Website Redesign: When It Is Time and How to Keep Your Search Rankings

A website built five years ago may have looked great at the time. Since then, phones, search engine requirements and probably the business itself have changed. Sooner or later the owner decides it is time for a website redesign. The riskiest part of that project is the migration: handled carelessly, it costs the site its rankings in Google and Yandex, and after launch fewer leads come in than before. Below we cover how to tell a redesign is needed, how to prepare, what to do on launch day and what to watch afterwards.

Signs your website needs a redesign

• The site is awkward to use on a phone. In Uzbekistan more than half of internet users go online from smartphones, and if they have to pinch to zoom or keep missing buttons, they leave for a competitor.
• Pages load slowly. A slow site loses visitors and loses out in search results. We explain how to measure speed below.
• The company has changed its logo or brand identity, but the website has not.
• New services, languages or business lines have appeared and do not fit the old structure.
• Content is hard to update: every change needs a developer, or the content management system is outdated and no longer gets security updates.
• Traffic is steady but leads are falling. That usually happens when the site no longer convinces visitors.

If two or three of these apply, a redesign will most likely pay off.

How to check speed and usability in numbers

Google rates page experience with three Core Web Vitals metrics. You can check them for free in PageSpeed Insights and in the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console.

• LCP measures how many seconds it takes for the main element of the page to appear. Good: up to 2.5 seconds.
• INP measures how quickly the page responds to taps and clicks. Good: up to 200 milliseconds.
• CLS measures how much the layout jumps around while loading. Good: up to 0.1.

A page counts as good when at least 75% of visits meet these thresholds. If your site shows red numbers, especially on mobile, the redesign gets a clear goal you can check after launch.

When you do not need a redesign

Sometimes the problem lies elsewhere. If the site looks good and loads fast but brings few leads, check the copy, the offer, the prices and the advertising first. If one form or one section is inconvenient, you can rework just that part. A full redesign costs more and carries more risk, so do not start with it unless there is a clear reason.

Redesign vs migration: the difference for SEO

If only the look changes and page addresses, copy and meta tags stay the same, search engines barely notice. The risk grows when the page addresses (URLs), the content management system, the section structure or the domain change along with the design. For a search engine such a project counts as a migration: it has to recrawl the pages and connect the new addresses to the old ones.

Google's documentation advises changing one thing at a time where possible. For example, move the site to the new system with the old URLs first, and change the structure in a later stage. If rankings drop, it is then easier to see why. Google recommends moving small and medium sites all at once, while large sites can be moved section by section.

Preparation: what to collect before work starts

Most post-launch problems happen because nobody recorded how the site performed before. Before you start, collect:

• the list of pages that get impressions and clicks, from Google Search Console and Yandex Webmaster;
• the queries people use to find you, with current positions;
• the full list of site URLs (export it with a crawler such as Screaming Frog, or take it from the sitemap);
• the title, description and H1 of every important page;
• backlinks to the site, which have their own reports in Webmaster and Search Console;
• goals and events in Yandex Metrica and Google Analytics, meaning which forms and buttons count as leads.

You will need this data twice: when building the redirect table and when comparing results after launch.

How to keep your rankings: a step-by-step plan

1. Keep your URLs or build a redirect table

It is best to keep the addresses of important pages unchanged. If that is not possible, build a table with the old address in one column and the new address it should lead to in the other. Permanent server-side redirects with a 301 code (308 also works) are set up from this table.

• Each old address leads to the closest matching new page.
• Each redirect goes straight to the final address, without chains like "old → intermediate → new". Google advises avoiding chains, or at least keeping them under three hops.
• Do not send all old pages to the home page. Google may treat such redirects as soft 404 errors, and those pages lose their rankings.
• If a page was removed completely and the site's topic stays the same, Yandex suggests redirecting it to a closely related section. When there is no suitable page, returning a 404 is the honest option.
• Keep redirects for at least a year. Google calls that the minimum, and where possible it is better never to remove them.

2. Carry over meta tags and copy

Pages that bring traffic need to move together with their title, description, H1 and main text. In a redesign the copy is often cut down for a "cleaner" look, and the page stops answering the queries it used to rank for. You can rewrite and improve the copy, but the key topics and phrases should stay. While you are at it, check that images have alt text.

3. Make sure search engines can see the content

Modern sites often build the page in the browser with JavaScript. Yandex's documentation warns that such content may not get indexed, so it is better to serve the main text, headings and links directly in the HTML (server-side rendering). The check is simple: open the page source with Ctrl+U and search it for the article or service text. If the text is not there, search engines most likely cannot see it either.

