Website redesign
without losing your SEO
A poorly prepared redesign can erase years of visibility in a few hours. Here is the migration plan that protects your rankings: URL inventory, redirects, testing and monitoring.
Six risks to neutralise
The real causes of traffic drops after a redesign.
Abandoned URLs
Changing the structure without redirects produces mass 404 errors and an immediate loss of rankings.
Shortened content
A cleaner design must not delete the text that carried your keywords: keep it and reorganise it.
Blocked indexing
A robots file or noindex tag left over from staging can de-index the entire site.
Broken internal links
Menus and in-content links must point to the new URLs without redirect chains.
Performance regression
A heavier new theme degrades LCP and therefore the measured experience.
Lost measurement
Analytics tags and conversion goals must be reinstalled before go-live, not after.
Migration plan
Six steps in order, with no shortcuts.
Export every URL from the sitemap, Search Console and a full crawl of the current site.
Identify the pages that bring traffic and conversions: they drive the redirect plan.
Match each old URL to its new destination, one to one, never bulk-redirecting to the home page.
Check tags, redirects, forms, speed and mobile rendering before publishing.
Go live, submit the new sitemap and request recrawling of key pages.
Track 404s, positions and traffic weekly, then fix issues as they appear.
Frequently asked questions
Redesigns, redirects and recovery times.
Should I keep the old URLs?
When they are clean and readable, yes: it is the safest option. Only change them if the current structure genuinely harms understanding of the site.
How long should redirects stay?
At least a year, and ideally permanently. They cost little and preserve existing external links.
Does traffic always drop after a redesign?
A few weeks of fluctuation is common. With a complete redirect plan and preserved content, recovery is quick.
Can I redesign in stages?
Yes, section by section. It takes longer but limits risk and makes the effects easier to analyse.
Should I change domain name?
Only for a rebrand. Changing domain adds a significant risk factor to the migration.
What if traffic does not recover?
Check 404s, redirect chains, canonical tags, removed content and speed, in that order.
A web project to move forward?
Describe your needs in a few lines: we reply within 48 working hours with concrete recommendations and a fixed quote if you want one.
Request a free quotecontact@websteve.fr
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