SEO
A website redesign is one of the most common ways businesses accidentally destroy their SEO. You launch the new site, it looks great, and then your traffic drops 40% overnight. It happens because redesigns change URLs, remove pages, alter content, and break redirects. This checklist ensures you don't lose what you've built.
Audit my redesigned siteBefore you change anything, run a full audit of your current site. You need to know: which pages are ranking, which pages get the most traffic, which pages have the most backlinks, and which pages convert best. This is your baseline. After the redesign, you'll compare against this baseline to make sure you haven't lost anything. Save your current sitemap, your Google Search Console data, and your analytics reports.
The most common redesign SEO disaster is removing pages or changing URLs without redirects. Every URL on your old site must either: exist on the new site with the same URL, or 301 redirect to the most relevant new page. If a page is being removed entirely, redirect it to the closest equivalent — never let it 404. Create a redirect map spreadsheet before launch: old URL → new URL → redirect type. Test every redirect after launch.
Your new design shouldn't remove content that's driving traffic. Before launch, compare: title tags, meta descriptions, H1 tags, body content, and internal links between the old and new versions. If your new design has shorter pages, fewer internal links, or different title tags, you're telling Google the pages are about different things. Keep the content that works — improve the design around it, don't gut it.
Planning a redesign? Don't lose your rankings.
Run a free audit of your current site before you change anything — know what you need to preserve.
Run a full audit of your new site on a staging environment before you launch. Check: all pages are crawlable (no accidental noindex), all redirects work, the sitemap is updated, structured data is valid, page speed hasn't regressed, mobile usability is intact, and all internal links work. Velrix's audit can scan a staging URL — run it before you flip the switch, not after.
On launch day: update your DNS, submit your new sitemap to Google Search Console, monitor Google Search Console for crawl errors, check that your most important pages return 200 (not 404 or 500), verify your robots.txt isn't blocking Google, and watch your analytics for traffic drops. If traffic drops significantly, check for crawl errors immediately — the faster you catch issues, the less ranking damage you sustain.
For 2-4 weeks after launch, monitor: Google Search Console for new errors, your rankings for your top keywords, your organic traffic compared to baseline, and your Core Web Vitals scores. Run a new audit and compare it to your pre-launch audit. If any scores regressed — page speed, mobile usability, SEO issues — fix them immediately. The first few weeks after a redesign are when you either preserve or destroy your SEO equity.
Most redesign SEO disasters are preventable — they happen because no one checked the SEO impact before, during, and after the launch. Velrix makes this easy: audit your current site to establish a baseline, audit your staging site to catch issues pre-launch, and audit your live site to confirm nothing regressed.\n\nDon't launch blind. Run a free audit first.
Audit my site