Website Relaunch Without Losing Rankings: The SEO Migration Checklist

In a relaunch, rankings are almost never lost because of the new design, but because of three avoidable mistakes: old URLs without a matching redirect, deleted or heavily shortened content that ranked before, and technical blocks that are overlooked at go-live. If you have these three under control, you can rebuild a website completely without losing visibility. This article shows the checklist we use to plan relaunches at ad.boutique in Vienna and Zurich, including our own.

Why rankings are lost in a relaunch

Google does not evaluate a website as a whole but every URL individually. A URL is the exact address of a page, for example /blog/article-name. If the address changes, Google has to understand that the new page replaces the old one. That is what redirects are for.

The most common causes of losses:

Phase 1: inventory before the relaunch

Before a single pixel is designed, it must be clear what the old website achieves today.

1. Collect all URLs: via a crawler, from the sitemap and from Google Search Console. Search Console is Google's free tool that shows with which pages and search terms a website appears in search.
2. Determine the value of each URL: clicks and impressions from Search Console, visits from web analytics, inbound links from other websites.
3. Mark the top pages: pages with rankings, visitors or links are protected. Their content may improve, but must not disappear.
4. Back everything up: export titles, descriptions, headings and texts of the important pages before the old system is switched off.

The inventory often reveals surprises: old blog articles that bring more visitors than the service pages, or subpages that important partners link to.

Phase 2: the redirect plan

The redirect plan is a table with every old URL and its destination. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirection that tells search engines the page has moved.

Rules for a good plan:

• One to one where possible: every old URL points to the new page that matches its content most closely.
• No chains: a redirect leads directly to the destination, not via intermediate stops.
• No loops: A never redirects to B, which redirects back to A.
• 410 for genuine deletions: the status 410 says that a page has been permanently removed. Only for pages without visitors, rankings and links.
• Fix host and protocol: one variant is canonical, for example with www and https, and all others redirect there.

Phase 3: content and structure

The new site should answer the old site's search queries at least as well. That does not mean copying texts one to one, but the topics, questions and terms a page ranks for belong in it again.

Check for every top page:

• Is there a page on the same topic on the new website?
• Does it answer the same questions, ideally better and more up to date?
• Does it have a unique title and description?
• Do internal links point directly to the new URL, not the old one?
• Have structured data such as organisation, article and FAQ been built in again?

Phase 4: technology before go-live

The technology decides whether Google can read the new site correctly at all. Before go-live, we check:

• ☐ Staging block removed: the test environment is blocked for search engines, the live site is not. Check both separately.
• ☐ robots.txt correct: search engines and desired AI crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot may read the site.
• ☐ noindex only where intended, for example on thank-you pages and campaign landing pages.
• ☐ Canonical tags point to the page's own canonical URL.
• ☐ XML sitemap only contains new, reachable URLs.
• ☐ All redirects tested, automatically and with spot checks in the browser.
• ☐ Load time measured on a phone, above all Largest Contentful Paint, the time until the largest visible element has loaded.
• ☐ Tracking and consent work, so that you can compare before and after.

How strong the effect of load time is, a real estate project shows: in the Noma case, the project page was far too slow on a phone at first. The biggest conversion lever was therefore not a new creative but load time. A relaunch is the opportunity to remove such brakes. How we build project websites for property developers is shown on the page Real estate marketing agency.

Phase 5: go-live and the weeks after

Go-live is not the end but the start of the monitoring phase.

1. On go-live day: test redirects live, submit the sitemap in Search Console, check robots.txt and noindex once more.
2. In the first week: check Search Console daily for crawl errors and 404 pages, add missing redirects immediately.
3. In the first weeks: compare clicks and impressions per top page with the period before the relaunch. Fluctuations are normal, a persistent drop for an individual page is not.
4. Keep redirects permanently: Google recommends keeping redirects in place for a long time after a move. Old links from other websites do not disappear.

How we do it in our own relaunch

We are currently rebuilding our own website, as of October 2026, and are following exactly this list:

• Old blog articles stay reachable: the previous articles move to /wissen, and /blog redirects there permanently.
• Old service URLs point via 301 to the matching new service or industry page.
• An old test product without a successor gets the status 410.
• One canonical host: the address without www redirects to www.ad.boutique.
• Tested redirects: an automated test ensures there are no chains, no loops and no duplicate rules.
• Preview blocked, production open: the preview is blocked for search engines, while the live site allows search engines and AI crawlers.
• Speed as a goal: mobile first, with the goal of a Largest Contentful Paint under 2 seconds.

An honest point: on our old site, it is mainly the home page that ranks today. We are still implementing the redirects completely, because they secure existing links and cost nothing.

Special case: online shops

For online shops, a relaunch is often also a change of system, for example to a new shop platform. Almost all URLs change at the same time, and there are additional pitfalls:

• Product URLs: every product needs a redirect to its counterpart, including sold-out products with links or rankings.
• Category URLs: categories often rank better than individual products and deserve special care.
• Filter and parameter URLs: they should not end up in the index en masse, either before or after. Check canonical tags and rules for parameters.
• Product feeds: if URLs change, the feeds for Google Shopping and Meta must also be updated, otherwise ads lead nowhere. More on the feed in the article Performance Max for online shops.
• Tracking: purchase events, basket value and consent must work on day one, otherwise the campaigns lack the data to learn.

Typical mistakes at a glance

When a relaunch still costs visibility

Some losses are intended or unavoidable. If you deliberately drop topics, you lose the rankings for them. Changing domain requires more time and care than a relaunch on the same domain. And if the old site ranked for terms that do not fit the business, a decline there is not a problem, as long as the important pages hold.

A relaunch is also the opportunity to make the website fit for AI answers: clear answers, structured data, permitted AI crawlers. More on this in the guide Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). How we build websites that load fast and sell is shown on the page Web design.