The new website went live in January. It looks sharp on a phone. By April the phone rings less than it did last spring, and your web designer says the site is fine.
A few launch mistakes can cause that, and none is obvious at a glance. The checklist below follows the order the work happens, ready to hand your designer.
Can you do a website redesign without losing SEO?
Yes, if the new site keeps the pages that bring calls, redirects their old addresses and shows the same contact details.
When calls drop after a launch, look for three things first:
- Old addresses that lead nowhere. Each page sits at its own address (URL). If a page moves and the old address shows "page not found", the search result that brought calls hits a dead end.
- Service pages folded together. Roof repair, roof replacement and gutters become one Services page, and the page that matched a buyer's search is gone.
- A broken call button or form. The tap-to-call link dials an old number, or the quote form isn't connected to anyone's inbox.
Some movement is normal even when everything is right. Google says rankings may swing while it rereads (recrawls) a changed site. A medium-sized site can take a few weeks or more to show the new addresses.[1]
Timing helps. Google suggests moving a site during your recurring slow period, so fewer people run into problems.[1] If spring is your busy season, launch in the slow months, not the week before the first warm weekend.
Which pages should you list before the build starts?
The pages that bring visitors from Google today. In Search Console, Google's tool for site owners, open the Performance report and choose the Pages tab.[2] It shows the past three months by default, so widen the date range to cover your last busy season.[2]
Copy the top pages into a spreadsheet, one row each. Then add the pages in your sitemap, the file that lists your pages for Google.[1] If you haven't set up Search Console, start with our setup guide.
Next to each page, note what's on it: the job, the towns, the photos, the questions. The design can change, but keep those words and photos.
Move job photos and files such as a warranty PDF too. Google says images and downloads may already get search traffic.[1] When you rewrite a page, what goes on a service page lists the parts to keep.
How do you send old addresses to the new pages?
With a page map and permanent redirects. A redirect sends anyone who opens an old address, a person or Google, to the new one. Google recommends permanent server redirects (301 or 308).[1]
Permanent matters. After a permanent redirect Google shows the new page in results, and after a temporary one (302) it shows the old page.[3]
Send each old page to its closest match. Google says not to redirect many old addresses to one unrelated page, such as the home page. It can confuse people and might be treated as a soft 404, meaning Google handles it like a missing page.[1]
The other half of that rule: if several old pages now live on one new page, redirect them all to that page.[1] A page you drop with no replacement, like an expired coupon, should return a 404 error.[1] Point each redirect straight at its final page, not through a chain.[1]
A roofing company's page map in Omaha
- /roof-repair-omaha → /roof-repair: same job, new address.
- /leak-tips and /roof-leak-faq → /roof-repair: two short posts now answered on that page.
- /gallery → /our-work: the same job photos, moved.
- /contact-us.html → /contact.
- /fall-special-2024 → no match, so it returns a 404.
- Phone number, Google profile link and home page address: unchanged.
Illustrative example
Two things to refuse. Don't change the domain, the site software and the design all at once, because Google suggests one change at a time.[1] And don't accept temporary redirects for a permanent move: ask for 301s in writing.
What has to stay the same on the new site?
Your contact details, first. Google builds Business Profiles partly from crawled web content, including a business's official website.[4] A new site with an old phone number or different hours puts a second version of your details in front of Google.
Then check the website link on your Google profile. Google asks for the full web address, including http:// or https://, and says to make sure its crawler isn't blocked on the site.[5] If the domain or the linked page changes, update the link the day you launch.
Keep what buyers look at before they call. Many check the site after reading your reviews:
54% of consumers visit a business's website after reading positive reviews, up from 32% in 2019.
Source: BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey · (opens in a new tab)
- Service pages that bring calls, each still on its own page.
- Reviews you quote on the site, and the review page's old address redirected.
- Job photos with their captions, on the pages they were on.
What do you check on launch day?
Test settings first. Some site owners block crawling or add noindex tags while a site is built, Google notes.[1] A noindex tag tells Google to drop the page from its results entirely.[6]
- Remove the noindex tags and robots.txt blocks (rules that stop Google from reading pages) left from the build. Google lists forgetting them among the common mistakes.[1]
- Keep your Search Console access. If you proved ownership with an HTML file or a meta tag in the page code, Google says to carry it over.[1] Then submit the new sitemap in Search Console.[1]
- On your phone, open five old addresses of pages that moved. Each should land on the right new page, not the home page or an error.
- Tap the call button on the home page and on every service page. The dialer should open with the right number.
- Send a test quote request from your phone and find it, checking spam too. Google's hosting guide says to test forms before going live.[7]
If a page still won't show up a few weeks later, why a website doesn't show up on Google walks through the causes in order.
What should you check in the weeks after launch?
Old addresses that now show errors. For the first month, check the Page indexing report in Search Console weekly for pages marked Not found (404). Google says it often sees redirects to pages that don't exist, and this is where they show up.[1]
Google says a 404 isn't necessarily a problem for a page removed with no replacement. A page that moved should get a 301 redirect.[8]
Watch the count of indexed pages, too. If it drops without a matching rise in errors, Google says you might be blocking pages with robots.txt, noindex or a login.[8]
In Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, old addresses should show as redirects. That's expected, and our Bing redirect guide shows what to check.
Leave the redirects in place. Google says to keep them as long as possible, generally at least one year, and to consider keeping them for good.[1] That way old addresses in directories and on the truck keep working. Google adds that redirects are slow for visitors, so update the links you control, like your social profiles.[1]
What should you put in writing with your web designer?
A short list, agreed before work starts. Google itself says a great time to bring in search help is when you're considering a redesign, and the earlier the better.[9]
- A page map of every old address and its new home, sent to you before launch.
- Permanent (301) redirects set on the server and tested on launch day.
- Your business name, phone, address or service area and hours, exactly as on your Google profile.
- Every page that brings calls kept as its own page, with its words and photos.
- Test settings removed, the Search Console ownership file or tag carried over and the new sitemap submitted.
- The domain, hosting and Search Console in your name, with the designer added as a user.
- Redirects kept for at least a year, plus a check two weeks after launch.
On a site of a few dozen pages, you can run this yourself. Past that, or with a domain change, I'd pay someone to build and test the map.
Before the build, our website visibility audit shows how the current site does on Google, Maps and AI answers. To hand off the whole project, the Website Rebuild (from $5,000) includes the migration, at one fixed price agreed in writing first. The audit report and the Rebuild are both on our pricing page.
What can't this checklist control?
How fast Google catches up. The pace depends on how many pages you have and how fast your server is.[1]
A clean move protects what the old site earned. Keep building what brings new calls: better pages, more reviews and a stronger Google profile. Google's pages cited here were checked on October 27, 2026.