A new website can lose a large share of its search traffic in the weeks after launch, even when the design is better. Search engines rank URLs and the content on them, so when those change without a plan, the rankings attached to them go too.
Why traffic drops after a redesign
- URLs change and the old ones aren’t redirected, so search engines and visitors hit errors.
- Pages that ranked are removed or merged, or their text is cut back.
- A “noindex” setting from the staging site goes live with the launch.
- Titles, descriptions and headings are lost in the move to new templates.
- Important pages drop out of the menu, so fewer internal links point to them.
Before launch
- Export every URL that gets traffic or has links pointing to it. Search Console’s Pages and Performance reports, plus a crawl of the old site, cover most of it.
- Map each old URL to its closest new page. Send a page to a category or the homepage only when nothing similar exists.
- Keep the content that ranks. If a page is being rewritten, keep the parts that answer the search it ranks for.
- Check that the new templates output a title, a meta description, one H1 and a canonical tag on every page type.
- Keep the staging site behind a password, so it can’t be indexed and no “noindex” setting needs remembering on launch day.
On launch day
- Put the permanent (301) redirects live at the same moment as the new site.
- Test a sample of old URLs, starting with the ones that bring the most traffic.
- Check robots.txt and make sure no page that should rank carries a noindex tag.
- Submit the new XML sitemap in Search Console.
The weeks after
Watch Search Console for new 404 errors and pages dropping out of the index, and compare traffic page by page against the old site. Most problems found in the first few weeks are missed redirects, and they’re quick to fix once spotted. Google’s own guide to moving a site with URL changes covers the same steps in more detail.
Our team builds websites as retroXpect, so we plan the SEO side of a redesign before launch. See our redirects and site migrations service.
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How this page looks on Google
Website redesign checklist: how to keep your Google rankings
Redesigns are a common cause of sudden drops in search traffic. A checklist for before, during and after launch, so you keep the rankings you’ve built.
The title and description we wrote for search engines, as they appear in results.