Website redesign without losing SEO: a 3-phase checklist

Yes, you can change your website without losing the visits you get from Google. The condition: every URL that gets visits today must still exist, or redirect with a 301 to its equivalent with the same content. Even when you do it right, Google warns that rankings may fluctuate for several weeks while it crawls the change.

Below you will find what Google’s and Bing’s official documentation says, a 3-phase checklist and a redirect map template. Both are designed so you can demand them from whoever builds your website, and here we explain how to choose an agency.

Google ranks URLs, not websites

To Google, your website is a set of URLs, and each one has its own history of crawling, links and rankings. Its site move guide makes it clear: the move happens URL by URL. Googlebot has to visit every old and new address at least once.

That is why the work involved in a redesign depends on how much changes:

If no URL changes, the technical side is similar to Google’s guide to changing hosting. As soon as a single URL changes, the site move guide applies.

Watch out for small changes, because they are URL changes too. Going from www to non-www, from http to https or from /servicios.html to /servicios changes the address. And Google is case-sensitive: /Servicios and /servicios are different URLs.

Google gives 2 warnings worth reading before you approve the project:

• Make changes one at a time. Its example is precisely a redesign: if you are going to change domain, content management system and design, it recommends doing so separately.
• Redesigning content and URLs at the same time has a cost. The Change of Address tool help page explains it: keeping the structure makes it easier for signals to pass to the new site. If you take the opportunity to redesign the content and change the URLs, you may see a drop in traffic. Google has to reassess each page.

In plain terms: the less that changes at once, the less Google has to relearn. If you change platform and design, do not also change domain in the same launch. And if you have not chosen a platform yet, first compare Framer, WordPress or custom code or take the technology test.

How long Google takes to process the change

There is no fixed time frame. Google says that on small or medium-sized sites most pages can take a few weeks to move, and that large sites take longer. The speed depends on the number of URLs and how fast your server is.

During that time rankings may fluctuate, and Google considers this normal. What is not normal is a drop that does not recover. In that case, its guide to debugging traffic drops points to the typical migration mistakes:

• noindex or robots.txt blocks that were only needed during development.
• Incorrect redirects, especially to URLs that do not exist on the new site.
• Sitemaps that have not been updated.
• A server without enough capacity: after a migration, Google crawls the new site more than usual.

Be wary of anyone who guarantees that nothing will move. Google itself says it may.

301 redirects, explained without jargon

A 301 redirect tells the browser and Google that a page has moved for good. Anyone who goes to the old address lands on the new one, and Google starts showing the new one in its results.

What the official documentation says, in 5 rules:

1. Permanent and server-side. Google recommends 301 or 308. A 302 is temporary: Google treats it as a weak signal and may keep showing the old URL. JavaScript redirects are a last resort.
2. No need to fear losing strength. Google states that 301s and other permanent redirects do not cause a loss of PageRank.
3. Each URL to its equivalent. Redirecting many URLs to the home page may be treated as a soft 404 error. If you merge several pages into one, you can redirect them all to that one.
4. Straight to the final destination. Googlebot follows up to 10 hops, but Google recommends redirecting directly to the final URL, without chains.
5. For a long time. At least 1 year, according to Google, and for your visitors the ideal is forever. During that period Google can transfer the links that other websites pointed at the old URLs to the new ones.

If a page disappears and has no replacement, the right thing is for it to return a 404 or a 410. Google removes URLs that return 4xx errors from its index, and that is what you want for a page that no longer exists.

A detail that gets forgotten when leaving Wix, Framer or WordPress: redirects configured on the old platform stop working when your domain points to the new website. They have to be exported and added to the new one, already pointing to the final destination.

Bing asks for the same. Its webmaster guidelines ask for 301s for permanent changes, 302s only for changes of less than 2 days, and redirects instead of canonical tags. Its current guide does not include a change of address tool like Google’s. To report new, changed or deleted URLs quickly, it recommends IndexNow.

