Treating website redesign SEO as an afterthought is the most reliable way for a UK business to lose the organic traffic it spent years building. The pattern is depressingly common. A business commissions a new website because the old one looks dated, is hard to update or does not work well on mobile. The brief focuses on design, brand, functionality and content management. An agency builds something that looks far better. It launches. Within two or three weeks, enquiries from search start to fall, rankings for important pages disappear, and Google Search Console fills with errors. By the time anyone investigates, months of lost leads have already passed.
The causes are rarely mysterious. Old URLs that ranked well now return errors because nobody mapped them to new pages. Content that was earning traffic was cut or rewritten during the redesign. A setting that kept the staging site out of search results was copied to the live site. Navigation changes buried pages that used to be prominent. None of this is a failure of design or development skill; it is a failure to treat search visibility as one of the things the project must protect.
This guide starts with why SEO has to be part of the redesign brief from day one, then covers a pre-launch content and URL audit, a complete redirect mapping process, what to preserve versus what is safe to change, and a launch-day and post-launch monitoring checklist that catches problems before they become permanent ranking losses. Our earlier guide to planning a redesign without losing SEO rankings introduces the core ideas; this one goes deeper into the process, the decisions and the safeguards.
Why SEO has to be in the redesign brief from day one
Many of the decisions that determine whether a redesign keeps its search visibility are made early, long before anyone thinks about redirects. By the time SEO is considered at the end of a project, those decisions are expensive to reverse.
- Information architecture. How pages are grouped, which pages exist and what their URLs look like are decided during planning. Changing them changes what search engines see.
- Content scope. Decisions to cut, merge or rewrite content are often made for design or brand reasons, without knowing which pages earn traffic and links.
- Platform and technology. A new content management system or front-end framework can change how pages are rendered, how URLs are structured and how fast pages load.
- Templates and design. Headings, page titles, internal links, image handling and page speed are shaped by templates and design choices.
- Timeline and budget. If audit, redirect mapping and post-launch monitoring are not scoped and budgeted, they are squeezed into the final week or skipped.
Putting SEO in the brief means stating plainly that protecting existing organic visibility is a project requirement, naming who is responsible for it, and building the audit, mapping, testing and monitoring into the plan and the budget.
Add this to every redesign brief: “The new site must preserve existing organic search performance; the supplier will audit current pages, map every indexed URL to its new destination, test redirects before launch and monitor search performance for twelve weeks after launch.” It costs nothing to write and changes how the whole project is planned.
Website redesigns and organic traffic — the numbers
The figures below are indicative, drawn from redesign projects and post-launch recovery work we carry out for UK businesses. They are not a formal survey.
The third figure is the one that matters most to the business case. Losing traffic after a redesign is not a temporary blip that resolves itself. Where errors are found and fixed quickly, recovery is usually faster; where they persist for months, competitors fill the gap, and some losses are never fully recovered. Prevention costs a fraction of recovery.
What causes traffic loss after a redesign
The chart shows the causes we find most often when investigating organic traffic loss after UK business website redesigns. Most cases involve more than one cause, so figures add up to more than 100%.
Missing or wrong redirects dominate, which is why redirect mapping gets so much attention. But nearly half of cases also involve content that was removed or thinned during the redesign, and a large share involve changes to internal linking that reduced the prominence of important pages. The last item is less common but the most damaging: a single setting telling search engines not to index the site can wipe out visibility within days.
