I built a website for my cousin's landscaping business a few years ago. Back then, it was a single page with poor local SEO and lackluster content, but it managed to attract a few hundred clicks a month mostly due to the URL, which included the city name. I've since expanded my SEO knowledge and built successful sites for several clients. Recently, I completely revamped my cousin's site by adding dedicated service pages optimized for keywords and local traffic, updating tags and descriptions. The new site is almost entirely different except for the branding, URL, and a few images. Since this is my first experience redesigning an existing site rather than starting from scratch, I'm curious about how these changes might affect traffic. Will there be a dip in traffic during the transition, or might it remain stable until the new pages are indexed by Google?
4 Answers
Be careful—if you don't plan things right, a redesign can negatively impact your rankings. But if done correctly, it’s a great chance to address years of SEO debt. Watch out for URL structure changes, broken redirects, or accidentally no-indexing important pages during migration. A redesign can also improve site speed, internal linking, and organization. Just remember, SEO should be integrated into the redesign from the get-go, not tacked on afterward. Make sure to map old URLs to their new ones and keep your top content intact. Most issues arise from treating SEO as an afterthought.
When you're making big changes like new URLs and fresh content, Google will take some time to crawl the site again and reassess everything. Your previous single-page format might actually help you since you’re not completely starting from scratch. Keeping the same domain and main URL reduces the risk of losing traffic, so it seems like you'll be in a good spot after the redesign.
Why was there a moderator blocking my post? Seems like a rough experience with bots on platforms!
It’s tough to predict exactly what will happen because it really depends on how users were discovering the site before. Your changes could either enhance visibility or disrupt it. Given that you’ve improved the site significantly, you’re likely in a better position now. But remember, if people used to find the site easily due to its uniqueness, the old setup might have worked just fine. Basically, it’s a wait-and-see game!
I didn't have much of a clue back when I started either! Just took on the task because my cousin asked. I ran a validation check in Google Search Console and it looks like all the pages are indexable, so I think it should be alright.