Step zero: export the URLs you cannot afford to lose

Before designing anything, get from Search Console the list of pages that Google already shows in its results. It is the basis of the redirect map and what you will check after the change.

1. Go into Search Console and open the Performance report, under Performance > Search results.
2. In the date filter, choose the last 16 months, the maximum period of data that Search Console keeps. That way seasonal pages are included too, such as those for the income tax return season (campaña de la renta).
3. Turn on the Total clicks and Total impressions cards and open the Pages tab.
4. Click Export and choose Google Sheets, Excel or CSV.

The export is limited to 1,000 rows. Google explains that on small sites this may cover most or all of the data.

If you hit the limit, filter by parts of the URL (for example, those containing /blog/) and export each part. Another option is for your provider to use the API, which reaches 50,000 rows per day.

Complete the list with 3 more sources:

• Pages with links from other websites. In the Links report, under Top linked pages. It can be exported too.
• Your current sitemap. Google says your most important URLs are usually there.
• PDFs and images. Google asks for them to be included in the plan because they can get visits from Search or from links in their own right.

Keep that export exactly as it is. It is your “before” snapshot, and you will use it for comparison in the following weeks.

Template: redirect map

Let’s say a tax and accounting firm moves from WordPress to a new website and keeps its domain. Its map, sorted by impressions, would look like this:

The template is ready to fill in as a CSV, for Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets.

How to fill in each column:

• Old URL: each row of your export, plus PDFs and pages with external links.
• Impressions: used to prioritise. The first rows are checked before anything else.
• New URL: the closest equivalent page. Never the home page by default.
• Expected response: 301 if the page moves, 200 if it stays the same, 404 or 410 if it disappears with no replacement.
• Status: Pending, Configured (the provider has set it up) or Checked (someone has gone to the old URL and arrived at the new one in a single hop).

To check a few URLs, Search Console’s URL Inspection tool is enough. For many, Google suggests tools that crawl the whole site, and gives Screaming Frog as an example. Ask your provider for the report with the response code for each row.

Migration checklist in 3 phases

Copy it into the quote or the approval email. It must be possible to tick off each point as done and checked.

Phase 1. Before the change

• Search Console verified as a domain property, by DNS. It covers all variants of your domain and does not depend on a file or a tag that could be lost when changing platform.
• Website also registered in Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Export of Performance (16 months), Top linked pages and the list of PDFs and images, saved.
• Existing redirects on the current platform exported.
• Complete redirect map, reviewed by you and with final destinations.
• The pages that rank keep their content, title and headings, unless there is a reason explained in writing.
• New website in a test environment protected by a password or with noindex. Google points out that robots.txt does not prevent a page from appearing in its results.
• List of pages from which the noindex will be removed and how the robots.txt will look on the day of the change.
• Each new page with a canonical tag pointing to itself, with the full URL on the final domain.
• Menu, footer and internal links already pointing to the new URLs, not the old ones.
• Structured data from the old website (business, articles) moved across and validated with the Rich Results Test. FAQs have not produced a rich result since 7 May 2026, but their markup does no harm. If a WordPress plugin generated it, the new website has to generate it some other way.
• If you have a Valencian or English version, hreflang annotations with the new URLs.
• The main content is in the page’s HTML. Bing asks you not to hide important content behind JavaScript that runs in the browser.
• Analytics installed on the new website and the server ready for more crawling than usual.
• New sitemap ready and old sitemap saved.
• Launch date at a time of low traffic, as Google recommends.