The cost of building SEO in versus recovering afterwards
The table compares indicative costs of including SEO protection in a redesign with the costs that typically follow when it is left out. Figures are broad ranges for a UK business website of 50 to 500 pages and depend on site size and complexity.
| Activity | Cost if built into the project | Typical cost if missed | Who feels it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-launch content and URL audit | £800 to £3,000 | Ranking pages removed or thinned without knowing | Marketing, sales |
| Complete redirect mapping and testing | £500 to £3,000 | Lost traffic and links; emergency mapping after launch | Marketing, sales, development |
| Pre-launch technical SEO checks | £500 to £2,000 | Indexing blocked, broken titles, slow templates | Whole business |
| Post-launch monitoring for twelve weeks | £500 to £2,500 | Problems found months late, after damage is done | Marketing, sales |
| Recovery work after a failed launch | Avoided | £3,000 to £15,000 or more, plus months of lost enquiries | Whole business |
The protective activities together typically cost a modest share of a redesign budget. The cost of skipping them is dominated not by the recovery fee but by the leads and sales lost while traffic is down, which for a business that depends on organic search can dwarf the cost of the entire redesign.
A design-only redesign versus an SEO-integrated redesign
The comparison shows the difference between treating a redesign purely as a design and development project and building search visibility into it.
Design-only redesign
SEO considered at the end, if at all
SEO-integrated redesign
Search visibility protected as a project requirement
The SEO-integrated approach does not constrain design much. Most of its work is analysis, mapping and checking, done alongside the design and build. The main constraint it imposes is that content and URL changes are made knowingly, with an understanding of what they will affect.
Scoring three types of redesign
Not all redesigns carry the same risk. The score grid compares three common types; a high badge means a high level of that characteristic.
A visual refresh on the same platform with the same URLs is the lowest-risk redesign, though content and template changes still need care. Moving to a new platform with a new structure changes almost everything search engines rely on. Combining a rebuild with a domain change adds a further layer, because every URL changes and signals must transfer to a new domain. The higher the risk, the more the audit, mapping and monitoring matter, and the more sensible it can be to separate changes, for example changing domain and platform at different times.
The pre-launch content and URL audit
A pre-launch SEO audit establishes what the current site has that is worth protecting. It should start early, ideally before the new site’s structure is finalised, so that its findings shape content and URL decisions.
Build a complete URL inventory
Combine several sources, because no single one is complete: a crawl of the current site, the XML sitemap, pages reported in Google Search Console, pages receiving traffic in analytics, URLs with external backlinks from an SEO tool, and URLs of images, PDFs and other files that are linked or ranking. Include old URLs that already redirect, since existing redirects need preserving too.
Attach performance data
For each URL, record organic clicks and impressions from Search Console, organic sessions and conversions from analytics, the number of external linking sites, and the main queries it ranks for. Use at least twelve months of data where available, so seasonal pages are not missed.
Decide what happens to each page
Classify each URL into one of four decisions:
- Keep: the page moves to the new site with its content substantially intact, ideally at the same URL.
- Improve: the page is rewritten or expanded, preserving the topics and queries it currently serves.
- Merge: several overlapping pages combine into one stronger page, with all old URLs redirected to it.
- Remove: the page has no traffic, links or business purpose and will not be carried over; redirect it to the most relevant alternative if one exists.
Protect what ranks
Pages with meaningful organic traffic, rankings for valuable queries or external links should not be removed or thinned without a deliberate decision and a plan to preserve their value. This is where design ambitions to simplify content most often collide with search performance, and where the audit earns its keep. Our guide to using Google Search Console explains how to gather the performance data.
Page speed and rendering on the new platform
Redesigns often change the technology that builds and delivers pages, and those changes can affect search visibility even when URLs and content are preserved.
Rendering. Some modern front-end frameworks build page content in the visitor’s browser using scripts. Search engines can process many such pages, but it can be slower and less reliable than serving complete content directly. For pages that need to rank, make sure the main content, headings, links and metadata are present in the page as delivered, or use server-side rendering or pre-rendering. Check how key pages appear to search engines using Search Console’s inspection tools on the staging or launched site.
Speed. New designs often add large images, video, animation, fonts and third-party scripts. Page experience, including loading speed and visual stability, is one of many factors search engines consider, and slow pages also convert worse. Set performance targets for key templates, test them on mobile connections before launch and compare with the old site.
Mobile. Search engines primarily use the mobile version of pages for indexing. Make sure the mobile design includes the same important content and links as desktop, rather than hiding them to save space.