4. Update internal links, canonical and hreflang

Menus, in-text links and buttons should point straight to the new addresses, not through redirects. Every new page needs a canonical tag pointing to itself. If the site has Russian, Uzbek and English versions, the hreflang attributes also move to the new addresses, otherwise search engines may show people the wrong language version.

5. Build and test on a staging copy

The new version is built on a test address closed to indexing with a password or a robots rule. There you check the mobile version, Core Web Vitals speed, lead forms, internal links and every redirect in the table. For a long list of redirects a crawler is handy: it goes through the old addresses and shows where each one leads.

6. Move your analytics

Yandex Metrica and Google Analytics tags, form submission goals, ad pixels and verification codes for Search Console and Webmaster often get lost when the template changes. Without them you will not know how the redesign affected leads.

7. Launch correctly

Launch during a period of lower than usual traffic, and not right before holidays when the team is unavailable. Right after publishing:

• check robots.txt and the robots meta tag so the indexing block from the staging copy does not end up on the live site;
• make sure important pages return a 200 code and serve content;
• update sitemap.xml and submit it to Search Console and Yandex Webmaster;
• request recrawling of key pages: Webmaster has a "Reindex pages" tool, Search Console has "URL Inspection";
• open a dozen old addresses by hand and see where they lead.

If the domain changed, use the Change of Address tool in Search Console and report the site move in Webmaster.

8. Monitor the site after launch

According to Google, for small and medium sites most pages move in the index within a few weeks, and it takes longer for large sites. Yandex gives up to two weeks for new pages to appear and old ones to drop out. During this time, watch 404 errors, indexing status, rankings for your main queries and the number of leads. Small fluctuations after a migration are normal. If one page drops sharply, the cause is usually a missed redirect or lost copy, and it is quick to fix. Ask the owners of sites that link to you to update their links to the new addresses, starting with the ones that bring the most visitors.

Common redesign mistakes

• All old addresses redirect to the home page.
• Page copy has been cut to a couple of lines for the sake of a minimalist design.
• The indexing block from the staging copy is still on the live site.
• The Uzbek or English version has been forgotten and opens with an error.
• URLs were changed for no reason other than that the new ones look "nicer".
• Heavy images and videos were added and the site became slower than before.
• Redirects were removed after a couple of months because they seemed no longer needed.
• Analytics tags were not moved, so there is nothing to compare before and after.
• The domain, CMS and structure were changed at the same time, so when rankings drop nobody can tell why.

What comes first: the brand or the website

If you want to refresh your logo or brand identity along with the website, start with those. The website is built on the brandbook, and doing it the other way round means redoing the site twice. More on this in "Branding in Tashkent: Logo, Identity & Brandbook".

The timeline and cost of a redesign are usually similar to building a new site of the same size. We look at what affects them in "Website Development Cost: What Drives the Price". If your site is small, see also our article on business card websites.

Frequently asked questions

Will my rankings drop after a redesign?

If URLs are kept or redirected and the copy and meta tags are carried over, there is usually no major drop. Small fluctuations in the first weeks are normal. A sharp drop is almost always caused by a mistake during the migration, which can be found and fixed.

How long should I keep 301 redirects?

Google recommends at least a year, and longer where possible. People keep arriving at old addresses from bookmarks, social media and other sites for a long time, and without a redirect they land on an error page.

Can I change the domain during a redesign?

You can, but it is the riskiest option. You will need redirects from every page on the old domain to the new ones, a change-of-address notice in Search Console and Yandex Webmaster, and you should keep renewing the old domain for at least another year. Without a strong reason, keep the domain.

Do I need to change the content management system?

Only if the current one is getting in the way: it is outdated, no longer updated, awkward for editing content or slowing the site down. Changing the system almost always changes page addresses, so a redirect table is essential in that case.

How long until search engines notice the new site?

The first changes in the index usually show up within a few days. Yandex processes new and old addresses within up to two weeks, and Google moves most pages of a small site within a few weeks. An updated sitemap.xml and recrawl requests for key pages help speed things up.

Conclusion

A redesign pays off when the site has specific problems: it is awkward on phones, slow, visually dated or cannot fit new services. To avoid losing search customers along with the old design, plan the migration as carefully as the design itself: collect the data in advance, build a redirect table, test everything on a staging copy and watch the site for several weeks after launch. Take a look at our work and our website development page, and if you want to discuss your project, get in touch. We will review your current site and suggest a redesign plan that keeps your rankings.