Most of the search traffic a business loses in a redesign is lost the same way: pages that ranked were given new addresses and the old addresses were left to return a not-found page. The second way is subtler: pages kept their address but lost the words that made them rank, because the rewrite made them shorter and vaguer. Website redesign SEO is the small amount of planning that prevents both, and it is the part of a redesign a business can run itself with a spreadsheet. This page sets out the page map, the redirect rules, what to keep on the pages that matter, and what to check on launch day.
The page map: every old address and where it goes
Export the list of every address on the current site, from the sitemap, the analytics or a crawl. Against each one, write the address on the new site that carries the same subject. Where the subject is dropped, choose the closest page rather than the home page, and where nothing is close, accept the not-found rather than redirecting everything to the front door. That list is the page map, and it is the single document that decides whether the redesign keeps its rankings. The search engine's own guidance on site moves describes exactly this: one-to-one redirects, prepared in advance.
Redirects, and the two ways they go wrong
Every changed address gets a permanent redirect to its new page, which tells search engines the page moved rather than vanished. The first way this goes wrong is chains: an old address redirecting to a second old address that redirects again, which should be collapsed to one hop. The second is the catch-all: every old address sent to the home page, which search engines treat as not-found in disguise. The redirects are set up on the new site before launch and tested against the whole page map, not a sample.
Keep the subject on the pages that rank, and check the launch
For each page that brings search traffic, the new page should carry the same subject in its title and its main heading and should not lose the substance that answered the searcher's question. Shorter and prettier is how rewritten pages lose rankings. On launch day, verify every redirect on the page map, confirm the new pages are not blocked from indexing (a staging site is often blocked and the block is forgotten), submit the new sitemap, and watch the search console for not-found reports over the following weeks. Those checks belong on the launch checklist with a name and a date against each.
Questions people ask about website redesign seo
Will a redesign always cause a drop in search traffic?
A brief wobble is common while search engines recrawl. A lasting drop is almost always missing redirects or pages that lost their subject, and both are preventable.
Should every old page be redirected to the home page?
No. Search engines treat a blanket redirect to the home page as a soft not-found. Redirect each page to the page that replaces it, and let genuinely dropped pages return a proper not-found.
How long should the old redirects stay in place?
Indefinitely. They cost nothing to keep, and inbound links to old addresses from other sites persist for years.