A new site paired with smart SEO can bring thousands of targeted visitors your way. Without a solid strategy, that same relaunch could tank your search rankings, lose organic traffic, and hit your business.
Launching a new website? Virtual high five! It’s a big move and one worth celebrating.
While a redesign might look like a purely visual upgrade to users, what’s happening behind the scenes matters just as much to search engines. URLs change. Site architecture shifts. Content gets moved, cut, or rewritten. If search engines aren’t guided through those changes properly, they will treat your new site like it’s brand new.
Thinking of a redesign? We wrote a guide on how to tell when it’s time to redo your website.
A new site paired with smart SEO can bring thousands of targeted visitors your way. Without a solid strategy, that same relaunch could tank your search rankings, lose organic traffic, and hit your business by drying up leads.
Many websites lose their SEO ranking after a relaunch. Here’s how to make sure yours doesn’t.
Why SEO Often Takes a Hit After a Relaunch
Broken redirects = Lost rankings
Changing a URL without a redirect can do big damage to your search rankings. When a URL changes or a page is deleted, search engines hit a dead end and the backlinks lose their value.
The fix? Setting up 301 redirects. These permanent redirects tell Google that a page has moved and transfer most of the original page’s SEO value to the new one.
Lost metadata affects search visibility
During a redesign, important SEO elements like meta titles, descriptions, and header tags can be overlooked or completely wiped out. While meta descriptions don’t directly impact rankings, they drive clicks. They influence how your page appears in search results, and a great one can make all the difference in getting users to click it. If you don’t write them, Google will automatically generate snippets from your page copy, but they often miss your brand’s voice and fail to clearly communicate what the page is about.
Broken and missing internal links create confusion
Strong internal linking helps organize your website, helping users and search engines navigate through the site and find relevant content. During a relaunch, it’s easy for these links to break because:
- That blog post you linked to is now called something completely different
- Your ‘/services’ page is now ‘/what-we-do’
- Someone setting up the new page made a typo in the link
- Unupdated menus or navigation that don’t reflect the new site architecture
Each broken internal link creates a dead end for both users and search engines, confusing and frustrating for everyone.
Rewriting or cutting content can sabotage your previous rankings
Refreshing content is one of the best ways to boost SEO, even outside of a website redesign. Updating the existing copy with new information can breathe new life into your content, with one research study showing a 106% increase in organic traffic after optimizing posts.
If you plan on changing or removing top-performing content, remember that it can cost you valuable keyword rankings and traffic. Remember: content that’s been earning backlinks and building authority doesn’t magically regain its position when removed or completely rewritten.
Slow site speed drains SEO potential
Your old site might not have been as pretty, but it might have loaded quickly. Now, if your new website has auto-playing videos, unnecessary plugins, and heavy images, it can slow down your site and cost you visitors. Search engines notice this change, causing lower rankings and less visibility for your business.
What to Do Before You Hit Publish
Crawl and audit your current site
The same way you wouldn’t renovate a house without checking what’s inside first, before touching a single line of code:
- Run a comprehensive site crawl to document every URL, title, and meta description
- Identify your top traffic-driving pages
- Map out all your internal linking patterns
- Document your current ranking positions for key terms
- Save a backup of your data
Create a redirect map
Failing to set up redirects is one of the quickest ways to tank your visibility after a redesign. When URLs change, make sure users and search engines can still navigate your site easily. Without redirects, visitors land on a 404 page, which frustrates users and weakens your search presence. Create a solid redirect map in place to maintain SEO rankings and give your new site the strongest possible start.
Protect your top-performing pages
Like renovating a historic tourist destination, don’t tear down the architectural features that made it special in the first place. Your highest-ranking pages earned their success over time. Keep that momentum by preserving key elements: set up a redirect or maintain original URLs when possible, retain core content structure, and keep high-performing keywords in place. Layer in new terms from your keyword research, but don’t sacrifice what’s already working.
Back up your SEO data
An SEO audit uncovers SEO ranking factors and metrics on your site: your top-performing pages, high-value keywords, backlink profile, and traffic sources. Compare pre- and post-launch audits to identify and address any issues that come up during your redesign.
What to Monitor During and Right After Launch
Double-check your redirects
Manually test important pages and run a full-site crawl to confirm all redirects are working as expected. Then, run a full site crawl to catch any lingering 404s. Every broken link is a site traffic and potential revenue walking out the door.
Check your robots.txt and sitemap
Double-check that your robots.txt file isn’t blocking crawlers, update your XML sitemap to reflect the new URLs, and resubmit it through Google Search Console. For priority pages, request indexing directly. No matter how great your site is, it won’t matter if Google can’t see it. If it can’t find your pages, it can’t rank them, and if it can’t rank them, your audience won’t find you either.
Monitor Google Search Console
Google Search Console will become your best friend post-launch. Check for sudden drops in impressions or clicks, crawl errors, pages falling out of the index, and mobile usability issues. Catch problems here, and you can fix them before they start costing you traffic or conversions.
Watch user behavior for warning signs
Sometimes, the clearest signals that something’s off come straight from your users. Keep an eye on your analytics for red flags: bounce rates climbing, time on site plummeting, conversion rates dipping, or top landing pages suddenly underperforming. These are stats from your audience telling you something’s broken. Identify any dips and investigate the cause.
Best Practices for a Smooth Transition
Minimize risk and protect your rankings with these launch-phase best practices:
- Try to time your launch during a low-traffic period, if you can. Avoid peak sales seasons or major campaigns.
- Be sure to keep the structure and core messaging of your top-performing pages
- Submit your updated sitemap to Google as soon as the site goes live.
- Monitor site health daily (manually or with tools) for at least two weeks post-launch.
Long-Term SEO Opportunities After Launch
Start with speed, because every second matters
Reduce load times by optimizing behind the scenes: shrink image file sizes, enable browser caching, and clean up your code to remove anything unnecessary. And while you’re at it, take care of those Core Web Vitals that have been haunting your audit reports.
Rebuild your internal links
Your site redesign is a perfect opportunity to enhance how your pages connect, making sure visitors and search engines can easily navigate to your most valuable content.
Add new SEO-friendly content
Update outdated data, refine your writing, and add visuals or features that improve the user experience. Google loves fresh, relevant content, and a thoughtful refresh can drive a surge in rankings without reinventing the wheel.
Update and refresh older content
Don’t forget about existing pages. Updating outdated posts with new insights or formatting can boost rankings and re-engage readers.
Final Thoughts
Launching a redesigned website can breathe new life into your brand, but if you’re not careful, it might send your search rankings crashing. With a solid strategy and post-launch monitoring, you can maintain your hard-earned rankings while creating an even stronger website that attracts leads.
Ready to make sure your website relaunch boosts your rankings instead of tanking them? Let’s talk before you hit that launch button!