Website redesign: how to change your site without losing Google

By the ContractorUK Editorial Team · Fact-checked 7 November 2026

Signs a redesign is due

• It's a struggle on a phone: text you have to pinch, buttons too small to hit. Our guide to making a website mobile friendly shows what good looks like.
• You can't change it yourself, so it never gets changed.
• Chrome shows "Not secure" beside the address. That happens when a site doesn't use https, and Chrome's help page warns that someone may be able to view or change what visitors send.
• The services, prices and photos describe the business you ran three years ago.
• It runs on software nobody updates, or the person who built it has disappeared.
• It's a company site without the registered name, number and office in the footer.

When a refresh will do instead

If the site already works on a phone, loads quickly and you can edit it, you may not need a redesign at all. Rewriting the home page, replacing tired photos and updating the services costs less, takes days rather than weeks and carries none of the risks below. A redesign is for when the foundations are wrong, not the decoration.

Why redesigns lose rankings

Google ranks individual pages at individual addresses. Change /boiler-repairs.html to /services/boiler-repairs/ and, as far as Google can tell, the old page has vanished and an unknown one has appeared in its place with no history. Every link other sites made to the old address now ends at an error.

The cure is a permanent redirect from each old address to its replacement. Google's guide to site moves with URL changes sets out the essentials:

• Use server-side permanent redirects, such as 301 or 308. Google says permanent redirects don't cause a loss in PageRank.
• Send each old page to the most relevant new one. Redirecting everything to the home page confuses visitors and may be treated as a soft 404.
• Skip the chains. Point old addresses straight at the final page rather than through two or three hops.
• Keep redirects in place for as long as possible, and generally for at least a year.
• Change one thing at a time. If you're moving domain, switching platform and redesigning, Google suggests doing them one after another.
• Expect movement. For a medium-sized site, Google says it can take a few weeks or more before the new addresses take over from the old ones in results.

Map the old addresses before anyone builds anything

Begin with a list of every address on the current site that matters. Pull it from three places: the menus and pages of the site itself, the Performance report in Google Search Console if you use it (it shows which pages actually get clicks from search), and your analytics. Then give every old address a destination:

The last row is deliberate. For content you've dropped on purpose, Google's guidance is to return a 404 or 410 rather than redirect it somewhere unrelated. And wherever you can, keep the old address on the new site. The best redirect is the one you never need.

Launch day checklist

1. Redirects switched on, and every address on your list tested: one hop, right page.
2. Any "noindex" tags or robots.txt blocks used while the site was being built, removed.
3. Canonical tags on the new pages pointing at the new addresses.
4. Page titles and descriptions carried across or improved, not reset to a default.
5. Every form sent and received, and the phone number tapped from a mobile.
6. https on every page, with no warnings in the address bar.
7. Links inside the site pointing at the new addresses directly, not through redirects.
8. Links you control elsewhere updated: your Google Business Profile, directory listings, social profiles and email signature.

The weeks after launch

Watch Search Console's indexing reports for pages returning errors, and compare traffic with the same weeks last year or before the move. Small dips while Google recrawls are normal. A page that has dropped out completely often points to a missing or mistaken redirect, which is quick to fix once you spot it. Our guide to getting your website on Google covers the tools for keeping an eye on it.

Moving to ContractorUK from an old site

If one of our sites is replacing your old one, connect the domain you already own so your address doesn't change, and keep page addresses close to the old ones where you can. Before you switch over, bring your list of old addresses and ask us how they'll be redirected, so nothing important falls through the gap. Page titles, descriptions and canonical tags are set up on every page by our engineers from the start.

For a big site with hundreds of ranking pages, or a move that changes the domain as well, pay an SEO specialist to run the migration; at that size the fee is cheaper than the risk. For a typical small business site, a careful redirect list and the checklist above will see you through. You can see the new version free for 7 days before deciding anything, and then it's £49 a month including VAT.