Keep your SEO when you redesign or move a website

  • redesign
  • site-migration
  • redirects
  • google-search-console
  • seo

Updated

Search traffic usually drops after a redesign for one reason: old page addresses stopped working. Google and every link to your site still point at the old URLs, so when those return "not found", the rankings they earned go with them. Keep your SEO by redirecting every old address to its closest new page with a permanent (301) redirect, keeping the content that ranked, and checking Google Search Console in the weeks after launch.

Before launch: list what you have

  1. Export your current page addresses. Your sitemap (often yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml or /wp-sitemap.xml) lists them. Add the pages people actually land on: in Search Console, open Performance → Search results → Pages and export the list for the last 12 months.
  2. Note what ranks. The top pages in that export bring most of your search traffic. Keep their topic, main text, title, and description on the new site, even if the design changes.
  3. Map old to new. In a spreadsheet, put each old address beside the new address that covers the same thing. Send pages you're dropping to the closest related page, not all to the home page.

At launch: redirect and open the doors

  1. Add 301 redirects for every address that changes. See Set up a 301 redirect in WordPress. Google recommends keeping redirects "for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year".
  2. Let search engines in. New sites are often built with search engines blocked or pages marked noindex. Check that's switched off on the live site.
  3. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console. See Add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.
  4. Moving to a new domain? Redirect the old domain page by page, keep both domains in Search Console, and use its Change of Address tool. You only need that tool for a domain change.

Source: Site moves with URL changes (Google Search Central).

After launch: watch and fix

  • Week one: test your old top pages by typing their old addresses. Each should land on the right new page.
  • Weekly for a couple of months: in Search Console, open Indexing → Pages and look for Not found (404) addresses. Add a redirect for each one that used to matter.
  • Compare traffic in Performance against the same weeks before launch.

Google says visibility can fluctuate during a move, and that it can take a few weeks or more for the new addresses to replace the old ones in results. A short dip is normal. A drop that keeps going after a month or two means something was missed.

Already launched and traffic fell?

  1. Find the old addresses: an old sitemap, an analytics landing-page report from before launch, or the Wayback Machine at web.archive.org.
  2. Check each one. Redirect any that now show "not found".
  3. Compare your top pages old and new. Restore text, headings, or whole pages that were cut.
  4. Check the new site isn't blocking search engines or marking key pages noindex.

If your site runs on Dirigible

  • If search engines are blocked site-wide, the Dashboard's Welcome screen shows a warning with a Let search engines index this site button.
  • Dirigible SEO keeps the SEO title and description you set on each page, and Migrate Yoast Data, under Dirigible → Tools, copies titles, descriptions, noindex, and canonical settings over from Yoast SEO. See Dirigible SEO tools.
  • Audit broken links, in Dirigible → Tools & Maintenance, finds links in your content that point at addresses that no longer work.

A site with hundreds of pages, a domain change, or a store with product URLs is worth planning with someone who has done migrations before: the redirect map is the part that protects years of search traffic.