Accessibility. Clear headings, descriptive links and alternative text help both users with disabilities and search engines understand pages; a redesign is a good time to improve them.
A redesign timeline with an SEO workstream
The timeline shows how SEO activities fit alongside a typical redesign project of three to five months.
The audit and URL strategy sit early in the project, where they can influence decisions rather than react to them. Redirect mapping happens alongside content migration, when the team knows where each piece of content is going. Monitoring continues well beyond launch, because some problems only become visible as search engines recrawl the site over several weeks.
A complete redirect mapping process
Redirect mapping connects every old URL to its most relevant new destination with a permanent redirect, so that visitors and search engines arriving at old addresses reach the right content and the old pages’ accumulated signals transfer. It is the single most important SEO task in a redesign that changes URLs.
Start from the full inventory
Every URL in the inventory needs a destination, including those being removed. Pages being kept or improved map to their new equivalent. Merged pages all map to the combined page. Removed pages map to the closest relevant alternative, such as a parent category; only where nothing relevant exists should a removed page return a not-found status.
Map one to one wherever possible
Each old page should redirect to the single most relevant new page. Redirecting many old pages to the home page is a common shortcut that search engines may treat much like a missing page, losing the value of those URLs.
Use permanent redirects
Use permanent (301 or 308) redirects for moved content, not temporary ones, so search engines understand the move is lasting.
Avoid chains and loops
If the old site already had redirects, update them to point directly at the new destination rather than through several hops. Check for loops where redirects point back to each other.
Handle patterns and edge cases
Large sites can use pattern-based rules for consistent URL changes, such as a moved blog section, but test them carefully. Remember trailing slashes, upper and lower case variations, URL parameters used by old systems, the old site’s secure and non-secure versions, subdomains, images and downloadable files that are linked externally.
Test before launch
Load the redirect map onto the staging site and test every redirect automatically, checking that each old URL returns a single permanent redirect to the intended destination, and that the destination returns a successful status. Fix errors before launch, not after. Our earlier guide to planning a migration without breaking links covers the wider migration framework.
Keep redirects in place
Google has advised keeping redirects for at least a year after a move, and keeping them longer is safer, particularly for URLs with external links. Make sure the redirects survive future changes to hosting or platform.
Special cases: e-commerce, multilingual and large sites
Some sites need extra care during a redesign.
E-commerce sites have thousands of product and category URLs, filters that generate parameter URLs, and products that come and go. Map products and categories systematically, decide how filtered URLs should be handled, preserve product structured data, and plan what happens to discontinued products, usually redirecting to the most relevant category or replacement rather than to the home page.
Multilingual and multi-region sites use language or country versions with alternate-language annotations. Redesigns must preserve these relationships, map each language version separately and keep regional URLs consistent.
Large content sites with years of articles need pattern-based redirect rules alongside individual mappings, careful handling of archives, tags and pagination, and enough testing capacity to check thousands of redirects automatically.
Sites with subdomains or microsites being folded into the main site need their URLs inventoried and mapped as part of the same exercise, since they often have their own rankings and links.
In each case the principles are the same — inventory, decide, map, test, monitor — but the scale means automation and careful prioritisation become essential.
SEO practices in UK redesign projects
The progress bars show how often each SEO practice is included in the UK website redesign projects we review. Figures are indicative.
SEO practices included in redesign projects
Most projects carry over analytics and redirect the main navigation pages, because their absence is obvious. The practices that protect the long tail of traffic — mapping every indexed URL, basing content decisions on data, testing redirects before launch, crawling staging, writing SEO into the contract and monitoring after launch — are each present in a minority of projects. That gap explains most post-launch traffic loss.
How often ranking URLs launch without redirects
Across the redesigns we investigate after traffic loss, the share in which a significant portion of URLs that had been receiving organic traffic launched with no working redirect is striking.
