A redesign is exciting. New look, faster pages, better photos. But if the switch is rushed, the old pages Google has ranked for years can suddenly lead to "page not found," and the traffic that came with them quietly disappears.
We moved our own website to a new platform this October, so this is fresh for us. Here is what we do on every move, for clients and for ourselves.
Why rankings drop after a redesign
Google ranks pages, and each page lives at an address, or URL. A new platform usually means new addresses. If nothing tells Google that the old page now lives somewhere new, Google treats it as gone, and links from other websites now point at nothing.
Changing the design, the content and the structure all at once also gives Google a lot to re-evaluate. Google's John Mueller has said that URL changes can take several months for Google to fully process, Search Engine Land reported. Some movement is normal. A steep, lasting drop usually means something was missed.
Before launch
- List every page that matters today. Use the Pages report in Google Search Console, your analytics and your current sitemap. Note the pages that bring in visits and enquiries.
- Map each old address to its new home. Every old page should point to the closest matching new page. Sending everything to the home page is a common shortcut, and it throws away much of what those pages earned.
- Keep what already works. If a page ranks well, carry over its best content, headings and page title, then improve it. Do not start from a blank page.
- Set up permanent (301) redirects from every old address to its new one. Google's site move guide says that 301 and other permanent redirects do not cause a loss in PageRank.
- Carry over your tracking. Your Google Analytics tag, ad conversion tracking and Search Console verification all need to come across to the new site. This step is easy to miss and it is worth checking twice, because without it you cannot see what the new site is doing.
- Test everything that brings in business: forms, phone links, booking tools and checkout, on a phone as well as a computer. Our pre-launch checklist covers the rest.
On launch day
- Turn on the redirects at the same moment the new site goes live.
- Submit your new sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Use the URL Inspection tool on your home page and main service pages and request indexing.
- Changing your domain name too? Use the Change of Address tool in Search Console after your redirects are in place.
The first few months
- Check the Page indexing report. Old addresses showing as "Page with redirect" are expected. Anything showing as "Not found (404)" that used to get visits needs a redirect.
- Watch your search performance weekly. Compare clicks and impressions with the weeks before launch, and keep an eye on the searches that matter most to your business.
- Keep your redirects in place. Google recommends keeping them for at least 180 days, and longer if old addresses still get traffic, in its Change of Address help page. We simply leave them on for good.
- Fix broken links inside your own site so they point straight to the new pages.
What happened when we moved our own site
On October 9, we moved newdaymarketing.co to a new platform. We redirected every old address Google had been showing in search to its closest new page, submitted the new sitemap and watched Search Console closely. In the first two weeks, Google was showing our site in search results about three times as often each day as it had in the month before, as new service and area pages started to appear. A few of our main searches moved around in that time, which is normal after a move, and we are watching them week by week.
The lesson is the same one we share with clients: a redesign is a chance to grow your search traffic, as long as the move itself is planned.
Planning a new website in Kingston or anywhere in Ontario? See how we approach website design and development, or book a free discovery call and we will walk you through how we would move your site safely.
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