The PironHow does a website redesign affect search rankings?
Preserving search visibility during a website redesign: page URLs, permanent redirects and what to do before the switch.
A concern often raised by businesses that want to rebuild their website is losing search engine visibility when they move to the new site.
With a well-planned migration, this risk can be greatly reduced. The most frequently overlooked part of the process is page URLs.
Why do page URLs matter?
Every page on a website has its own address. For example, yoursite.com/our-services or yoursite.com/contact-details. The longer a site has been live, the better search engines know these addresses. Visitors may have bookmarked some pages, and other sites may link to these addresses.
Search engine visibility is built largely on these addresses.
What happens to old URLs on the new site?
On a new site, page names or locations often change. For example, /contact-details may become /contact, and service pages may move to a new structure. A visitor arriving at an old address that does not exist on the new site sees a “page not found” error.
Search engines encounter the same error and, after a while, remove these pages from their index. A large part of the ranking losses seen after a website rebuild comes from this.
Permanent redirects
The solution is a permanent redirect (301 redirect). Visitors and search engines arriving at the old address are automatically sent to the new page. Search engines learn the page’s new location and transfer the value of the old address to the new one. Short-term fluctuations may be seen after the switch.
What to do before the switch
- List every page URL on the existing site. On WordPress sites, the sitemap is usually found at
yoursite.com/wp-sitemap.xml. The page list in Google Search Console can also be used for this. - Define the counterpart of each old URL on the new site. Pages without a direct counterpart should be redirected to the closest content, not all to the home page.
- Prepare the redirects before the site goes live.
- Test the old URLs after launch.
- Monitor the error reports in Google Search Console during the first weeks.
Questions to ask your provider
- How will the existing site’s page URLs be identified?
- What will be done with pages that have no counterpart on the new site?
- How will the redirects be checked after launch?
If these questions do not receive clear answers, it is advisable to review the migration plan.
The Piron’s approach
In website rebuild projects, work begins with the existing site’s sitemap. All content, including blog posts, service pages and galleries, is listed, and each item is given a counterpart on the new site. Redirects are prepared before launch, and the old URLs are checked one by one after launch.
- An old address such as
/contact-detailsis redirected to the/contactpage on the new site. - Service pages whose names have changed are connected to their counterparts in the new structure.
For information about your website rebuild project, please get in touch through our contact page.