THE JOURNAL / Website planning
A website redesign SEO checklist for your launch plan.
Plan existing URLs, content, redirects and launch checks before a website redesign. A practical SEO checklist for business owners and project teams.
A website redesign changes more than the pages you can see. It may also change the addresses people have bookmarked, the content search engines understand and the paths that bring customers to a useful next step.
This website redesign SEO checklist is a planning aid. Assign an owner to each part, agree what will be checked and keep the evidence with the launch plan. No checklist can guarantee unchanged rankings.
1. Record the pages you rely on
Before replacing the site, export a URL inventory and identify pages associated with useful enquiries, purchases or search visits. Ask the team which pages customers share and which downloads appear in proposals or emails.
Where access is available, review Search Console, analytics and the content system together. A page with little recent traffic may still serve an important customer or contractual purpose. Record the reason for keeping, improving or retiring it.
The output is a decision list, not just a spreadsheet of addresses.
2. Map old URLs to the right destinations
Keep useful URLs where it makes sense. When an address changes, record the corresponding destination and the reason for the move. Have a person who understands the content approve that map.
Google recommends permanent server-side redirects for permanent URL changes. Redirects should lead to the relevant replacement, rather than sending unrelated old pages to the homepage. See Google’s site-move guidance and redirect documentation.
Ask the implementation owner to test the actual responses. A link that appears to work in one browser is not enough evidence that the intended redirect is configured.
3. Approve content before it disappears
Compare the proposed pages with the existing offer. Has a useful service explanation been shortened into an ambiguous slogan? Are contact details, eligibility conditions or product information missing?
Review titles, descriptions, headings and internal links as part of that content decision. A redesign should make important information easier to understand and find. It should not simply preserve every old sentence, nor discard useful material because it did not fit the first layout.
Assign content approval to someone with the authority and knowledge to make those choices.
4. Check the release settings
Staging and production have different jobs. Confirm that temporary access restrictions or indexing controls do not accidentally carry into the public release. Check the intended canonical URLs, sitemap and important navigation links.
Make this a recorded release task with a named owner. If the domain or platform is changing, include the people responsible for hosting and account access in the plan. They need to know when the change happens and how a problem will be reported.
5. Verify the visitor journeys
Test the destinations that matter to the business: enquiries, bookings, purchases and downloads. Include mobile use and unsuccessful submissions, not just a successful desktop visit.
Check that a request reaches its intended destination and that the visitor gets a truthful result. A button click, an opened email draft and a delivered enquiry are different outcomes.
Our website launch checklist covers the wider release checks around content, forms and handover.
6. Review the launch after it happens
Agree a monitoring period and a person responsible for reviewing search reports, broken destinations and enquiry delivery. Google notes that search visibility can fluctuate while changed URLs are processed. Record what changed so a later issue can be investigated in context.
A useful handover includes the approved URL map, access ownership, known limitations and a route for fixes.
For help connecting the design to the transition plan, explore Absurd’s website redesign services. Bring the current site and the pages you cannot afford to lose track of.
Written by The Absurd Company.
Independent thinking, from Kingston to wherever you are.