The figure is indicative rather than a formal survey. Typically, the main pages were redirected, but blog posts, product pages, location pages, older service pages and downloadable files were not. Individually each may have brought only a little traffic; together they often accounted for a large share of organic visits and enquiries. A complete inventory and map is the only reliable way to avoid this.
What to preserve versus what is safe to change
A redesign does not have to freeze everything. Some changes carry little SEO risk; others need care. Knowing the difference lets the project be ambitious where it can and careful where it must.
Preserve wherever possible
- URLs of pages that rank or have links. Keeping the same URL is always safer than redirecting.
- The substance of ranking content. The topics, depth and answers that made a page rank. Rewriting for tone and brand is fine; removing the information people were searching for is not.
- Page titles and descriptions that perform well. Carry them over or improve them deliberately rather than letting templates replace them with generic text.
- Internal links to important pages. Pages linked prominently from navigation and other pages tend to rank better; keep important pages prominent.
- Structured data such as business details, reviews or product information, where it is in use.
Usually safe to change, with care
- Visual design, layout and branding. Provided content remains accessible and pages stay fast.
- Images and media, with descriptive file names and alternative text carried over or improved.
- Copy that does not rank, such as thin pages with no traffic or links.
- Navigation labels, as long as important pages remain reachable and prominent.
Change only with a plan
- URL structures. Necessary sometimes, but every change needs a redirect and introduces some risk.
- Platform and rendering technology. Make sure content is visible to search engines without relying on scripts that may not be rendered reliably, and that pages load quickly.
- Domain name. Treat as a separate migration with its own planning, redirects and notification to search engines through Search Console.
- Merging or removing content. Decide using performance data and redirect accordingly.
Handling content that has to go
Not every page should survive a redesign. Outdated news, discontinued services, duplicate pages and thin content can reasonably be retired. The question is how to retire them without losing value.
Check each candidate for removal against its traffic, rankings and links. Pages with none of these can usually be removed and redirected to a relevant parent page, or allowed to return a not-found status if nothing relevant exists. Pages with links or meaningful traffic need a decision: merge their useful content into another page and redirect, or keep them in some form. Where a service is discontinued, a page explaining what replaces it, or redirecting to the closest alternative, serves visitors and preserves signals better than an error.
Record every removal decision in the inventory, with the reason and the redirect target. This makes it easy to review decisions if a traffic drop appears later, and to explain to stakeholders why certain pages no longer exist.
The 12-point pre-launch and launch-day checklist
The checklist covers the essential SEO checks before and on the day a redesigned site goes live.
- Record the baseline. Organic traffic, conversions, top pages and rankings for key queries.
- Complete the URL inventory. Crawl, sitemap, Search Console, analytics and backlink data combined.
- Finalise the redirect map. Every indexed URL to its most relevant new destination.
- Test redirects on staging. Single permanent hop, correct destination, successful final status.
- Crawl the staging site. Check titles, descriptions, headings, canonical tags and broken links.
- Check rendering and speed. Content visible to search engines; pages fast on mobile.
- Keep staging out of search. Protected by password or blocked from indexing until launch.
- Remove staging blocks at launch. Confirm the live site is indexable and robots settings are correct.
- Deploy and spot-check redirects live. Test a sample of high-value old URLs immediately.
- Submit the new XML sitemap. In Google Search Console and other search engines’ tools.
- Verify tracking. Analytics, conversion tracking and Search Console working on the new site.
- Schedule monitoring. Daily checks for the first week, weekly for twelve weeks.
Launching on a Monday or Tuesday, rather than a Friday, means the team is available to spot and fix problems during the first critical days, before search engines have recrawled much of the site. Avoid launching just before peak trading periods, when any temporary dip would hurt most.
Redesign SEO readiness — where most UK projects sit
Combining SEO in the brief, a data-informed content audit, complete redirect mapping, pre-launch testing and post-launch monitoring gives an indication of how well a redesign protects organic visibility. The gauge reflects a typical UK business website redesign at the start of the build phase.
