Website relaunch without losing rankings

A new site should look fresher and work better. What often comes along goes unnoticed at first: a drop on Google. After launch, traffic falls, enquiries dry up, and nobody knows why. It does not have to be this way. Rankings survive a relaunch when a few things are right.

Why a relaunch costs rankings

Over years, Google has learned which of your addresses stand for what. A relaunch often changes exactly that: new addresses, a different structure, rewritten text. If Google cannot find the old pages again, the trust you built is gone, and the buildup starts partly from scratch.

The most important rule: 301 redirects

When addresses change, every old address has to point permanently to its new target, via a 301 redirect. That way the trust you built carries over to the new page.

• List every existing address before you move.
• Map each old address to its matching new target.
• Do not redirect everything to the homepage, Google reads that as an error page.

Carry content and structure across

Visibility hangs on content. Do not throw away what ranks during a relaunch.

• Keep or improve text, do not cut it without replacement.
• Keep the heading structure clean, one H1 per page, a clear hierarchy. The basics are in SEO in plain words.
• Add structured data back, so Google and AI understand the page. More in Structured data.

Technical basics: sitemap, robots, load time

• Regenerate the sitemap and submit it to Google.
• Check robots.txt: the new site must not accidentally be set to noindex. That single checkbox has thrown entire sites out of the index.
• Watch load time, a new design quickly becomes heavy. See Core Web Vitals.

After launch: watch it

The move is not done at launch. In the first weeks you check in Search Console whether pages fall out of the index, redirects run into nothing, or errors show up. Caught early, most of it is fixed quickly.

In short

Redirect old addresses cleanly, carry content and structure across, check the technical basics and watch it afterwards. Do that and you move without crashing.

Planning a rebuild and want to avoid the ranking drop? Have a look at Websites and the SEO and GEO analysis, or drop me a line via the contact page.