SEO Checklist for a Website Relaunch

If you’re redesigning and relaunching your website, there are a lot of things to think about from an SEO perspective. After all, if you’ve spent lots of time building up your position in search, you don’t want to lose all that work through a poorly-implemented relaunch.

 

When you relaunch a website, chances are your search rankings will wobble a bit anyway. They may drop or move around a lot for a few months while search engines crawl and check the new site. However, by taking appropriate steps before the launch, you can reduce the risk of this and ensure a smoother SEO transition.

 

The things you need to do to ensure a good SEO-transfer will vary depending on whether you’re changing the domain name or not, and how dramatic a change your new website is, but here are some things to think about in either scenario. I’ve also included a handy summary download that you can take away with you. Find it at the end of this guide.

Plan As Much As Possible

The more changes and checks you can implement before going live, the better. Planning is vital to make sure your website has everything it needs, and that you have time for proper review and testing before going live.

 

The more planning you can do early-on, the more likely your website will look and work as you want, and the less time you’ll have to spend chasing your tail and fixing little (and big) errors. Some such errors are inevitable, but the fewer you have, the smoother the transition and the less likely you are to lose search rankings.

Prepare and Check Redirects

During your website relaunch, you might find that there are some pages that no longer exist on the new site, or that URLs have changed. If this is the case, make sure you have appropriate redirects from all of these pages.

 

A redirect automatically sends visitors to the replacement page, and so prevents them losing where they are or struggling to find the right information. It also means you can provide a better user experience and a more likely to keep potential customers.

 

If you know that there are going to be changes to pages and URLs, make sure you set up the redirects before you launch. Where possible, you should also update on-site and off-site URLs so that they go directly to the new URL instead of the old one. The redirects are a backup for any that you miss, or for links that you aren’t able to change.

 

On-site links should be updated before you launch, but external links should be updated after.

 

Your developer or an SEO expert will be able to help you set up redirects.

Transfer Tracking Codes

Make sure important code, such as Google Analytics and Facebook tracking, is transferred to the new site. If, for any reason, your old site will remain live, you should also remove the code from there to avoid duplication.

 

If you have tracking set up through something like Google Tag Manager, you should check whether you need to make any updates for the new site, especially if tracking triggers change.

Update Google Search Console

Unless the structure of your website is exactly the same, you should upload your new sitemap to Google Search Console immediately after you’ve launched. Google will eventually pick up on the sitemap on its own, but you can help your search rankings remain steadier if you update the sitemap yourself.

 

If you don’t already have one, create a Google Search Console account and link it to your website. Otherwise, just log onto your account. Then find the Sitemaps option on the left menu: add a link to your new sitemap and delete the old one.

 

Remember to do this as soon as possible after the site is live.

Post-Launch Checks

Some things you can’t do before launch, so it’s important to check them as soon as possible immediately after launching to make sure everything works as expected.

Check Redirects

Use software like Screaming Frog, which is a free tool (up to 500 URLs, including images), to see if there are any broken links on your new site. If you find any, make sure you add redirects and update the original links.

Check Tracking Codes

Make sure everything is still working by checking dashboards, testing conversion actions, and monitoring figures over the next few weeks.

Download the Website Relaunch SEO Checklist

For a brief checklist of everything I’ve written about here, help yourself to my free Website Relaunch SEO Checklist.