SEO and Website Redesign Checklist: 8 Key Elements For Your Strategy

You’ve worked hard on your website’s SEO. Now, it’s time for a website redesign, and you want to upgrade your site without accidentally undoing all that hard work.

Building your website SEO can be a slog. The thought of doing anything that could negatively impact all of your hard work is genuinely terrifying. But the answer isn’t just to leave well enough alone and never update your site. Striking that balance — staying current while optimizing for SEO — can be tricky.

So, how can you master SEO and website redesign at the same time?

This guide will walk you through documenting your SEO's current state and setting realistic goals for it post-website redesign. Then, learn how to approach your website redesign to see positive gains.

SEO and Website Redesign: How To Redesign Without Hurting SEO

When you redesign your company website, it’s easy to get caught up in responsive design, fresh aesthetics, and improved user experience. These elements are all critical to a successful site redesign, but there’s one other element you cannot overlook: SEO.

Your search engine optimization efforts are the backbone of your online visibility, and a misstep during redesign could undo years of hard work.

But why is it so critical to consider SEO during a site redesign?

Your current website has likely built up significant SEO equity over time. This equity includes your rankings for key terms, backlinks from other sites, and the authority you've established in your niche. A poorly executed redesign can inadvertently wipe out this progress, leaving you to start from scratch in the search rankings.

Some of the major pitfalls you should keep in mind when exploring a website redesign include:

Changing URLs without proper redirection
Failing to transfer on-page SEO elements like title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags
Consolidating valuable pages that had critical backlinks

A strong website redesign strategy will not treat SEO as an afterthought. Instead, you should consider the SEO implications of every change you propose to your website. Some of the steps you need to take during your website redesign include:

Conduct a thorough SEO audit of your current site to understand what's working well.
Set clear SEO goals for the redesign that align with your overall business objectives.
Create a detailed plan for maintaining and improving your SEO during the transition.
Do regular check-ins throughout the design and development process to ensure you’re following SEO best practices.
Run comprehensive testing before launch to catch any potential SEO issues.
Implement a post-launch monitoring plan to quickly identify and address any unexpected SEO impacts.

By prioritizing SEO throughout your redesign, you're not just preserving your current search performance — you're laying the groundwork for future growth. A well-executed redesign can actually boost your SEO, improving site speed, enhancing user experience, and providing opportunities to optimize your content strategy.

With this baseline information in mind, let’s now explore some of the key elements you should include in your website redesign plan to ensure SEO is top-of-mind at every stage in the process.

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1. Establish Existing Website SEO Baselines

Before you dive into your redesign, it's crucial to get a clear picture of where you're starting from. You'll want to analyze key metrics like organic traffic, keyword rankings, and site speed. Tools like HubSpot, Google Analytics, and Google Core Web Vitals will help you get that starting snapshot of site performance.

This baseline assessment serves two important purposes. First, it gives you a benchmark to measure the success of your redesign efforts. Second, it helps identify areas where your current site might be falling short, guiding your redesign strategy.

Remember, SEO isn't just about what users see. Your evaluation should consider front-end elements (like content and user experience) and back-end aspects (like site architecture). This holistic approach ensures you're not overlooking any critical factors that could impact your search performance.

2. Audit & Optimize Existing Website Content

Now that you have your baselines, it's time to explore your content strategy. Use tools like Google Search Console to identify the top-performing content and pages that are hurting your domain authority. Look for broken links, outdated information, and duplicate content.

Refresh old blog posts, update outdated pages, and be sure to add a clear next step to every page and post on your website to prevent users from getting confused and bouncing.

As you conduct this audit, pay close attention to key traffic stats, rankings, and conversion goals. This data will guide your decisions on which pages to keep, which to redirect, and which might benefit from being combined for better SEO performance.

Remember to identify your most important pages first. These typically have the most views, inbound links, and impressions. What keywords are these pages ranking for? You’ll want to be sure not to remove those keywords from those critical pages, or else you’ll risk losing your spot in the ranking for those terms… and losing all your traffic alongside it.

3. Determine SEO and Organic Traffic Goals

Another element you need to consider is what you are trying to accomplish with your website redesign. Don’t go in blind. Take the time to set some clear goals for your rankings and organic traffic.

You’ll want to set SMART goals: goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

In other words, saying, “We want to rank higher in the SERPs” isn’t a worthwhile goal. Instead, you might say you want to rank in the top five spots for a specific keyword by the end of next quarter.

What do you want to achieve with this redesign? You could wish to boost your rankings for specific keywords, increase your overall organic traffic, or improve the balance between organic and paid traffic. Whatever your goals are, make sure they're concrete and quantifiable.

