A website redesign is an exciting milestone, offering a chance to update visual branding, improve user journeys, and adopt modern front-end technologies. However, redesigns carry significant risks. Without careful planning, changes to URL directories and page structures can lead to broken internal links, missing metadata, and severe organic search traffic drops.
To execute a successful redesign, you must audit your existing site structure and compile an inventory of your pages before making any changes.
1. Compile Your Current Page Inventory
Before changing your layouts, you need a complete map of your existing site.
- Crawl your current site recursively to build a list of all active URLs.
- Document title tags, meta descriptions, and canonical tags for every page.
- Export this data into a structured spreadsheet so you have a baseline to compare against.
2. Map URL Redirects (301 Redirect Mapping)
If you must change URL structures during the redesign, you must set up redirects to guide users and search engines to the new pages.
- Create a map matching every old URL directory to its corresponding new path.
- Configure permanent
301redirects on your server to preserve link authority and rankings.
3. Audit Your Information Architecture
A redesign is the perfect opportunity to clean up disorganized GNB menus and footer links.
- Review click depths to ensure core pages are within three clicks of the homepage.
- Group related pages under logical parent menus to simplify navigation.
4. Verify Technical & Metadata Configurations
Once the staging site is ready, audit it to ensure no meta configuration errors exist:
- Verify that every page has exactly one
h1tag. - Ensure that image assets include descriptive alt tags.
- Confirm that staging disallow rules (
robots.txt) are removed before launching the new site.
Website Redesign Checklist
- [ ] Crawl and archive your existing site directory structure.
- [ ] Create a 301 redirect map matching old URLs to new paths.
- [ ] Export your current metadata configuration (titles, descriptions, alt texts).
- [ ] Audit GNB and footer link structures for consistency.
- [ ] Verify that staging environments are excluded from search indexation.
- [ ] Run post-launch crawls to check for broken internal links.
Redesign Audits with AttractiveWebAI
AttractiveWebAI makes redesign planning simple. Use our DeepAnalyzer to scan your staging environment, audit metadata configurations, identify broken link pathways, and verify your new site structure. You can export the crawled data into a styled XLSX sheet, providing an accurate, shareable inventory of your redesign project.
Planning a website redesign? Click below to run a pre-launch audit.