Redesigning your website is exciting—it’s a chance to modernize your brand, improve UX, and increase conversions. But one wrong move can send your organic traffic crashing overnight.

Search engines don’t care how pretty your new design is. If key SEO elements are lost, changed, or broken during the redesign, you could lose rankings, visibility, and revenue.

Good news: this doesn’t have to happen.

With proper planning and technical care, you can redesign your website without hurting your SEO. In fact, you can even improve it.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to retain organic rankings during a website redesign—from pre-launch SEO audits to post-launch tracking.

Why Website Redesigns Can Hurt SEO

Let’s start with the risks.

Most traffic loss happens when a redesign causes:

• URL structure changes without redirects

• Deleted or consolidated pages

• Loss of metadata and schema markup

• Changes to internal linking and crawl paths

• Increased page load times

• Mobile usability issues

• Robots.txt or noindex errors

• Poor migration of blog or content pages

And most of these are avoidable with proper SEO planning.

Phase 1: Pre-Redesign SEO Planning

Before any design mockups are approved, start with SEO strategy.

✅ 1. Audit Your Current SEO Performance

Use tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to analyze:

• Top-ranking pages by traffic and keywords

• Top-linked pages (backlinks)

• Mobile performance

• Bounce rates and dwell time

• Current sitemap structure

• Page speed insights

Create a benchmark report—you’ll use this later to compare post-launch performance.

✅ 2. Map Out All Existing URLs

Crawl your current website using Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to get a complete list of:

• All live URLs

• Metadata (titles, descriptions)

• Canonical tags

• H1 and heading structure

• Internal linking

Export the data into a spreadsheet. This is your SEO blueprint for the new site.

✅ 3. Plan Your URL Structure Carefully

Will your URLs change in the new design?

Sometimes category names, blog slugs, or product paths are restructured. That’s fine—but you MUST plan 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones.

For example:

Avoid 404s at all costs. Search engines will drop your rankings fast if they hit dead ends.

✅ 4. Retain or Improve SEO Elements

In the redesign process, make sure you retain:

• Unique meta titles and descriptions

• H1 and H2 structure on each page

• Canonical tags

• Open Graph tags (for social sharing)

• Alt text on images

• Structured data (schema markup)

Tip: Don’t let your designer strip down your content or remove SEO sections for aesthetics.

✅ 5. Use a Staging Site for SEO Testing

Before you go live, test everything on a staging server.

Make sure:

• Pages render correctly

• SEO tags are visible in source code

• Crawlability is intact

• Noindex or disallow rules aren’t accidentally set

Use the Google Mobile-Friendly Test and Rich Results Test to validate pages.

Phase 2: During the Redesign Process

While the site is being built or reworked, keep SEO aligned with development.

✅ 6. Optimize for Core Web Vitals

Redesigns often introduce new animations, videos, and large images—great for users, but dangerous for speed.

Use Google PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse to track:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

• First Input Delay (FID)

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Work with your dev team to:

• Lazy load images

• Minify CSS/JS

• Use next-gen formats like WebP

• Compress everything

Fast-loading pages = better SEO + better UX.

✅ 7. Maintain Mobile Responsiveness

Mobile-first indexing is Google’s default. Make sure the redesign works flawlessly on all screen sizes.

Don’t let important content or navigation get hidden or broken on mobile. Test mobile UX early and often.

✅ 8. Preserve Content Depth

Designers often want to “simplify” pages. But be careful—removing too much content can cost you long-tail keyword rankings.

Keep:

• In-depth product descriptions

• FAQs

• Blog content

• Testimonials

• Internal links

Design clean, not thin.

Phase 3: Launch SEO Best Practices

Launch day is critical for SEO. You only get one shot to roll out smoothly.

✅ 9. Implement All 301 Redirects

Your URL mapping document becomes your 301 redirect plan.

Redirect every old URL to its equivalent new page.

You can use:

• Shopify’s URL redirects

• WordPress redirect plugins

• Apache or Nginx config

• CMS-level rewrite rules

Test them in bulk with Screaming Frog or HTTP Status Checker.

✅ 10. Submit Your New Sitemap to Google

Once the new site is live:

• Update your XML sitemap

• Submit it in Google Search Console

• Submit in Bing Webmaster Tools too

Also, request a crawl of your homepage and major sections using the URL Inspection Tool.

✅ 11. Check Indexation & Crawlability

Go to Search Console > Coverage Report:

• Look for sudden spikes in “Excluded” or “Error” pages

• Ensure your main pages are still indexed

• Fix any crawl issues, blocked resources, or noindex tags

✅ 12. Track Keyword Rankings

Use a rank tracker (like SEMrush or SERPWatcher) to compare pre/post-launch rankings.

Watch for:

• Drops in high-value keywords

• Missing pages or deindexed URLs

• Unusual traffic dips in Google Analytics

If anything drops fast, check:

• Redirects

• Canonical tags

• Indexation status

• Internal link structure

Phase 4: Post-Launch SEO Monitoring

The first 4–6 weeks after launch are critical.

✅ 13. Monitor Organic Traffic Daily

Check:

• Google Analytics: Organic sessions

• Search Console: Clicks and impressions

• Google Rankings: Top pages and keyword shifts

Expect slight volatility—but not huge drops. If you see a 30–50% decline, investigate fast.

✅ 14. Fix Broken Links and Errors

Run post-launch crawls using Screaming Frog or Ahrefs Site Audit.

Fix:

• 404 errors

• Broken internal links

• Missing images

• Redirect loops

These issues hurt both SEO and user trust.

✅ 15. Ask Google to Re-Crawl Key Pages

Use URL Inspection Tool to reindex your:

• Homepage

• Top category pages

• Best-performing blog posts

• Key landing pages

This helps Google understand your new structure faster.

Bonus: Use This Opportunity to Boost SEO

Redesigning your site isn’t just about preserving SEO—it’s a great time to improve it too.

Add:

• New blog categories

• Schema for products, reviews, and FAQs

• Internal link silos for better crawl flow

• Lead-gen CTAs (like email capture, discount codes)

Final Thoughts: Redesign Smart, Not Fast

Website redesigns are a golden opportunity to refresh your brand—but if SEO is ignored, they can become your worst nightmare.

The secret to retaining rankings is simple:
Plan ahead, test thoroughly, and monitor post-launch.

Want expert support for a traffic-safe redesign?

Check out our eCommerce Store Migration SEO Guide—a must-read resource to keep your rankings, traffic, and revenue intact during major site changes.