This step is also the perfect time to involve your SEO team in the conversation. They can provide valuable insights on the potential impact of various changes and help ensure your goals are ambitious and realistic.

4. Map Your Site Architecture

Another critical element of your website redesign checklist is your site architecture. How is your website structured? How will users navigate through your pages? How do your pages relate to one another?

When it comes to architecture, simpler is often better. Aim for a clean, logical structure. Remember that simpler architecture will help Google understand and crawl your site and make it easier for visitors to navigate deeper into your site.

As a rule of thumb, limit your top-level navigation to five or six items. This simplicity keeps things manageable and helps focus users' attention on your most important content.

When planning your new architecture, consider how each element will enhance both user experience and SEO. Your goal is to create a structure where important content is easily accessible, and the relationship between pages is clear.

5. Optimize For Mobile

Another critical element of your website redesign strategy is optimizing for mobile. Over half of all modern website traffic comes from mobile devices. As a result, if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re alienating half your audience. If you want to master SEO and website redesign, ensure your site is responsive, fast, and easy to navigate on a small screen.

A key part of mobile optimization is page speed. Large images and videos can significantly slow down your load times, frustrating users and hurting your search rankings. Focus on minimizing file sizes without sacrificing quality. Tools like Google's Core Web Vitals can help you measure and improve your mobile performance.

Remember, a mobile-friendly site isn't just about scaling down your desktop version. It's about creating an intuitive and enjoyable experience on a small touchscreen. This translation might mean simplifying layouts, enlarging touch targets, and rethinking how you present information.

6. Resubmit Your XML Sitemap

Once your new site is live, you still need to help search engines understand its structure. That's where an XML sitemap comes in. This file acts as a guide for search engines, helping them discover and index your content more efficiently.

After a redesign, you'll need to generate a new sitemap that reflects your updated website structure. Make sure this new sitemap is pristine — no 404 errors and all URLs pointing to the correct destinations. Tools like RankMath or Yoast SEO can be incredibly helpful here, often generating sitemaps automatically.

Once you've created your new sitemap, submit it through Google Search Console and other search engine webmaster tools. Then, keep a close eye on your traffic and crawl errors in the following days and weeks.

7. Map Your 301 Redirects

Throughout your website redesign, you may change some URLs to key pages and posts or consolidate content to remove pages altogether and simplify your sitemap. 301 redirects will be your best friend if you want to accomplish this without hurting your SEO.

301 redirects help you avoid sending users to broken links. These permanent redirects tell search engines a page has moved while also passing along the SEO equity of the old URL to the new one.

How can you map your 301 redirects efficiently?

Start by creating a spreadsheet that maps out all your old URLs and their new counterparts. This close attention might seem tedious, but it's crucial to stay organized and make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

As you map redirects, you might also want to identify low-value pages that don't belong on your new site. This mini-audit can be a great opportunity to prune content, improve your overall site quality, and make sure your content is relevant and valuable. Win-win.

8. Test Your Site Post-Launch

Last but not least, you’ll want to test your website post-launch! Many professionals think a site launch is the finish line, but if you want a smooth website redesign that boosts rather than hurts your rankings, you’ll need to engage in thorough post-launch testing.

Start by meticulously checking all your redirects. Are old URLs properly redirecting to their new homes? Are there any broken links or 404 errors? Don't forget to test all forms, buttons, and interactive elements.

Beyond functionality, you'll want to closely monitor your traffic, search rankings, and indexing in the weeks following launch. This attention will help you gauge the success of your redesign and quickly identify any potential issues.

Remember, seeing some fluctuations in your metrics is expected immediately after a redesign. But if you've done your homework and followed these steps, you should soon see your site performing better than ever in search results.

Want To Discuss SEO and Website Redesign? We Can Help

Redesigning your website while preserving and enhancing your SEO is no small feat. It's a complex process that requires careful planning, execution, and monitoring. But you don't have to go it alone.

Lean Labs specializes in launching killer B2B websites — and that means redesigning sites that keep with SEO best practices. Our experienced Growth Team can create a tailored, step-by-step plan for your website redesign project that not only maintains your current SEO standing but aims to boost it.

We understand that every business is unique, and so are its SEO needs. That's why we offer personalized strategies aligning with your goals and industry challenges. From establishing baselines to post-launch optimization, we're with you every step of the way.

Ready to take your website to the next level without sacrificing your hard-earned search rankings? Let's chat. Our team is here to discuss how we can be the perfect SEO and website redesign partner for your business.

Mallory is a Growth Marketer at Lean Labs, working with brands to ignite their growth engine through conceptualizing, implementing, and optimizing growth marketing strategies.

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