It happens all the time. A company redesigns its website, and by everything the team can see the launch is a success: a fresher design, faster pages, a clearer message. Three weeks later the manager notices that requests from the website have dropped. When someone opens Search Console, hundreds of old URLs are returning 404 errors, including pages that used to bring in most of the traffic.
A migration plan written before launch prevents that.
What should you collect before you change anything?
A complete list of your current URLs from three sources. The first is Search Console, whose pages report shows what appears in search and brings in clicks. The second is your current sitemap plus a crawler that collects every page. The third is the pages other websites link to, because those carry value you don't want to lose. Put the URLs in a spreadsheet, with the number of clicks each one got over the last twelve months next to it.
How do you build a redirect map?
For every old URL, pick the new page closest to it in meaning. The old "About us" page goes to the new "About" page, and a service page goes to the matching service page. The homepage is not a destination for everything.
- /about-us/301 redirect to /about/
- /contact-us/301 redirect to /contact/
- A deleted pageA 410 code if it has no replacement
A 301 redirect tells search engines the page has moved permanently, so its ranking signals pass to the new address. A 410 code says the page was removed on purpose, which is clearer than leaving thousands of 404 errors.
What if the redesign includes a new domain?
Changing the domain is a bigger job than changing the design, because every URL on the site changes. All the steps above apply, plus a few more. Keep the old domain registered and renewed, since the redirects work only as long as it does, and Google recommends keeping them for at least a year. Redirect each old URL to its counterpart on the new domain, add the new domain to Search Console and use the Change of Address tool there. Then update the links you control: your Google Maps profile, your social media accounts and your email signatures.
Why keep the content of pages that already rank?
A page that brings in traffic answers a question people are searching for. If you rewrite it, keep its topic and main keywords, and improve the wording and structure instead of deleting the paragraphs readers come looking for. Carry over the title and description of every important page, or improve them, and don't turn important text into an image or into a section that only shows after a click.
What needs to be ready technically before launch?
A correct canonical URL on every page. hreflang tags if the site is in two languages, linking each page to its counterpart, which we explain in building an Arabic and English website. Structured data for the organization, services and articles. A new XML sitemap with live URLs only. A robots.txt file that doesn't block important pages. Watch for a block that was put on the staging site and forgotten at launch, since it's one of the most common mistakes.
Test speed on mobile too. We explain the metrics in Is your website slow on mobile?
How do you test the new site before launch without Google indexing it?
Put the staging version behind a password. That's the surest way to keep it out of the index, and it also stops the design from leaking before its time. Blocking indexing with robots.txt or a noindex tag works, but that's exactly what gets forgotten on launch day. Then run a crawler on the staging site and compare the results with the old site: does every important page have a title and description, do internal links point straight to the new URLs without passing through a redirect, and are there pages that no link reaches?
When is a good time to launch the new website?
During a quiet period for your business. Launching a week before your busy season or a big ad campaign means any mistake in the redirects or forms will surface at the worst moment. Avoid launching right before a holiday too, when nobody on the team is around to watch and fix things. The first days after launch are when forgotten URLs and forms that don't send get discovered, so make them days when the developer is available. Tell your sales and customer service teams the launch date, since they'll be the first to hear from customers that a page won't open or a message didn't arrive.
What should you do on launch day?
- Take a full backup of the old site.
- Put the new site live and switch on the redirects at the same time.
- Try a sample of old URLs yourself and confirm they redirect to the right page.
- Submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Request indexing for your most important pages with the URL Inspection tool.
What should you monitor over the next two months?
Every week, check the indexing report to see whether the new pages are being read, the 404 errors to catch old URLs you forgot so you can add redirects for them, and clicks on your top twenty pages compared with before the launch.
We followed this plan on this very site when we moved it from WordPress to a static site. If you're planning a redesign, read about our website design and development service, or send us your current website link and we'll start with the inventory.
Questions our partners ask
Is a drop in traffic after a redesign normal?
Some fluctuation in the first few weeks is normal while search engines re-read the site. A large drop that keeps going usually means old URLs with no redirect, or pages that used to rank whose content was removed.
Should I redirect all old URLs to the homepage?
No. Redirect each URL to the new page closest to it in meaning. A deleted page with no replacement should return 410 or 404.
Written by the Visual Innovate team, the people who build, host and follow up systems, websites and apps for our clients in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Egypt.
