Redesigning without losing your rankings

A redesign loses rankings for one reason: the page addresses change and nothing tells Google where they went. Fix the addresses and the rankings follow the pages across. That is the whole mechanism. Here is the full checklist, published, so you can run it yourself or check whoever you hired did.

I want to redesign my website. What does the process look like?

A website makeover has five stages, and only one of them is the design. Skipping stage one is what turns a redesign into a traffic loss.

1. Inventory. List every address the current site has ever had, from its sitemap and from Search Console, with its traffic. This is the stage people skip and the only one that is irreversible.
2. Decide what each address becomes. Kept, merged, or redirected to its closest match. Not "redirected to the homepage", which Google treats as a soft 404.
3. Design and build, with the old site still live.
4. Launch with the redirects already in place, not added the week after.
5. Watch for a month. Search Console, the indexing report, and the list from stage one re-tested.

The rest of this page is stages one, two and five in detail, because those are where the rankings are won or lost.

Why does a redesign lose traffic?

Because Google ranks URLs, not websites. Your site has a set of addresses Google has indexed. A redesign changes them — /services.html becomes /services. If nothing points the old address at the new one, the old address returns a 404 and the ranking attached to it is gone.

1. The URLs change and nobody writes them down. New builder, new slug rules, no list of the old addresses.
2. The redirects are unmapped. The lazy fix sends every old address to the new homepage. Google Search Central says plainly: "Don't redirect many old URLs to one irrelevant single URL destination, such as the home page of the new site" (checked September 2026). Google reads those as soft 404s and rankings do not transfer.
3. The redirects are 302s, not 301s. Many builders and plugins default to 302.
4. The clock. Google does not re-crawl the day you launch. Its site-move guidance says "a small to medium-sized website can take a few weeks for most pages to move". Ahrefs' migration guide expects "a few weeks of flux" for a mid-size site changing domain. Two to six weeks is realistic for a 20-to-100-page local site.

The drop size is arithmetic, not mystery. If 40 of your 60 indexed pages 404 on launch day, you lose roughly what those 40 earned. The 40% to 70% figure people quote is that sum. We found no credible published average for real redesigns, so treat it as modelled, not measured.

What is the difference between a 301 and a 302 redirect?

A 301 tells Google the page moved for good, so the ranking moves with it. A 302 says the move is temporary, so Google keeps the old address indexed and the ranking sits on a page that no longer exists. In a redesign every redirect is a 301. There is no case where a 302 is right.

RFC 9110 (June 2022), the HTTP standard, defines 301 as a resource "assigned a new permanent URI" and 302 as one that "resides temporarily under a different URI". Google's redirect documentation maps that onto indexing: with a permanent redirect "the indexing pipeline uses the redirect as a signal that the redirect target should be canonical"; with a temporary one it "doesn't".

What do SEO website migration services actually do?

Twelve steps, eight before launch. That is the part most redesigns skip, and most of what an SEO website migration service actually sells.

1. Crawl the old site. Screaming Frog's SEO Spider crawls 500 URLs free; the licence is £199 a year (as of September 2026).
2. Export every indexed URL from Search Console. Google still ranks pages your menu no longer links to.
3. Add analytics and the old sitemap. Twelve months of organic landing pages, plus everything in yoursite.com/sitemap.xml.
4. Sort by clicks, highest first. Those are the pages that matter.
5. Map 1:1. Each old URL gets one new URL, the closest match in subject, never the homepage.
6. Keep the search intent of the title and H1. A page ranking for "emergency plumber Leeds" whose H1 becomes "Our Work" is thrown away, redirect or not.
7. Point internal links at the new URLs. Google: "Change the internal links on the new site from the old URLs to the new URLs."
8. Write the redirects as 301s and test them on staging.
9. Launch, then re-test on the live domain; staging rules do not always survive.
10. Resubmit the sitemap, leaving the old one submitted so you can watch the swap happen.
11. Submit a change of address only if the domain changes.
12. Watch 404s for 30 days. Every old URL marked "Not found (404)" in Search Console is a missing redirect.

The mapping sheet, six columns, is what makes the rest auditable:

old_url               | clicks_12mo | new_url             | type | intent_kept | live
/services.html        | 412         | /services           | 301  | yes         | ok
/emergency-plumbing   | 388         | /emergency-plumbing | 301  | yes         | ok
/about-us.html        |  91         | /about              | 301  | yes         | ok
/blog/frozen-pipes-15 |  64         | /advice/frozen-pipes| 301  | yes         | ok

The test. Put the old URLs in a file, one per line, and run this:

while read -r url; do
  printf '%s -> ' "$url"
  curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code} %{redirect_url}\n' "$url"
done < old-urls.txt

You want 301 on every line. 302 is wrong, 200 means no redirect fired, 404 means that page and its rankings are gone. Run it again a week later; plugin updates wipe redirect rules.

How do I list every URL Google has indexed?

Search Console, Pages report, the Indexed tab, Export. One limit first: Google states that "the list of example URLs in the report is limited to 1,000 items, and isn't guaranteed to show all URLs in a given status". Cross-check three other sources.

No Search Console access? Your developer probably holds it. Who owns your website covers getting it back.

Do I need Google's change of address tool?

Only if the domain changes. Google is specific: "You only need this tool when moving from one domain or subdomain to another... You don't need it for HTTP to HTTPS moves, switching between www and non-www on the same domain, or moving paths within the same domain." A redesign on your own domain needs redirects instead, and Google says to "keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year".

What does a normal dip look like?

A wobble in the first fortnight, back to baseline by about day 90. Still down 30% at three months means something is broken, not Google settling.

What does Fablence do about it?

Redirect mapping sits inside the $69 a month plan, not an extra. Before launch we crawl your old site, pull the Search Console data, build the mapping sheet above, and archive the old site. You get the sheet — an audit trail that works against us as easily as for us. We take your services, hours, photos and copy off the open web automatically, so that list exists before the new site does. You send us nothing.

What we will not change without telling you first:

• Your URLs. Any address that changes goes on the sheet, and you see it before launch.
• Titles and H1s on pages that already rank. We redesign around the words that earn clicks, not over them.
• Your name, address and phone number as written. One character out from your Google Business Profile and local rankings wobble.
• Your domain or your Google Business Profile. The domain stays registered to you; on the profile we are Manager, never Owner.
• Pages that earn calls. Nothing gets deleted for looking dated.

Plainly: we rebuild your homepage first at a private link. Say no, it is deleted, you owe nothing. The $299 setup is charged only on approval; the site is live within 72 hours. Month to month, 30 days' notice, no exit fee, free static export on request. Pricing · what the monthly plan covers.

When should you not hire anyone for this?

Under about 15 pages, with Search Console access, do it yourself. It is an afternoon, and the free Screaming Frog tier covers 500 URLs. Only swapping the template on Wix or Squarespace? Use their redirect manager; the URLs usually do not change. Moving off Wix or Squarespace covers actually leaving.

We are the wrong people for some sites. We do not build ecommerce stores, booking or scheduling systems, membership portals, custom web apps, or multi-location franchise sites. Migrating product URLs or a booking database is a harder job; hire a specialist. If your site is a few pages that should bring in phone calls, that is our job: what is wrong with my site or a free rebuilt homepage.