Old URLs stop resolving and rankings die
The page structure changes and the old addresses stop resolving. Pages that took years to earn their rankings return errors, and the traffic they carried does not find its way back on its own.
Services
B2B Website Redesign
Rebuild the site without losing what already ranks. Every URL mapped before anything moves, schema carried across, and the same measurements taken before and after.
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Redesigned Safely
Where a B2B Website Redesign Loses Traffic
The ProblemStandard Agency
Structured data treated as a launch-week detail
Structured data and search snippets get treated as a launch-week detail. On day one an engine loses the machine-readable version of a site it already understood.
Nothing was measured before the rebuild
The old site was only ever judged on taste, so the new one gets judged the same way. Six months later nobody can say what the redesign earned.
The Solution
The Legency Approach
The Legency ApproachEvery old URL is mapped before anything moves
A crawl of the live site produces the full 301 map, so each old address arrives at the page that replaces it and the equity travels with it.
Schema is rebuilt on the new templates first
Structured data and search snippets are rebuilt on the new templates before launch, and the pages that never had them get them for the first time.
The same numbers recorded before and after
Rankings, conversion and a 100-point readability score are recorded on the old site and re-run identically on the new one, so the comparison is arithmetic.
What Carries Over
What a Migration-Safe Redesign Protects
The Redirect Map
Every live URL mapped to its new home before launch. On one six-site estate, 261 URLs stranded on a retired domain were mapped to the brands that should own them.
The Structured Data
Markup rebuilt on the new templates and re-checked after launch. Across that same estate, 230 markup errors were closed and technical health rose on all five sites measured in month one, by 5 to 10 points each.
The Measurement Baseline
A 100-point readability audit is run before the rebuild and re-run identically after it. One client moved from 30 to 59 in two months on that scale, our own audit both times.
The Component System
The new site ships as a governed component library, so the round of change after this one is your marketing team adding pages instead of another rebuild.
Before You Commit
Most Redesigns Solve a Problem Nobody Diagnosed
A redesign is the most expensive answer available, and it is usually chosen before anyone has established what is actually wrong. These are the four reasons we hear, and what each one really needs.
"It looks dated"
Sometimes true and rarely the reason revenue is flat. Worth checking what the site does on mobile, how fast it is, and whether the copy still describes what you sell, before spending on a new look for the same problems.
"We have repositioned"
The strongest reason on this list. When what you sell has genuinely changed, the structure has to change with it, and patching the old structure produces a site that argues with itself.
"Nobody converts"
This is a conversion problem and a redesign is the slowest way to address it. It also destroys the attribution: change everything at once and you can never say which change did the work.
"Marketing cannot change anything"
A build problem rather than a design one. If the reason for the redesign is that the current site is unmaintainable, say so, because it changes what the new one has to be good at.
The Real Risk
The Traffic You Already Earned Is What You Can Lose
A redesign changes URLs, structure and copy at once. Done without care, the site loses rankings it took years to build, and the loss shows up a quarter later when nobody connects it to the launch.
- 01
Inventory what currently earns
Every URL with impressions, clicks, backlinks or conversions gets listed before anything is designed. Pages that earn nothing can be cut without ceremony. Pages that earn quietly are the ones a redesign usually deletes by accident.
- 02
Map every old URL to a new one
A one-to-one redirect map, written before launch rather than after the 404s appear. Redirecting everything to the home page is the usual shortcut and it throws away most of the equity it was meant to preserve.
- 03
Keep the content that ranks
If a page ranks, its substance moves across even when its design does not. Cutting a thousand words to fit a new template is how a site loses the position that was paying for itself.
- 04
Watch the first ninety days
Crawl weekly after launch, compare against the pre-launch baseline, and fix what moved. Most redesign damage is recoverable if it is caught in the first month and expensive once it is not.
This is also the argument for redesigning in stages where the site allows it: fewer variables changing at once, and a result you can still attribute afterwards.
Case Study
Six sites, run as one estate.
A move off K2 Group’s old domain had left rankings stranded behind it. 261 URLs were mapped to the brands that should own them, and the retired domain fell from 103 ranked terms to 3 as the group’s brand search moved to first place on the live site.
View Case Study
Before You Commit
Find Out Whether You Need a Redesign at All
A redesign is the most expensive answer available and it is often not the right one. A call about what is actually underperforming, and whether a smaller piece of work would do it instead.
- How we separate what is genuinely wrong from what merely looks dated
- How a rebuild keeps what the current site already earns
- A staged option where the site allows it, so results stay attributable
Common QuestionsFrequently Asked
Frequently Asked
Questions
Not if the URLs are mapped before anything moves. Every live address gets a 301 to the page that replaces it, metadata and schema carry across, and rankings are watched through cutover rather than checked a month afterwards.
It depends on how many pages, templates and integrations are involved. Every redesign starts with an audit that scopes the work and sets a realistic timeline before anything gets designed.
The same measurements get taken twice. Rankings, conversion on the pages that matter and a 100-point readability score are recorded on the old site and re-run identically on the new one, so the before and after compare directly.
It carries across with everything else and then gets extended. On one six-site estate we wrote and attached 205 new answers, 75 of them running in French, Spanish, Portuguese and Mandarin, with regulatory content held in English deliberately because a drifting translation carries real risk.
The site ships as a component library your marketing team owns. New pages, sections and campaigns come out of parts that already exist, so the next round of change is an extension rather than another rebuild.