A score in the mid-thirties typically reflects a project with an assumption that “the agency will handle redirects”, but no written responsibility, no content audit informed by data, no plan for testing redirects and no monitoring after launch. The main pages will probably be fine; the long tail and the content that has been changed are at risk.
Adding SEO to the brief and contract, running a content and URL audit early, and planning mapping, testing and monitoring typically lifts readiness into the seventies or eighties. Done at the start of the build, this adds little to cost or timeline; done after launch, it becomes recovery work.
Common redesign SEO mistakes
The mistakes below account for most of the traffic loss we see after redesigns.
- Leaving SEO out of the brief. Nobody is responsible for protecting organic performance.
- Redirecting only the main pages. The long tail of blog, product and location pages is lost.
- Redirecting everything to the home page. Search engines may treat these as missing pages.
- Cutting content for design reasons. Pages that ranked are thinned or removed without knowing.
- Changing URLs unnecessarily. Every change adds risk; keep URLs where you can.
- Copying staging settings to live. A block on indexing can remove the site from search.
- Losing page titles and descriptions. Templates replace tuned titles with generic ones.
- Not testing redirects before launch. Errors are found by users and search engines first.
- Launching on a Friday or before peak season. Problems go unfixed when they matter most.
- No monitoring after launch. Problems are noticed months later, after the damage is done.
Staging sites are usually blocked from search engines to avoid duplicate content, through robots settings, page-level instructions or password protection. If those settings are copied to the live site, search engines may stop indexing it within days. Make checking that the live site is indexable the first test after launch, and recheck after any further deployment.
Case study: the redesign that lost the blog
A UK specialist manufacturer with around 90 staff relaunched its website after an eight-month redesign. The new site looked far more modern, worked well on mobile and was easier for the marketing team to update. The agency had redirected the main product and service pages to their new equivalents.
Within a month, organic traffic had fallen by around half and enquiries through the website had dropped sharply. An investigation found that more than three hundred technical articles and guides, built up over years, had not been migrated because the new design had no equivalent section. Their URLs returned not-found errors. Many of those articles ranked well for specific technical queries and had attracted links from industry sites and forums; together they had generated a large share of the site’s organic visits and a steady flow of enquiries from engineers. Several product pages had also been shortened during the redesign, losing the specification detail that had helped them rank, and page titles across the site had been replaced with a generic template.
Recovery took several months. A resources section was added to the new site, the most valuable articles were restored and updated, and every old article URL was redirected to its new location or, for the small number not restored, to the most relevant alternative. Product pages regained their specification content, and page titles were rewritten. Organic traffic returned towards its previous level over around six months, but the business estimated it had lost a substantial number of enquiries during the dip.
“We thought of the redesign as a design project. Nobody asked which pages were bringing in our customers, and the answer turned out to be the ones we had quietly dropped. Next time, SEO goes into the brief before anyone opens a design tool.” — Marketing Manager, UK specialist manufacturer
The lesson is not that the agency built a poor site. It built what it was asked to build. The brief did not ask it to protect the content and URLs that were earning the business’s organic visibility.
Post-launch monitoring and triage
Even well-planned launches produce some issues. The aim of post-launch monitoring is to find them within days, while they are easy to fix and before search engines have fully processed the change.
First week: daily checks
- Confirm the site is indexable and that robots settings and sitemaps are correct.
- Check Search Console for spikes in not-found errors, server errors and redirect errors, and fix the highest-value URLs first.
- Crawl the live site to catch broken internal links, redirect chains and missing titles.
- Watch analytics for falls in organic sessions and conversions against the baseline, and check that tracking is working.
- Spot-check high-value old URLs and the queries they ranked for.
Weeks two to twelve: weekly checks
- Track organic clicks and impressions by page and query against baseline in Search Console.
- Monitor indexing coverage as search engines process the new URLs and drop the old ones.
- Review rankings for key queries and investigate pages that have fallen significantly.
- Look at server logs or Search Console crawl statistics to see that search engines are crawling the new site.
