Field notes / Website decisions
How do you protect useful search traffic during a redesign?
By Boulevard Labs · Updated · Editorial approach
Record the current URLs, keep useful content, map changed addresses to relevant destinations, and check indexing settings before launch. After launch, monitor crawling, search performance, and enquiries. These steps reduce avoidable mistakes; they do not guarantee unchanged rankings.
Record the site you have
Inventory pages and available search or analytics data. Identify useful landing pages, external links, and content customers rely on before changing the structure.
Decide what to keep, improve, or remove
Give each retained page a clear purpose. Merge overlapping pages where appropriate, but do not remove useful detail just to make the navigation shorter.
Map addresses that change
Keep existing URLs when practical. For moved content, plan a permanent redirect to the closest relevant page. Redirecting every old page to the homepage can leave visitors without the answer they expected.
Check the launch settings
Check canonical URLs, robots rules, noindex settings, the sitemap, internal links, mobile layouts, and visible HTML content. Test enquiry delivery as well as search settings.
Monitor after launch
Use Search Console and available analytics to check indexing, errors, relevant search traffic, and enquiries. Investigate changes with the page and URL history in hand.
Explore Monitor after launch