Service 02 / Websites
A redesign shouldn't cost you your rankings.
The most common reason businesses put off replacing an outdated site isn't the money. It's the fear that the new one will rank worse than the old one. That fear is justified; and avoidable.
The friction
What actually goes wrong
Every URL changes and nothing redirects
The single biggest cause. Every link, bookmark and ranking pointing at the old address hits a 404, and Google drops what it cannot find.
Content gets thinner
The old page had 900 words. The new one has a nice photo and two sentences. It looks better and ranks worse.
The new site is slower
A heavier theme, a slider, six tracking scripts. Speed is a ranking input and an ads cost input.
Tracking is rebuilt from scratch
A new analytics property instead of the existing one. Your year-over-year comparison is gone permanently.
Nobody has the logins
Extremely common, and it stalls more redesigns than budget does. The original developer is unreachable and nobody knows who hosts it.
The scope
How the migration is handled
Defined before work starts. Documented when we hand it over.
- 01Full crawl of the existing site first; every URL, what ranks, what gets traffic
- 02URLs preserved wherever they are working. A URL that ranks is an asset
- 03301 redirect map for everything that must change, one-to-one, never bulk to the homepage
- 04Content preserved or expanded, never quietly cut
- 05Search Console monitored through the switch, not checked a month later
- 06The same analytics property, so your history survives
- 07Speed measured before and after, so the change is a fact
- 08Access recovered first; domain, hosting, analytics; before anything is built
How we think about it
If you do not have your logins
This stops more redesigns than anything else, and it is usually solvable.
The domain can be recovered through the registrar with proof of business ownership, even if it was registered by someone else. Hosting can be identified from DNS records. Analytics can be reclaimed or, worst case, started fresh; losing history but not rankings. Search Console can be re-verified through DNS or a file on the site.
It takes some paperwork and it is rarely a dead end. We do this at the start of the project, before any design work, because there is no point designing a site we cannot deploy.
The connected system
Where this sits in the system
- 01
Website
You are here - 02
Visibility
- 03
Tracking
- 04
Follow-up
No lock-in
You own it.
After a redesign with us the domain is in your name, the code is in your repository, and the analytics are in your account. The logins problem is what happens when it was arranged the other way.
Related
Questions
Will a website redesign hurt my SEO?
Only if the migration is mishandled. The three things that cause ranking loss are URL changes without redirects, content being cut, and the new site being slower. Handle all three and a redesign is typically neutral to positive. Expect some fluctuation for two to four weeks while Google re-crawls; that is normal and it settles.
Will I lose my Google reviews?
No. Reviews live on your Google Business Profile, not your website. A redesign does not touch them.
How long does a redesign take?
Most take four to eight weeks depending on how many service pages there are and how quickly content and photos come back. Recovering lost access can add time at the start.
Can you keep my current design?
Yes, if it is working. Sometimes the right answer is rebuilding the same design properly; faster, mobile-usable, tracked; rather than changing how it looks. We will say so if that is the case.
What if my site is on Wix or Squarespace?
Then URLs will change, so the redirect work matters more. It is completely doable. We map the old structure to the new one before anything moves.
Do I need to redesign at all?
Sometimes not. If your site is reasonably fast, works on a phone, and has a page per service, the better spend might be tracking or search visibility. The assessment will tell you; and if that is the answer, we will say it.
Start a project
Send us your current site.
We'll tell you what's worth keeping, what's costing you, and whether a redesign is actually the right spend.