Triage when traffic falls
Some short-term fluctuation is normal after any significant change, as search engines recrawl and reassess pages. A sustained or large fall needs investigating. Work through the likely causes in order: is the site indexable; are old URLs redirecting correctly; has content on falling pages been removed or thinned; have titles changed; have internal links to those pages weakened; have pages become slower or harder to render? Comparing falling pages with their pre-launch versions usually reveals the cause quickly. Our guide to technical SEO audits covers diagnostic checks in more depth.
Writing SEO into the agency contract
Where an agency or developer builds the new site, the clearest way to make sure SEO is protected is to write it into the contract and statement of work. Useful provisions include:
- Responsibility. Who carries out the content and URL audit, redirect mapping, technical SEO checks and post-launch monitoring, and who signs them off.
- Deliverables. A complete URL inventory with performance data, a redirect map covering every indexed URL, a pre-launch test report and a post-launch monitoring report.
- Acceptance criteria. Launch is not accepted until redirects are tested, indexing is confirmed and key technical checks pass.
- Post-launch support. A defined period during which the agency fixes SEO-related defects promptly.
- Templates and editability. Titles, descriptions, headings, alternative text and structured data must be editable by the business.
- Performance. Agreed targets for page speed on key templates.
Agencies that already work this way will welcome clear requirements; those that do not will at least price the work properly rather than discovering it at launch.
Using the redesign to improve SEO, not just protect it
A redesign is also a rare opportunity to fix long-standing SEO weaknesses. With the content audit in hand, the business can merge thin, overlapping pages into stronger ones, fill gaps where valuable topics have no page at all, improve page structure and internal linking around key services, and build templates that load quickly and present content clearly to search engines. Old URLs that attracted links years ago but now return errors can be redirected to relevant new pages, recovering value that had already been lost.
The order matters: protect first, then improve. Changes made to strengthen content should still be informed by performance data, and every URL change still needs a redirect. Businesses that combine protection with deliberate improvement often see organic traffic grow after a redesign rather than merely recover. Links pointing at old URLs are worth particular attention; our guide to link building explains why redirecting them preserves hard-won value.
Local listings, profiles and external links after a redesign
Search visibility does not depend only on the website itself. Business profiles, directory listings, social profiles, email signatures, advertising campaigns and partner sites all link to specific pages. After a redesign, update these links to point directly at the new URLs, particularly for your Google Business Profile, major directories and paid campaigns, rather than relying on redirects indefinitely.
Check that location pages for multi-site businesses keep consistent names, addresses and phone numbers, and that any structured data for business details is carried over. For high-value external links from partners and industry sites, a short note asking them to update the URL is worthwhile, though redirects will preserve most of the value if they do not.
At a glance: website redesign without losing rankings
| Stage | What to do | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Brief | Make preserving organic performance a requirement with a named owner | Puts SEO into decisions from the start |
| Baseline | Record traffic, conversions, top pages and rankings | Lets you measure the impact of launch |
| URL inventory | Combine crawl, sitemap, Search Console, analytics and backlinks | No single source finds every URL |
| Content decisions | Keep, improve, merge or remove based on data | Protects what ranks and earns links |
| URL strategy | Keep URLs where possible; plan changes | Every change adds risk |
| Templates | Editable titles, headings, structured data; fast pages | Technical foundations for ranking |
| Redirect map | Every indexed URL to its best destination, one hop, permanent | Transfers visitors and signals |
| Staging checks | Test redirects, crawl, check rendering and speed | Find errors before search engines do |
| Launch day | Remove staging blocks, deploy redirects, submit sitemap, verify tracking | Avoids catastrophic indexing errors |
| Monitoring | Daily for a week, weekly for twelve weeks | Fix problems while they are small |
| Contract | SEO deliverables, acceptance criteria and support period | Clear responsibility and quality |
| Redirect lifetime | Keep for at least a year, longer for linked URLs | Signals continue to transfer |
How Cloudswitched approaches website redesigns
We build SEO protection into every website redesign from the first workshop. The brief states that existing organic performance must be preserved, and the project plan includes the audit, mapping, testing and monitoring needed to do it.
