How do I redesign my website without losing Google rankings?

A new website should bring in more enquiries than the old one. Sometimes it brings in fewer, and the reason is usually not the design. It is that the old site had years of search history attached to specific addresses, and the new site threw those addresses away.

The good news is that this is avoidable. Google publishes clear guidance on moving a site, and most of the work happens before launch. This is the checklist we follow, both when we build a site and when an SEO audit is checking someone else’s redesign. It applies whether you are in Norwich or anywhere else, and whether the new site is a refresh or a full rebuild.

Before you change anything, take a snapshot

You cannot protect what you have not measured. Before the redesign starts, record where the current site stands:

• Google Search Console: export the pages and search queries from the Performance report for the last twelve months. This shows which pages actually bring people in from Google, and for what.
• Analytics: note your top landing pages and how many enquiries the site currently produces.
• A full list of URLs: from your current sitemap, plus a crawl of the site with a tool such as Screaming Frog, which is free for smaller sites.

If you do not have Search Console set up, do it now. It is free, and it is the only place Google tells you directly how it sees your site. Without a “before” picture, you will not be able to tell whether anything went wrong after.

Map every old address to a new one

This is the most important step, and the one most often skipped. Make a spreadsheet with every old URL in one column and its new address in the next.

Google’s own advice is to start with your important URLs, the ones that get traffic or links, and work outwards. For each old page, the new address should be the closest equivalent: the old fencing page goes to the new fencing page, not to the homepage. Sending everything to the homepage throws that match away, and visitors arriving from an old link land somewhere that does not answer what they were looking for.

If a page is genuinely going away with no replacement, decide that deliberately rather than by accident. Do not forget PDFs and images that other sites link to.

Use permanent redirects, and keep them

Once the map is done, every old URL needs a permanent, server-side redirect to its new address. Google recommends a 301 or 308 redirect, pointing straight to the final destination rather than through a chain of hops.

Google also says to keep redirects in place for “generally at least 1 year”. In practice, there is little reason ever to remove them. Old links in emails, directories and other people’s websites will keep arriving for years.

When we rebuilt this site, the old contact page moved to a new address. A permanent redirect now sends /contact to /enquiry, so anyone with the old link still reaches the form. It is one line of configuration, and it is the kind of line that is easy to forget.

Keep the content that ranks

Redesigns often come with new copy, and new copy is often shorter. That is fine for most pages, but be careful with the ones your Search Console export shows bringing in traffic.

If a page ranks for “fencing contractor Norfolk” because it explains your fencing work in detail, cutting it down to two lines and a photo may cost you the ranking. Keep the substance: the headings, the detail that answers real questions, the service and place names customers search for. Improve the writing by all means. Just do not delete the reasons Google sent people there.

The same goes for titles and meta descriptions on those pages. Change them only if you have a reason to.

If two old pages covered the same ground, a redesign is a good moment to combine them into one stronger page. Redirect both old addresses to it, so neither one’s history is wasted.

Check the new site before launch

Before switching over, test the new site on its preview address:

• Every URL in your redirect map, to confirm each one lands on the right page with a single redirect.
• That the new site is not blocked from search engines. A staging site is often set to “noindex” or blocked in robots.txt, and that setting sometimes travels to launch.
• That every page has its own title, description and one main heading.
• That it is fast on a phone. Run Google’s PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse on mobile for your key pages.
• That forms, phone links and booking tools work, and that enquiries arrive where they should.

For comparison, this site scores 100 for SEO and accessibility in Google Lighthouse on mobile. A score is not a ranking, but low scores at launch usually point to something fixable.

After launch: Search Console

On launch day, submit the new sitemap in Search Console. Google’s guidance is to do this once the redirects are active. If you have moved to a new domain name, use Search Console’s Change of Address tool as well. Google notes this tool is only for domain moves, not for changes within the same domain.

Then watch. For the first few weeks, check the Pages report for new errors and “not found” addresses, and compare clicks and queries against your snapshot. Some movement is normal while Google recrawls the site. A page that drops away entirely usually means a missing or wrong redirect, and those are quick to fix once you spot them.

Snapshot the old site. Map every URL. Redirect permanently and leave the redirects in place. Keep the content that earns traffic. Test before launch, submit the sitemap after, and keep an eye on Search Console. When rankings drop after a redesign, the cause is usually one of those steps being skipped, rather than anything mysterious.