A redesign should improve the website homeowners use while preserving the useful routes people already follow. Before changing a page, record its URL, purpose, incoming traffic where available, and the destination that will replace it. Keep an address when the page still serves the same job.
The risky moment is the handoff between the old and new sites. A polished homepage will not help a homeowner who lands on a broken service link from an old email or Google result. Treat the page map, contact flow and launch checks as deliverables alongside the design.
Make the inventory before the design is approved
Collect the existing sitemap, a crawl of public pages, important campaign landing pages, and Search Console landing-page data. Ask the office which links appear in proposals and follow-up messages. A page can matter to customers even when it receives little search traffic.
Use a simple worksheet with columns for old URL, page purpose, keep or replace, new URL, redirect status and owner. Review any page marked remove with the business. An old article may need a clearer answer rather than deletion, while an obsolete offer needs a deliberate replacement or retirement.
- Separate public pages from private reports and booking tools.
- Include project pages, image links and downloadable documents where they are used.
- Keep a copy of the old site and page map for comparison.
Give each changed URL a useful destination
Google recommends mapping old URLs to their appropriate new locations when addresses change. Avoid sending every retired service and article to the homepage. A window-installation article belongs with the relevant replacement information, not an unrelated promotion.
Test the final destination, not only whether a redirect exists. Check that it loads, describes the right service, uses the intended canonical URL and provides a working next step. Review old campaign links separately so a temporary offer does not lead to a general contact form without context.
References: Google Search Central: site moves and URL changes ↗
What the RK Preferred project demonstrates
The RK Preferred rebuild included an 86-page website and a mapping for 73 old URLs. Its case study shows the website transformation and the move from the old design to the finished desktop and mobile experiences. Those are implementation facts, not a claim about lead growth.
Use that example to evaluate the scope of a proposal. Ask where the old-page inventory, content decisions and redirect checks will be documented. Page count alone does not explain whether a rebuild is complete; the relationship between the old pages and their replacements does.
Test the customer journey at launch
Open the new site from a phone and follow an old service URL, an old article URL and a saved estimate link. Try the phone link and form. Confirm that the office receives the right information and that the calendar, if used, shows the correct appointment type.
After launch, check indexing and landing-page reports over time, investigate unexpected errors, and annotate the release date. Search visibility can fluctuate during a move, so a single day is not a useful verdict. Keep the page map available until the old routes and tracking have been checked.
Common questions
Do all URLs need to change during a redesign?
- No. Keep useful existing URLs when the page still answers the same question. Map addresses that must change to their most relevant replacements.
Can a redesign guarantee that search traffic will stay the same?
- No. The practical protections are a documented page map, relevant redirects, accessible content and post-launch checks. Search outcomes depend on more than the design release.