Early in the project we build a complete inventory of current URLs with traffic, rankings, conversions and backlinks, and work with you on keep, improve, merge and remove decisions before the new structure is finalised. We keep existing URLs wherever possible, design templates that give you control over titles, headings and structured data and load quickly, and map every indexed URL to its new destination as content is migrated. Before launch we crawl the staging site and test every redirect; on launch day we verify indexing, redirects, sitemaps and tracking; and for twelve weeks afterwards we monitor search performance against the baseline and fix issues promptly.
Where it makes sense, we use the redesign to strengthen your search visibility too: consolidating thin content, filling gaps and recovering value from old links. No redesign can guarantee rankings, which depend on many factors outside any project, but a disciplined process prevents the avoidable losses that undo so many relaunches.
Planning a new website?
Talk to us about a redesign that improves your site without sacrificing the search visibility you have built.
Talk to a Web Development SpecialistFrequently Asked Questions
Why do websites lose rankings after a redesign?
Most often because old URLs are not redirected correctly, ranking content is removed or thinned, internal links and titles change, or a setting blocking search engines is carried over from staging. Each is preventable with planning.
What is a redirect map?
A list connecting every old URL to its most relevant new destination, implemented as permanent redirects, so visitors and search engines reach the right content and signals transfer from old pages to new ones.
Should we keep the same URLs when redesigning?
Wherever possible. Keeping URLs is safer than redirecting. Change them only where there is a clear benefit, and map and redirect every change.
Is it acceptable to redirect old pages to the home page?
Generally not for pages with a relevant equivalent. Search engines may treat mass redirects to the home page much like missing pages. Redirect each old page to its most relevant new page.
How do we find all the URLs on our current site?
Combine a site crawl, the XML sitemap, Google Search Console, analytics data and backlink data from an SEO tool. Include images, PDFs and existing redirects.
When should SEO be involved in a redesign?
From the brief. Content, structure, platform and template decisions made early determine most of the SEO risk, and are expensive to change later.
How long should redirects stay in place?
Google has advised at least a year after a move; keeping them longer is safer, particularly for URLs with external links.
Is a drop in traffic after launch normal?
Some short-term fluctuation is common as search engines recrawl the site. A large or sustained fall usually indicates a specific problem, such as missing redirects or removed content, and should be investigated promptly.
What should we check on launch day?
That the live site is indexable, staging blocks are removed, redirects work for a sample of high-value URLs, the new sitemap is submitted, and analytics and conversion tracking are working.
Can we change content during a redesign?
Yes, but base decisions on performance data. Improving and merging content can help; removing or thinning content that ranks can hurt. Redirect any URLs that change or disappear.
How long does recovery take if rankings drop?
It depends on the cause and how quickly it is fixed. Quick fixes can bring recovery within weeks; problems left for months can take six to twelve months to recover from, and some losses may not fully return.
Should we change our domain at the same time as redesigning?
It increases risk, because every URL changes and signals must transfer to a new domain. Where possible, separate a domain change from a redesign, and use Search Console’s change of address process when moving domains.
Related reading
More guidance for UK businesses from the Cloudswitched blog:
- Virtual CIO onboarding: what the first 90 days should look like
- Network capacity planning: forecasting growth before your network becomes the bottleneck
- Office downsizing and consolidation: moving to a smaller office without losing IT capability
- Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption: why most deployments fail to change how people work
- Penetration testing for web applications: what an OWASP-based test covers
A better website without losing your rankings
Cloudswitched redesigns business websites with SEO protection built in, from content audit and redirect mapping to launch checks and post-launch monitoring.
Talk to a Web Development Specialist
Cloudswitched
London-based managed IT services provider offering support, cloud solutions and cybersecurity for SMEs.