Phase 2. The day of the change

• Redirects live at the same moment the new website goes live.
• Development noindex and robots.txt blocks removed.
• Every URL on the map checked: a single hop and a destination that responds 200.
• A sample of pages reviewed with Search Console’s URL Inspection.
• Canonicals with final URLs, none from the test site.
• New sitemap submitted in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. In Search Console you can also submit the old one to watch its indexed URLs go down; Google warns that it will show redirect warnings and that they can be ignored.
• Annotation on the Performance chart with the launch date. You add it by right-clicking on the day.
• If you change domain: a change of address request for each variant of the old domain, with and without “www”.
• If the website uses IndexNow, Bing notified of the new, redirected and deleted URLs.
• Links you control updated: your Google Business Profile (website, bookings or appointments), social media, email signatures and ad campaigns.
• A test contact form submitted from the live website.

Phase 3. The following 8 weeks

Google talks about a few weeks for small and medium-sized sites. The 8 weeks are the monitoring margin we propose, not an official time frame.

• Week 1, every day: the Page indexing report, reasons “Not found (404)”, “Soft 404” and “Redirect error”.
• Week 1: every 404 on a URL with impressions or links is fixed with a 301, and you click Validate fix. Google says validation usually takes about 2 weeks.
• Every week: Performance compared with the previous period, with weekly granularity so that the day of the week has no influence. Sort by the Difference column to see which pages are dropping.
• Every week: Sitemaps report. Indexed URLs from the old sitemap should go down and those from the new one should go up.
• Weeks 2 to 4: ask the websites that link to you most to update the link, starting with those that send the most visits.
• Weeks 4 and 8: rich result reports with no new errors. If your website has more than 1,000 pages, also check the crawl stats; below that figure Google says it is not necessary.
• Week 8: comparison with the “before” snapshot, page by page, for the URLs with the most impressions. Those still clearly below are reviewed one by one: whether they respond, whether they have the same content and whether they receive internal links.
• Afterwards: redirects live for at least 1 year. If you changed domain, keep paying for the old one for at least 1 year, as Google recommends.

How to keep an eye on 404 errors without being technical

Search Console is the main source. Under Indexing > Pages, the reason “Not found (404)” lists the URLs that Google has requested and that do not exist. It only shows those from the last month, so check it every week.

Not every 404 is a problem. Google recommends fixing those that come from links on your own website or from your sitemap, and redirecting if the page has moved. A 404 for a page you deleted on purpose and with no replacement is correct.

To see the 404s your visitors run into, give the error page a recognisable title, such as “Page not found”. In Google Analytics 4, the Pages and screens report shows the title and path of every page viewed. Filter by that title and you will see which addresses are failing.

If your provider has access to the server logs, ask them every week for the list of URLs that return 404. Google recommends reviewing them during the move.

And in Google’s and Bing’s AI answers

A URL that Google stops indexing cannot appear as a link in its AI answers either. To appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet. A 404 or a forgotten noindex leaves it out.

Bing says so in its guidelines: correct redirects maintain visibility and continuity in Copilot and in the answers that rely on its search engine. And notifying with IndexNow reduces outdated URLs in those answers.

Our view: the map is signed off before the design

This is the procedure we follow at NOR studio. We applied it when moving Zoundroom from Framer to code in July 2026 and in the migration of Maestrat Global from an old WordPress site. It is also the one we follow with our own website. The criterion for going live is simple: no URL with impressions can return a 404.

The best migration is the one that changes the fewest URLs. If an address ranks and makes sense, it stays even if it is not perfect. And the redirect map is reviewed and signed off before the design, not the day before launch.

What to do on Monday

1. Go into Search Console and export the pages with impressions from the last 16 months. If you do not have access, ask whoever manages it to add you as an owner: the property belongs to your domain.
2. Transfer that list to the template above and ask your provider to fill in the new URL column before you approve the design.
3. Add the checklist to the quote and set aside the 8 weeks of monitoring.
4. Use the redesign to comply with what is already mandatory and what is coming: check whether your website has to be accessible by law and ask for the new one to be built to level AA from the start.

If you would like a second opinion on which URLs you cannot afford to lose, request your audit. If you are thinking of rebuilding your website, see how we approach web design. And if you would rather tell us directly, let’s talk about your case.