What to Do When Your Rank Drops After a Website Redesign or Migration 

Website redesigns or migrations can be exciting milestones, offering new opportunities for improving user experience, design, and overall functionality. However, they often come with a risk: a drop in search engine rankings. This can be alarming, especially if organic traffic is a key source of revenue or conversions for your business. The good news is, that ranking drops post-redesign or migration are common, and they are often reversible with the right steps. In this article, we’ll walk through the common causes of ranking drops and provide actionable strategies to address them. 

Why Do Rankings Drop After a Redesign or Migration? 

A website redesign or migration can affect multiple facets of your site, from the architecture to the URL structure, which in turn can lead to an SEO ranking drop. 

Here are the most common reasons for ranking drops: 

• Broken URLs and Missing Redirects: Changing URLs without properly redirecting the old ones leads to broken links and errors. 

• Technical Issues: Elements like sitemaps, robots.txt, and meta tags might be misconfigured or lost during the process. 

• Content Changes: New layouts or content structures may unintentionally impact keyword density, on-page SEO elements, and user engagement. 

• Decreased Site Speed: New design elements such as heavy images, complex code, or JavaScript frameworks can slow down the site. 

• Loss of Backlinks: Redirecting to incorrect URLs or eliminating high-ranking pages can lead to a loss of valuable backlinks. 

Understanding why rankings drop is the first step. Let’s now explore actionable ways to remedy the situation. 

Step 1: Evaluate and Fix Technical SEO Issues 

Technical SEO issues often emerge during redesigns or migrations, so addressing them should be your priority. 

Common Issues to Check: 

• Crawlability and Indexability: Use tools like Google Search Console and Screaming Frog to check whether your site is crawlable and indexable. Ensure that the robots.txt file isn’t blocking search engines from crawling important pages. 

• Broken Links: Perform a site crawl to find 404 errors and other broken links. These errors not only harm user experience but also affect how search engines view your site. 

• Canonical Tags: Ensure that canonical tags are correctly implemented to avoid duplicate content issues. 

• XML Sitemap: Make sure your XML sitemap is up-to-date and submitted to Google Search Console. 

Actionable Tip: Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs offer comprehensive audits to help you identify and fix technical SEO issues. 

Step 2: Check and Optimize Site Speed

After a redesign or migration, the site’s speed might suffer due to larger images, unoptimized code, or new plugins. Google’s Core Web Vitals assess how fast your site loads, its interactivity, and visual stability, all of which affect rankings. 

Steps to Improve Speed: 

• Image Optimization: Compress images and use next-gen formats like WebP. 

• Reduce Code Bloat: Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. Ensure that only essential scripts are running. 

• Implement Caching: Browser caching, along with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), can greatly improve load times. 

Tools: Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix, or Pingdom to identify bottlenecks and monitor site speed improvements. 

Step 3: Review URL Structure and Redirects

A significant part of your SEO strategy involves managing your URL structure. When URLs change, it’s crucial to set up proper redirects to avoid losing SEO value. 

Key Actions:

• 301 Redirects: Use 301 redirects to point old URLs to the new ones. This helps pass most of the SEO value (link juice) to the new pages. 

• Check Redirect Chains: Ensure that there are no redirect chains (multiple redirects) as these can slow down page loading and confuse search engines. 

• Fix Redirect Loops: Avoid redirect loops where two URLs keep redirecting to each other without resolving. 

Best Practice: Maintain a detailed record of old and new URLs to track the success of your redirects. 

Step 4: Reassess Your On-Page SEO 

Website redesigns sometimes alter the structure or remove important on-page SEO elements like titles, meta descriptions, headers, and internal links. 

Key Aspects to Review: 

• Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Ensure that each page has unique and optimized title tags and meta descriptions. These should include your target keywords. 

• Headers (H1, H2, etc.): Make sure headers are well-organized and contain relevant keywords. 

• Internal Linking: Verify that internal links are correctly set up and optimized for SEO. Well-placed internal links help distribute page authority across the site. 

Pro Tip: Use a tool like Moz or Ahrefs to check the optimization level of your on-page SEO after the redesign. 

Step 5: Re-index and Monitor Changes

After making fixes to technical issues, redirects, and on-page SEO, the next step is to inform search engines about the changes. 

• Submit Sitemaps: Resubmit your XML sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. 

• Request Re-indexing: Use Google Search Console’s URL inspection tool to manually request re-indexing of critical pages. 

• Monitor Search Console Data: Regularly monitor Google Search Console for crawl errors, coverage issues, and indexing updates. 

Step 6: Review Backlinks and Referral Traffic

Backlinks are a key factor in SEO, and losing backlinks during a redesign or migration can cause ranking drops. If your URLs have changed, ensure that high-quality backlinks are pointing to the correct pages. 

Steps to Address Backlinks: 

• Monitor Lost Backlinks: Use tools like Ahrefs or Moz to identify any lost backlinks after the redesign. 

• Reach Out for Updates: For high-value backlinks pointing to old URLs, reach out to site owners and request an update to the new URL. 

• Disavow Toxic Links: While backlinks are important, make sure to disavow any toxic or spammy links that might have surfaced post-migration. 

Step 7: Strengthen Your Content Strategy

Sometimes, content is either removed or restructured during a redesign, which can lead to keyword losses. Now is the time to reassess your content. 

Tips for Content Optimization: 

• Refresh Key Pages: Update and optimize old content with new keywords, improved structure, and relevant multimedia like images or videos. 

• Content Gaps: Identify content gaps or opportunities using keyword research tools to create new pages targeting valuable search terms. 

• Enhance User Engagement: Incorporate interactive elements like FAQs, quizzes, or testimonials that improve user engagement metrics. 

Step 8: Communicate Changes to Search Engines

If your redesign or migration includes major changes to the domain, structure, or technology stack, make sure you’re communicating effectively with search engines. 

Steps:

• Change of Address Tool: If you’re migrating to a new domain, use Google Search Console’s Change of Address tool to inform Google about the new domain. 

• Update External Platforms: Update your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) information on important directories, local listings, and review sites like Google My Business and Yelp. 

Step 9: Monitor Analytics and Set Benchmarks

Once you’ve made the necessary changes, it’s important to track your site’s performance and set benchmarks for recovery. 

Monitoring Tools: 

• Google Analytics: Track organic traffic, bounce rate, and conversions to measure how well the site is recovering. 

• Rank Tracking: Use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to track your keyword rankings over time. 

Setting benchmarks will allow you to see progress and identify any areas where further improvement is needed. 

Conclusion

Ranking drops after a website redesign or migration can be frustrating, but they are often temporary and reversible with the right strategies. By carefully addressing technical SEO issues, site speed, URL structures, content, and backlinks, you can restore your rankings and in many cases, improve them. 

Patience is key with website redesign or migration. SEO changes take time to reflect in search results, so monitor your progress, stay proactive, and adjust as necessary. By following these steps, you’ll not only recover your lost rankings but also set your website up for long-term SEO success.