A rebuild is a good moment to fix a slow, hard-to-edit website. It is also the moment when firms most often lose traffic, usually because pages moved or disappeared without anyone noticing. The fix is straightforward if you plan for it.
1. Inventory every URL before you start
List every page the old site serves: pages, posts, videos, guides, category and tag pages, PDFs and images that other sites link to. Your sitemap, a crawl of the site and Google Search Console’s page list are the three sources to combine. This list is your safety net. Anything on it should still work after launch.
2. Keep URLs the same wherever you can
If a page can keep its address, keep it. Changing /practice-areas/dui/ to /dui-defense/ may feel tidy, but it throws away history unless it is redirected perfectly. Better to improve the page and leave the address alone.
3. Redirect anything that has to move
Where a URL must change, set a permanent (301) redirect from the old address to the closest matching new page, not to the home page. Test each redirect. Avoid chains where one redirect points to another.
4. Move the content, not just the design
Titles, descriptions, headings, body text, image alt text and internal links should come across. A new design on top of thinner pages can underperform the old site even if it looks better.
5. Compare old and new, page by page
Before launch, crawl both versions and compare status codes, titles, descriptions, headings and word counts. Review every difference. This step catches the mistakes that cause traffic drops, and it is quick when it is automated.
6. Watch out for duplicate content
If the same articles also live on another domain, such as an old blog, decide which copy is the main one and tell search engines with a canonical tag. Two copies of the same content compete with each other.
7. Make it fast and mobile-friendly
The new site should load quickly on a phone. Heavy page builders and stacks of plugins are the usual culprits for slow sites. Compress images, use modern formats and limit scripts.
8. Launch, submit, and monitor
- Resubmit your sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Check that the staging site is not blocked from search once the real site goes live, and that the live site isn’t blocked by mistake.
- Watch Search Console for crawl errors and drops in the first few weeks, and fix problems quickly.
- Keep the old site available for a while in case you need to compare or roll back.
We used this approach to rebuild a Miami criminal defense site, keeping every URL and moving the firm off a page builder and paid plugins. The details are in the case study.
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