Redesigning your website? Learn how to implement technical SEO during a website redesign to retain rankings, improve site speed, and boost crawlability.
Last Updated: August 18, 2025
📘 Download Free Ebook: Grow Your Business with Digital MarketingWebsite redesigns are a fantastic opportunity to enhance your brand’s visual identity and user experience. However, without proper technical SEO Services considerations, they can become a disaster for your search engine rankings. Whether you're replatforming, restructuring URLs, or just updating your site layout, ignoring technical SEO can lead to a drop in traffic, lost backlinks, and indexing issues.
This guide explores how to implement technical SEO during a website redesign to ensure your SEO foundation remains intact and even improves during the process.
Technical SEO refers to website and server optimizations that help search engines crawl and index your site more effectively. During a redesign, many structural elements like URLs, internal links, and meta data often change. If these changes are not managed correctly, they can confuse search engines and negatively impact your rankings.
Common issues include:
By integrating technical SEO into your redesign plan, you protect your existing rankings and set the foundation for better performance.
Start by auditing your current website. Use tools like:
Look for crawl errors, broken links, page speed issues, mobile usability, and duplicate content. Export this data for reference during and after the redesign.
Use a crawler like Screaming Frog to download a complete list of URLs, meta data, header tags, and internal linking structure. Also, take a full backup of your website, including database and assets.
Track your top-performing pages, organic traffic, keyword rankings, and backlinks. These benchmarks help measure post-launch SEO impact.
Try to keep your existing URLs. If changes are needed, use 301 redirects and avoid redirect chains. Track changes with a URL mapping spreadsheet.
Generate an XML sitemap that includes only canonical URLs and submit it to Google Search Console. Also, create an HTML sitemap for user navigation.
Use descriptive anchor text, avoid orphan pages, and maintain a logical link structure from the homepage to deeper content.
Use canonical tags for pages with duplicate content or variations to consolidate ranking signals and avoid confusion for search engines.
Ensure the site is responsive and passes Google's Mobile-Friendly Test. Address issues like small tap targets and layout shifting.
Focus on optimizing Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) using PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse reports.
Add schema markup such as product, article, FAQ, or local business schemas. Use Google’s Rich Results Test to verify proper implementation.
Ensure semantic HTML structure, limit JavaScript for critical content, and avoid blocking important assets in robots.txt.
Launch the redesigned site in a staging environment, block it from indexing, and perform all SEO and functionality checks before going live.
Ensure all 301 redirects are active and monitor the site for crawl errors, traffic changes, and submit your new sitemap to Google Search Console.
Watch for ranking fluctuations, broken links, and crawl issues using tools like Ahrefs, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics.
A website redesign is more than just a fresh coat of paint—it’s a crucial opportunity to improve both user experience and SEO performance. However, mishandling technical SEO during this process can lead to disastrous consequences like traffic drops and lost visibility.
By following a structured, SEO-first redesign approach—including audits, URL mapping, redirects, mobile optimization, and Core Web Vitals—you ensure your website is technically sound and future-proof.
Whether you're working with Website Developers or managing the project yourself, integrating technical SEO from the start can turn your redesign into a powerful growth lever rather than an SEO setback.
If you need help auditing your site or planning an SEO-friendly redesign for your Indian business, consider consulting with a technical SEO specialist familiar with the local market dynamics.
