Website redesign
without losing rankings
Refreshing your site should not cost you the visits you already have. We measure what works, keep it and migrate it with redirects. Then we verify it is still there.
When is it time to redesign a website?
Almost nobody redesigns their site because they got tired of the colour. You redesign when something has stopped working: it looks bad on mobile, pages take forever to load, nothing can be updated without calling someone, or the site simply no longer resembles what the company does today.
The problem is that a redesign touches everything at once: the design, the copy, the URL structure and often the platform itself. And each of those can destroy rankings that took years to build. That is why the question we get most is not "how will it look?" but "am I going to lose the visits I have?".
The short answer is no, if it is done in order. What sinks a redesigned site's traffic is almost never the design: it is changing addresses without redirecting them, throwing away the content that answered the searches, or launching with the site blocked to Google and not noticing until it is too late.
Why a redesign sinks SEO
Six specific mistakes. None is hard to avoid; all are easy to overlook.
Changing URLs without redirects
The single biggest traffic killer. If /services/web-design becomes /design and nobody adds a redirect, Google loses the page, the rankings it had and every link pointing to it. The fix is a 301 redirect for each old URL. It is not hard: it is just that almost nobody does it.
Throwing away the content that ranked
A new site usually comes with shorter, "cleaner" copy. The problem is that long copy is what answers what people search for. Before rewriting anything you need to know which pages bring visits and for which terms, and keep that.
Losing titles and descriptions
When migrating platforms, custom titles and meta descriptions are often left behind and regenerated automatically. Suddenly every page is called the same and Google stops telling them apart.
Launching with the site blocked
During development a noindex is added so Google does not see a half-finished site. And it is forgotten at launch. The site works, looks perfect, and vanishes from Google in two weeks with nobody understanding why.
Winning on design, losing on speed
Animations, background video, heavy fonts and a plugin for everything. The new site is prettier and takes three times longer to load. Core Web Vitals drop and rankings follow.
Not measuring before the change
If you do not know what positions you had, you cannot know whether you lost them. The first step of any redesign is a snapshot of the current state: rankings, pages with traffic and indexed URLs. Without that you are flying blind.
How we do it
Five steps, and two of them are measuring. That is the whole difference.
Snapshot of where you are
Rankings, pages with traffic, indexed URLs and inbound links. It is the point of comparison, and without it there is no way to prove the redesign did no harm.
Map of old URLs to new ones
A list of every current address and where it will go. The ones that stay, the ones that change name and the ones that disappear. That list becomes the redirects.
Design and build
The visible part: new design, revised content and the site built with Next.js. You approve it before anything goes live.
Launch with redirects in place
The 301s go in on the same day, not the following week. And each old URL is checked one by one to confirm it lands where it should.
Verification afterwards
Over the following weeks indexing and rankings are watched against the step 1 snapshot. If something drops, it shows up and gets fixed while there is still time.
Frequently asked questions about website redesign
Will I lose rankings when I redesign my site?
Only if it is done badly. A redesign with redirects in place, the ranking content kept and URLs mapped does not lose traffic; in most cases it improves, because the new site is faster and better structured. What sinks traffic is not the redesign: it is changing URLs without redirecting.
How much does a website redesign cost?
It depends on the number of pages, whether you are migrating platform and how much content gets rewritten. A redesign is always cheaper than a site from scratch when content and structure can be reused. Send us your current site address and we will give you an estimate within 24 hours.
How long does it take?
Three to six weeks for a corporate site, including design, build and migration. The part that takes longest is usually not the design but reviewing the content and deciding what stays.
Can I redesign without changing platform?
Yes. Sometimes redoing the design on top of what exists is enough, and it is the cheapest option. Other times the platform is exactly the problem: if your site is slow from years of accumulated plugins, a new design on top will not fix it. We look at that before proposing anything.
What happens to my current site in the meantime?
It keeps running. The redesign is built in parallel on a temporary address Google does not index, and the switch happens at a specific moment with the redirects already prepared. Your site is not down for a single day.
What if my current site has nothing worth keeping?
That happens too, and it is worth knowing before paying to preserve it. If your site gets no visits from Google and has no inbound links, the migration work is unnecessary and starting from scratch is cheaper. We will tell you if that is your case.
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