Website redesigns
SEO during a website redesign — improve the site without casually throwing rankings away.
A redesign is a deliberate risk to anything currently working, taken in exchange for something better. Planned properly, that trade is worth making. Planned carelessly, it's an easy way to lose ground that took years to build.
Before design starts
What should be reviewed before a single wireframe is drawn.
The mistake we see most often isn't a technical one — it's a sequencing one. Design work starts, a new structure gets agreed, and only once it's built does anyone ask what the current site's URLs, links and top pages actually were. By then, several of the decisions that matter most have already been made without that information.
Reviewing the list below before design starts means every decision in the new site is made with full knowledge of what currently works, rather than discovering it by accident after launch.
Existing search performance
A baseline of current traffic, rankings and click-through data, taken before anything changes, so any movement afterwards can be judged against a real starting point rather than memory.
Important landing pages
Which pages actually bring in traffic and enquiries today — these need a deliberate plan in the new site, not an assumption they'll simply carry over.
Search Console history
Coverage, performance and any existing issues, reviewed before the rebuild so nothing pre-existing gets wrongly blamed on the redesign later.
Current URL structure
A full list of every indexed URL, so nothing gets quietly dropped or changed without a decision being made about it.
Backlinks pointing to the site
Which external pages link in, and to which specific URLs — this determines what absolutely needs a redirect versus what doesn't.
Existing content worth keeping
Pages, sections and copy that already perform a job well, so a redesign doesn't discard something useful purely for the sake of a fresh look.
Redirect requirements
A working list of every URL that will change, matched to where it should point on the new site, prepared before launch rather than worked out afterwards.
Metadata currently in place
Titles and descriptions that are already working, noted so a template change doesn't accidentally overwrite something effective.
Information architecture
How the current site groups pages, and whether the new structure genuinely improves on it or just looks different.
A testing plan
How redirects, canonicals and indexing will be checked before launch, not discovered as a problem afterwards.
Post-launch monitoring
Who's watching Search Console and analytics in the first weeks after go-live, and what response is expected if something looks wrong.
Lower risk
What can safely change.
- Visual design, layout and templates — new look and feel doesn't affect rankings by itself.
- Page speed and technical performance — improving these generally helps rather than harms.
- Copy and content, provided the topic and depth a page covers stays equal or improves.
- Navigation labels and visual structure, as long as internal linking still reaches every important page.
- Images, media and on-page formatting.
- The CMS or platform underneath, if the same URLs and content structure are preserved.
Higher risk
What requires caution.
- Changing URLs — every change needs a specific, deliberate redirect, not a general assumption the homepage will catch it.
- Removing pages that currently receive traffic, without a genuine replacement or a considered redirect target.
- Restructuring the site's architecture so that pages lose internal links they previously had.
- Rewriting high-performing content into something shorter or less specific for the sake of a new template.
- Consolidating several pages into one, without redirecting each of the originals individually.
- Changing metadata across the whole site at once without checking what was already working.
The upside
A redesign is also an opportunity, not just a risk to manage.
Sites accumulate problems over time — pages that were never quite finished, a navigation structure that made sense five services ago but not now, page speed dragged down by years of added plugins and scripts. A redesign is a genuine chance to fix all of that properly, rather than patching around it.
Done with the review above completed first, a redesign can leave a site faster, better structured and with clearer content than before — while keeping the search visibility that already existed intact. That combination is the actual goal, not simply avoiding damage.
If you're planning a migration alongside the redesign — a domain change, or a move to a new platform — see website migration SEO for what that adds to the process. And if a redesign has already gone live and something looks wrong, our page on lost rankings after a redesign works through the diagnosis.
For the wider technical picture, see technical SEO, or read about our approach to website redesign generally.
Before you ask
Questions about redesigning without losing rankings.
Next step
Got a vision?
Let's build the venture.
Tell us what your business does and what you need the website to achieve. We'll come back to you personally with honest thoughts — and a clear proposal if it's a good fit.