Redesigning your website without compromising on SEO ranking

Practical strategies to ensure your redesign strengthens, not weakens your online presence.

Redesigning your website is an exciting opportunity to upgrade your brand, improve user experience and align with business goals. But if not handled carefully, it can hurt your SEO rankings, the very thing driving organic traffic to your site. This article outlines how to maintain (and even boost) your search performance while giving your website a fresh new look.

Start with a pre redesign SEO audit

Before touching a single pixel, audit your current site. Identify top performing pages, traffic driving keywords and backlink profiles. Tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush help ensure your redesign retains what’s already working. Think of it as your digital asset list, you don’t want to misplace the valuables.

Preserve URL structures

Search engines and users build familiarity with your URLs. Changing them? Not a great idea unless you implement proper 301 redirects. Keep existing URL paths wherever possible to avoid traffic dips and SEO fallout.

Carry over metadata

Title tags, meta descriptions and header tags need to come along for the ride. This behind the scenes content is crucial for SEO visibility and click through rates. Export metadata from your CMS or SEO plugin before the migration.

Mobile responsiveness is non negotiable

With Google’s mobile first indexing, a poor mobile experience is a red flag. Ensure your redesign is responsive and performs well across all devices. Use Google’s Mobile Friendly Test to confirm you’re meeting expectations.

Boost page speed

Page speed affects both search rankings and user satisfaction. Compress images, streamline code and choose fast hosting. Aim for a sub 3 second load time, every second counts.

Retain high performing content

Don’t throw out the content that’s been working for you. Instead, refresh and optimise it. This helps preserve search equity and ensures your new site continues to rank.

Ensure crawlability and indexing

Make sure search engines can access and understand your new structure. Use XML sitemaps, clean internal links and robots.txt to guide search crawlers through the new layout.

Set up 301 redirects thoughtfully

Changed any URLs? Redirect them to their new versions using permanent (301) redirects. This protects your SEO equity and ensures users don’t hit dead ends.

Audit internal links

Internal links spread authority across your site. Update them post redesign to avoid broken links and missed opportunities. Tools like Ahrefs or Moz make it easy to scan your site for issues.

Post launch monitoring is key

Launching the new site is just the beginning. Closely track SEO metrics like rankings, traffic and bounce rate for the first 30-90 days. React quickly to any drop offs with fixes or refinements.

Test for UX before going live

Your redesign must feel good to use. Conduct usability testing, use heatmaps to track behavior and refine based on user feedback. Happy users signal quality to search engines.

Don’t forget structured data

If your site previously had schema markup like FAQs or product reviews, ensure it’s updated and implemented properly on the new site. This boosts visibility via rich snippets on search engines.

Secure your website

Ensure your new site uses HTTPS. Security builds trust and it’s also a Google ranking factor. If you already had SSL, double check all links point to the secure version.

Talk to Google (and other engines)

After the redesign, submit your updated sitemap in Google Search Console and request indexing. This tells search engines to scan your shiny new website and update their records.

A redesign doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch with SEO. With the right approach, it’s a chance to strengthen your visibility, not lose it. From technical migrations to content preservation, every step counts in ensuring your new website performs just as beautifully in search as it does on screen.
Thinking of redesigning your website? Let’s make sure it doesn’t cost you visibility. Reach out to Supercode for a thoughtful, SEO safe redesign that drives results.