A website redesign done wrong can destroy years of SEO progress, confuse existing customers, and launch a site that performs worse than the old one. This checklist covers every stage of a redesign project so you know what to protect, what to improve, and what order to do it in.
Before You Start: Audit Phase
- Export all URLs from your current site using a crawler like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb
- Identify your top traffic pages in Google Search Console and Google Analytics
- Document which pages rank for valuable keywords, and for which terms
- Note current Core Web Vitals scores as your baseline for improvement
- Record current conversion rates from analytics so you can compare after launch
- Identify broken links and errors on the current site
Planning Phase
- Define the goal of the redesign, better conversions, updated brand, improved mobile, all three?
- Create a new sitemap before designing anything. Know what pages you need
- Map old URLs to new URLs for every page that is changing structure or path
- Decide on tech stack and CMS before design begins, not after
- Set a realistic timeline with milestones for design, development, content, QA, and launch
Design Phase
- Review competitor sites for inspiration and differentiation opportunities
- Create wireframes before high-fidelity design
- Design mobile views before or simultaneously with desktop
- Define a proper color system and type scale that will scale to all pages
- Design all page states (empty, error, loading, success) not just the happy path
- Get stakeholder sign-off on design before development starts
Development Phase
- Implement all 301 redirects from old URLs to new before launch
- Transfer and reoptimize all meta titles, descriptions, and alt text
- Set up canonical tags on all pages
- Ensure the XML sitemap is updated with all new URLs
- Verify robots.txt is not accidentally blocking important pages
- Test all forms and conversion flows in staging
Pre-Launch Checklist
- Run Lighthouse / PageSpeed Insights on key pages. Target 80+ on mobile
- Test on iOS Safari, Android Chrome, Firefox, and Edge
- Test on actual mobile devices, not just browser emulation
- Verify all analytics tracking is firing correctly in the new environment
- Check that all 301 redirects are working as expected
- Have a rollback plan if something goes badly wrong
Post-Launch Monitoring
- Monitor Google Search Console for crawl errors daily for the first 2 weeks
- Watch organic traffic closely for 4-6 weeks for any drops
- Monitor Core Web Vitals after launch
- Check conversion rates against pre-launch baseline
- Set up heatmaps (Hotjar or similar) to observe real user behavior on the new site
Most common mistake: Launching without implementing 301 redirects for changed URLs. Every URL that was ranking and is now a 404 is organic traffic permanently lost until Google re-indexes the new URL. This can take months.
Planning a redesign and want to do it right?
We handle redesigns with full SEO migration planning so you keep what is working while improving what is not.
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