Website relaunch: a new design is quick. Keeping your rankings is not.
A website relaunch is the restart of an existing website: new design, often new technology, new structure. The risk is not the design but the move. Old URLs, content and rankings have to come along cleanly, otherwise the new site starts from zero on Google.
The website is ten years old. But it still brings in enquiries.
That is exactly the dilemma. The site is slow on mobile, every change goes through the agency, and everyone dreads the next CMS update. But it ranks for a few terms that bring in customers. So nothing happens for years, out of fear of losing the little that still works.
How you know a relaunch is due
Slow on mobile
Visitors leave before the page has loaded.
Every change needs the agency
One new sentence costs time and money.
Updates are scary
Nobody wants to touch the next major CMS update.
Content no longer fits
Your offer has changed, the website has not.
Enquiries get lost
Forms land in an inbox instead of the CRM.
Design first. Then the question of what happens with Google.
The new website gets designed, signed off and launched. URLs change along the way, pages get merged or dropped, and nobody recorded which of them brought in visitors. On launch day everything looks better, and a few weeks later the enquiries are missing. Then comes the repair work that two days of planning up front avoids.
The second mistake is the opposite: everything gets copied 1:1 into the new technology, including outdated pages and a messy structure. Then you have a new website with all the old problems.
Secure what you have first, then rebuild.
- Inventory: all URLs, rankings and backlinks from Search Console and a crawl.
- Decide: what stays, what gets merged and what goes.
- Rebuild: plan the content model, move content by script, a fast and easy-to-edit frontend, usually with a headless CMS.
- 1:1 redirects: for every old URL, plus a clean sitemap and language versions.
- After launch: check Search Console daily until Google knows the new structure.
Replacing TYPO3 or WordPress: A typical trigger is the next major update nobody wants to touch. Instead of laboriously upgrading the old system, the content moves into a headless CMS. How we build websites like that is covered under websites and portals.
Website relaunch checklist: what has to be done before launch.
Seven items to tick off before go-live. If one is missing, you usually notice it only in your enquiries.
- All old URLs exported and each mapped to a new one
- Redirects set up and tested
- Titles, descriptions and headings of ranking pages carried over
- New sitemap created and submitted in Search Console
- Canonicals and language versions checked
- Forms tested, enquiries arrive in the CRM
- Mobile load time measured (PageSpeed Insights)
“A relaunch rarely fails because of the design. It fails in the weeks after, when nobody looks at Search Console.”
What you usually ask us about a website relaunch.
A website relaunch is the restart of an existing website: new design, often new technology and a new structure. Unlike a brand-new website, there are existing URLs, content and rankings that have to come along.
When the site is slow on mobile, every change goes through an agency, nobody wants to touch the next CMS update or your offer no longer matches the website. A new design alone is rarely reason enough.
Not if every old URL redirects to the matching new one, the content of ranking pages is kept and Search Console is watched closely after launch. Rankings are usually lost exactly when that is missing.
It depends on a few drivers: how many page types and languages there are, how much content moves over and which systems get connected. The licence for a headless CMS is often free, the big items are implementation and migration.
New website, same enquiries? Let's talk.
Tell us briefly what is holding your website back today. We will tell you what a relaunch brings and what it costs, before anything gets built.