
• Text: keep the paragraphs that answer customers’ questions. A page that loses half its content can lose its position too.
• Internal links: point menus and in-text links at the new URLs directly, not at old URLs that redirect.
• Speed and mobile: test the staging site on a phone before launch.

Step 4: launch day checks

For a small business site, Google’s advice is to move in one go: we recommend moving all URLs on your site simultaneously instead of moving one section at a time. On the day the new site goes live, in this order:

1. 1
   Remove the staging blocks. Google lists it first among the common mistakes: “Don’t forget to remove any noindex or robots.txt blocks that were only needed for the migration.” Open yourdomain.co.uk/robots.txt and look for “Disallow: /”, and check the source of a few pages for “noindex”.
2. 2
   Turn on the redirects, then test them with the old list in hand. Google warns: “We frequently see people redirecting to the wrong (non-existent) URLs on the new site.” A crawler such as Screaming Frog, run on the list of old URLs, shows each one’s code and destination.
3. 3
   Check that no batch of old URLs lands on the home page. Google says: “Don’t redirect many old URLs to one irrelevant single URL destination, such as the home page of the new site. This can confuse users and might be treated as a soft 404 error.”
4. 4
   Submit the new XML sitemap in Search Console and run URL Inspection on the home page and your main service pages.
5. 5
   Changing domain name too? Use the Change of Address tool in Search Console; Google notes that you only need this tool when moving from one domain or subdomain to another.

Step 5: the weeks after launch

Expect movement. Google writes that for medium-sized websites, it can take a few weeks or more for Google to gradually start showing the new URLs instead of the old ones, and that a site’s rankings will settle down over time. What you watch is the direction, not the first days:

1. 1
   Search Console, Pages report: “Not found (404)” rising sharply means redirects are missing; add them to the map.
2. 2
   Performance report, compared with your baseline: the pages that lost clicks are the ones to inspect first (redirect, title, content cut).
3. 3
   Sitemaps report: the new sitemap should show its pages gradually indexed.

Website redesign cost: what the quote must include

“website redesign cost” is searched 50 times a month in the UK. We give no price here: we found no official or neutral source for UK redesign prices, and they depend on the number of pages and the platform. What we can say is what a quote should cover for the redesign not to cost you your traffic:

• The URL inventory and the 301 redirect map, written down and handed over to you.
• Setting up the redirects on the server or the platform, and testing them on launch day.
• A staging site that Google cannot see, and the removal of its blocks at launch.
• Carrying over titles, descriptions and content of the pages that ranked.
• A check of Search Console in the weeks after launch.

A quote that lists only design and pages, with no line for redirects, leaves the riskiest part of the job to nobody. Ask who does it, and who checks it.

What we see on small business websites

Our study of 2,747 small business websites in France checked the home page of each. Three of the checks are exactly what a careless launch breaks:

Our take

If you remember one thing, make it the redirect map: it is the one deliverable that decides whether your rankings survive, and it costs far less to write before launch than to rebuild from memory after a drop. We would start with the pages that bring most of the clicks in Search Console, map them by hand, and only then talk about design. For a small site whose addresses do not change, the risk is low; the trap is the agency staging block that goes live with the new site.

The FindMyCompany team