A redesign is when sites most often lose traffic — not because the new site is worse, but because a poorly prepared SEO migration breaks what Google spent years understanding: URLs, ranking content, inbound links. Here is our method to keep — and improve — your rankings.
Why redesigns lose traffic
- Changed URLs without redirects
- Ranking content deleted or shortened
- Forgotten tags: titles, descriptions, canonicals, hreflang
- Broken internal linking
- Slower pages
- Staging indexed, or the live site left on noindex
The method
- Inventory what performs: Search Console clicks, converting pages, pages with backlinks
- Build the 301 redirect plan: one old URL → its closest new page, no mass redirects to the home page, no chains
- Keep and enrich key content rather than trimming it for design
- Check the technical layer before switch-over: tags, sitemap, robots.txt, Core Web Vitals, protected staging
- Monitor for 8 weeks: crawl errors, 404s, clicks and rankings of key pages
A successful SEO redesign is prepared before the design and verified after launch.
This work has a cost — see website redesign cost — but nothing compared to lost traffic.
SEO redesign: FAQ
How long does Google take to process a redesign?
Pages are recrawled within days; rankings usually stabilise within several weeks.
What if traffic drops after launch?
Check 404s and redirects in Search Console first, then noindex tags, canonicals and the sitemap.
Hand over your SEO redesign
Our website redesign agency in Paris includes SEO migration in every project. Let’s talk about your redesign.