Redesigning Your Website? Don’t Forget SEO Migration
Redesigning your website is a big step. It’s a chance to clean up old content, refresh your brand, and finally get the site you’ve been wanting. But in the middle of all that excitement, there’s one thing that often gets missed: SEO migration. If you care about showing up on Google, this part really matters.
SEO migration is the behind-the-scenes work that keeps your traffic from disappearing after a redesign. Skip it, and you could lose all the search visibility you’ve built up over the years. Let’s say your old site had pages that ranked well. Maybe your service pages showed up when people searched in your area, or you had blog posts pulling in steady traffic. Then you launch your new site, and the URLs are different. Pages are renamed or removed. Metadata is gone. Suddenly, Google can’t find your content, and your rankings drop. So does your traffic.
We’ve seen it happen. And we’ve helped fix it after the fact. But it’s way easier to integrate SEO into the redesign and build process.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what SEO migration should include:
- Take stock of what’s working: Do a full audit of your current site. Look at what pages are bringing in traffic, what’s ranking well, and what you don’t want to lose.
- Set up redirects: If any URLs are changing, create 301 redirects so both users and Google know where to go.
- Keep your metadata: Page titles, meta descriptions, H1s, and image alt tags should all be carried over or improved. Don’t start from scratch without a plan.
- Update your sitemap and tell Google: After launch, submit your new sitemap through Google Search Console and make sure it can crawl everything correctly.
- Watch your traffic: Check your analytics and rankings after launch so you can catch and fix anything that drops off.
This isn’t only about rankings. It’s about making sure people can still find you. It’s about keeping your momentum. And it’s about making sure your new site doesn’t just look better, it performs better too.
Planning a redesign?
We help businesses launch sites without losing the visibility they’ve worked hard to earn. If you’re not sure where to start with SEO migration, let’s talk.
digital marketing specialist/project manager
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Victoria Prasek
Victoria graduated from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2018 with a B.B.A. in Organizational Management and a B.A. in French Studies. In 2023 she received her MBA in Organizational Management from Eastern University. She loves building and developing websites in WordPress and integrating tools such as HubSpot to maximize your marketing opportunities. Victoria also loves to create helpful and educational content for your journey to becoming a thought leader in your industry.