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A new website should bring more enquiries, not fewer. Most ranking drops after a redesign come from the same few mistakes, and all of them are avoidable.
1. Audit what you already have
Export your pages and the searches that bring visitors from Google Search Console. Note which pages get traffic, which bring enquiries and which have links from other sites. These are the pages you must protect.
2. Map every old URL to a new one
Make a simple spreadsheet: old address, new address. Pages that stay should keep their address if possible. Pages that move or merge need a 301 redirect to the closest new page. Nothing valuable should end up as a 404.
3. Carry across what ranks
Improve content, but don't throw away the text, headings and titles that already work. Keep the topic of each page the same.
4. Build fast and clear
- Every word in the page HTML, not only drawn by scripts
- One clear heading per page
- Unique titles and descriptions
- Compressed images and video
- Structured data for your business and services
5. Launch checks
- Test every redirect
- Remove any "noindex" from the new site
- Submit the new sitemap in Search Console
- Check analytics and forms
- Crawl the site for broken links
6. Watch the first month
Check Search Console weekly for errors and pages that dropped, and fix them quickly. A short dip can happen as Google recrawls; a good redesign recovers and then grows.
This is exactly the process we use for client sites and for our own. See our website redesign service if you'd like help.
