How to redesign your website without losing Google rankings

Why can a redesign affect your rankings?

Google keeps the addresses of your pages and what each one says in its index. A redesign usually changes three things at once: the URL structure, the copy, and the way pages link to each other. Each change makes sense on its own, but together they can slow down how quickly Google understands the new site.

The most common problems are pages that end up as 404 errors, content that gets cut or merged without a clear reason, broken internal links, and a staging robots.txt file that blocks crawling on the live site. None of them is hard to avoid if you check ahead of time.

What should you inventory before you start?

Before designing anything, build a spreadsheet with every URL on your current site. You can pull them from your sitemap, from Search Console, and from a crawler.

For each URL, note:

• Whether it gets organic traffic and which searches it shows up for.
• Whether other sites link to it.
• What will happen to it: it stays, changes address, merges with another page, or is removed.
• Its destination URL on the new site.

This spreadsheet is the foundation of the technical work. Google describes it as mapping old URLs to new ones in its guide to moving a site (Google Search Central).

How do you set up 301 redirects?

When a page changes address for good, you set up a permanent redirect on the server. Google explains that 301 and 308 status codes mean a page has moved permanently, and recommends this type of redirect when you want the new URL to replace the old one in search results (Google Search Central).

A few practical rules:

• One to one: each old URL points to the closest matching new page, not to the home page.
• No chains: avoid A redirecting to B and B to C; point straight to the final destination.
• Updated internal links: the menu and copy on the new site should link to the new URLs instead of relying on redirects.
• Correct canonical tags: each page should declare its own final URL (Google Search Central).

What about your content?

A redesign is a good chance to improve your copy, but avoid cutting down pages that already perform. If a page shows up for certain searches, keep the topics it covers, the headings that answer those searches, and the useful information it contains.

Before deleting or merging a page, check the spreadsheet to see whether it got traffic or links. If you remove it, redirect it to the most closely related page. If there is no equivalent, a 404 or 410 response is honest and better than sending everything to the home page.

What should you check on launch day?

1. Remove the crawl block from staging (robots.txt or noindex tags).
2. Test a sample of old URLs and confirm they redirect to the right page with a 301.
3. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console (Google Search Central).
4. Confirm that analytics and conversions are recording on the new site.
5. Check forms, site search, and key pages on your phone.

If you are also changing domains, Search Console has a Change of Address tool that you use after your redirects are in place.

How do you know whether the redesign worked?

Take a snapshot of the “before”: clicks, impressions, and average position in Search Console for your main pages, plus conversions in your analytics (Search Console Help). After launch, compare page by page, not just the site total.

It is normal to see some movement in the first few weeks while Google crawls the new URLs. What you need to watch are new 404 errors in Search Console, pages that keep losing clicks over time, and redirects that do not work. At AiDo Creative, as set out in the proposal, the inventory and redirect plan are agreed on before design starts.

Frequently asked questions