Key takeaways
- Treat SEO as architecture, not a content afterthought
- Protect URLs and redirects like production data
- Ship metadata, sitemaps, and CWV with the redesign - not after
Launching a redesign without SEO ownership is how companies wake up to a traffic cliff. The new site looks better. Google sees broken redirects, thin templates, and missing canonicals.
“If SEO isn’t in the architecture review, it’s already late.”
Protect what already ranks
- Export top landing URLs and map each to a new destination
- 301s for every changed path - tested, not assumed
- Preserve meaningful URL structure where it still matches IA
- Keep parity on title intent for money pages
Build SEO into the stack
- 01
Templates own metadata
Every indexable template has title, description, canonical, and OG defaults.
- 02
Crawl path is deliberate
Sitemap, robots, and internal links agree on what should be indexed.
- 03
Structured data where it pays
Only claim rich results you can keep accurate - FAQs, products, articles.
301
Default for changed URLs that had equity
0
Acceptable accidental noindex on prod money pages
1
Owner for SEO in the redesign squad
Post-launch watch window
For two to four weeks, watch Search Console coverage, top landing pages, and 404s daily. Redesign SEO isn’t done at deploy - it’s done when the cliff doesn’t arrive.
