How to Fix a Reduction in Traffic after a Website Redesign

No matter how well a website was initially designed, the time will come to redesign the site. Redesigning a website is vital to maintaining the quality of the site and should be done a relatively regular basis. While doing this usually increases traffic, a drastic redesign can be detrimental to your website’s traffic. Here are a few ways to prevent a reduction in website traffic after a redesign:

1. Check your Redirects

This is the most important step after a website redesign. Once your URL structure changed, or your pages were moved to a new location and without setting up proper redirects, your customers will be unable to visit your website. Make sure that your redirect is type “301”, the best type for search engine optimization.

2. Check the structure of Your Website

Your site’s structure primarily determines Google's site indexing, so if your site’s structure changed suddenly when redesigning the site, you would need a new sitemap. Your sitemap lists out the relevant pages on your site which you can submit to search console to make re-indexing of your pages easier, therefore, restoring the traffic on your site. You should also revisit your internal links to check if these links lead to old URLs to avoid crawl issues.

3. Site copy

Website redesign sometimes involves an entirely new copy of the site. If your site’s copywriter is not aware of the original keywords and did not incorporate them, it can have adverse effects. If your site’s pages are written differently without the keywords that made the site rank before, your site’s ranking will be affected. Google’s algorithm only shows users the information they are looking for. If your site does not have that information anymore, it will not show up in search results. In a way, making a site copy is like starting from scratch, however it isn’t difficult to regain the progress you’ve made before.