Relaunching a Website Without Losing Rankings — Where It Usually Goes Wrong

The relaunch is done, the site finally looks good — and three weeks later traffic has halved. This pattern is more common than people think, and it almost always has the same causes.

1. The old addresses weren't redirected

By far the most common mistake. If a page used to live at one address and now lives at another, the old address has to point permanently to the new one. Without that redirect, the new page loses all the history built up over years.

A relaunch is a move. Without mail forwarding, the post doesn't arrive.

2. The staging block stayed switched on

During development a site is usually made invisible to search engines. If that block is forgotten at go-live, the website gradually disappears from the index entirely. It often isn't noticed for weeks.

3. Content got "tidied up"

Old text feels redundant during a relaunch. But often those are exactly the pages bringing visitors in from search. Before deleting anything, you need to know which pages actually receive traffic.

4. Technical basics missing in the new version

Page titles, descriptions, structured data and language markup usually grew over years in the old version and don't get carried across to the new system.

The short checklist before switching over

Export a list of all old addresses and map each one to a new address
Remove the search engine block and verify it on the live site
Carry over page titles and descriptions
Submit the new sitemap to Google after switching
Check regularly for error pages in the first few weeks

If a relaunch is coming up for you, we're happy to look beforehand at which pages need protecting.