Website redesign checklist before you rebuild
Before a redesign: audit the pages already ranking, map every URL and plan 301 redirects, avoid rebranding at the same time, set a performance budget before design starts, and verify redirects on a staged site before the old one comes down.
K. Fischer
Principal, Process Engineering
Before a redesign: audit the pages already ranking, map every URL and plan 301 redirects, avoid rebranding at the same time, set a performance budget before design starts, and verify redirects on a staged site before the old one comes down.
Audit what's already working
Pull your top-performing pages by organic traffic before touching anything. Whatever is currently ranking needs a clear migration path in the new design, not just "we’ll recreate it later."
Map every URL
Document your current URL structure and plan 301 redirects for anything that changes. A redesign that quietly 404s a dozen ranking pages is one of the most common causes of a traffic crash after launch.
Don't redesign and rebrand at the same time
Changing your domain, messaging, and visual identity all in one project makes it impossible to know which change caused which result if something goes wrong. Separate these where you can.
Set a performance budget
Decide your target page weight and load time before design starts, not after developers hand you a beautiful but bloated homepage that fails Core Web Vitals.
Test before you launch
Stage the new site, run it through a technical SEO checklist, and verify redirects work before the old site comes down — not after.
Frequently asked
How do we apply this in our own business?
Start by documenting your current baseline before changing anything. Most of the value in this approach comes from being able to prove what changed and why.
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