Website Redesign Checklist: How to Redesign Without Losing Your Google Rankings

A new website should bring in more business than the old one. Too often it does the opposite: the redesign launches, it looks great, and a month later the phone is quieter because the site has dropped out of Google.

That drop is almost always avoidable. Rankings belong to URLs and the content on them. When a redesign changes URLs without redirects, deletes pages that were quietly bringing in traffic, or rewrites titles that Google already trusted, you’re asking Google to start over. This checklist is the process we follow on every website redesign so that doesn’t happen.

Before you redesign: decide what the new site has to do

Write down the two or three things the site must do better: more quote requests, more online orders, fewer “what are your hours?” calls. Every decision later gets measured against that list. “Look more modern” is fine as a goal, but it shouldn’t be the only one.

Step 1: Benchmark everything

You can’t tell whether a redesign worked if you don’t know where you started. Before touching anything, record:

• Organic traffic by page for the last 12 months (Google Search Console → Pages).
• The search queries each important page ranks for, and its average position.
• Conversions: form submissions, calls, bookings or sales, by month.
• Core Web Vitals and page speed for your key templates (PageSpeed Insights).
• Backlinks: which pages other websites link to (Ahrefs or Search Console → Links).

Export this to a spreadsheet. It’s your before picture.

Step 2: Crawl the current site and list every URL

Use a crawler (Screaming Frog’s free version handles up to 500 URLs) to list every page, image and PDF on the current site. Combine it with your Search Console pages export, because crawlers miss orphaned pages that still get traffic.

Mark each URL as one of:

• Keep: the page stays, at the same URL if possible.
• Merge: two thin pages become one stronger page.
• Retire: the page is gone and nothing replaces it.

Be careful with “retire”. A blog post you’ve forgotten about might bring in 40 visits a month or hold a link from the local newspaper. Check the benchmark data before deleting anything.

Step 3: Keep URLs where you can

The safest redirect is the one you don’t need. If /services/roofing/ ranks today, keep it at /services/roofing/ on the new site, even if a different structure feels tidier. Change URLs only when there’s a real reason, like merging pages or moving to a platform with fixed URL patterns (Shopify, for example, always uses /products/ and /collections/).

Step 4: Build a redirect map

For every URL that changes or is retired, decide where it should go and add a 301 (permanent) redirect:

Rules of thumb:

• Redirect to the closest equivalent page, not the homepage.
• Avoid chains (A → B → C). Point old URLs straight at their final destination.
• Keep redirects in place permanently, not just for a few months.

Step 5: Carry over what Google already trusts

For every page you keep, bring across:

• Title tags and meta descriptions that rank and get clicks. Improve them, but don’t throw away the keywords.
• Headings and body content that answer the query. A redesign is a good time to improve copy, not to cut it to three lines because the new design has more white space.
• Internal links between related pages.
• Image alt text and file names.
• Structured data (schema markup) for your business, services, products and FAQs.

Step 6: Build it fast and accessible

Use the redesign to fix what was holding the old site back:

• Compress and resize images, and serve modern formats like WebP or AVIF.
• Avoid heavy page builders and plugins that load scripts on every page.
• Make it work properly on a phone first.
• Meet basic accessibility standards: contrast, alt text, keyboard navigation and form labels. In Ontario this matters legally as well (see our AODA guide).

Step 7: Test on a staging site, hidden from Google

Build on a staging URL protected by a password or noindex. Before launch, crawl staging and check for broken links, missing titles, duplicate H1s and pages that accidentally kept noindex.

Step 8: Launch day checklist

• Remove noindex and any password protection.
• Deploy the redirect map and test a sample of old URLs, including your top 20 pages.
• Check robots.txt isn’t blocking the site.
• Submit the new XML sitemap in Google Search Console.
• Confirm analytics and conversion tracking fire on forms, calls and bookings.
• Update your Google Business Profile link if the homepage URL changed.

Step 9: Monitor for six weeks

Expect some movement for a week or two while Google recrawls. After that, compare against your benchmark:

• Search Console → Pages: look for new “Not found (404)” errors and fix them with redirects.
• Watch rankings for your most valuable queries.
• Compare conversions month over month.

If a page drops and stays down, compare old and new versions side by side. Usually something important was lost: a section of content, a heading, or internal links.

The short version

1. Benchmark traffic, rankings and conversions.
2. List every URL and decide keep, merge or retire.
3. Keep URLs that rank.
4. 301-redirect everything that changes to its closest match.
5. Carry over titles, content, links and schema.
6. Build fast, mobile-first and accessible.
7. Test on a hidden staging site.
8. Launch with redirects, sitemap and tracking checked.
9. Monitor for six weeks and fix what slips.

Planning a redesign in Windsor-Essex?

We follow this process on every website redesign, and our Windsor web design projects ship with a redirect map and Search Console monitoring as standard. If you want a second opinion before you start, give us fifteen minutes. No pitch deck.