9 SEO Mistakes to Avoid When Redesigning Your Website

Updated: Aug 11, 2026 Let’s set the scene: you have a website for your business, but it’s just... okay.

Maybe your user experience needs improvement, or perhaps your website doesn’t lend your brand the credibility you desire. The visuals may not align with your brand’s persona, or your current SEO strategy may not bring in enough organic traffic.

Whether your site needs some basic tweaking or a complete overhaul, giving your business a fresh online face can create a stronger experience for prospective clients and wow them with stellar copywriting and striking media.

Avoiding SEO Pitfalls for a Successful Website Transformation

However, not all website redesigns are created equal. Like a personal style makeover, some common pitfalls do more harm than good (we’re looking at you, spontaneous bangs).

While a redesign can transform your website for the better, it also has the potential to compromise the success you’ve earned so far – especially when it comes to SEO. If careless, you could inadvertently erase your hard-earned rankings and watch your traffic take a nosedive.

Avoid these common SEO errors as you approach your next website redesign, and watch your online makeover bring all the pros and none of the cons!

1. Skipping the SEO Audit

Search engine optimization is integral to a website’s success. You don’t want your redesign to compromise your SEO strategy, and the best way to prevent that is by performing a comprehensive SEO & GEO Website audit before making any changes.

If you’re wondering, what the heck is SEO? This is for you.

This audit provides you with a baseline that you can use to compare against your redesigned site and ensure that none of your implemented changes have compromised your SEO strategy.

2. Maintaining – Rather Than Improving – SEO

Sure, preserving your SEO strategy through a redesign is a good start. But wouldn’t it be even better to actively improve your SEO in the process?

Take your SEO audit one step further and use it as a tool to pinpoint where your search visibility could be strengthened.

For instance, if you find that your local SEO is lacking, you might consider employing strategies to land your newly redesigned website in Google’s Map Pack.

After all, you’re giving your website a glow-up – why not do the same for your SEO strategy?

3. Replacing Winning Content

A redesign doesn't mean every piece of content needs to start from scratch. Before making changes, identify the pages already earning traffic, rankings, backlinks, or conversions and understand what's contributing to their performance. Preserve what's working while looking for opportunities to improve accuracy, relevance, user experience, and alignment with your current brand. If content moves to a new URL, make sure the appropriate redirects are in place so you don't leave its existing search value behind.

4. Getting Lazy “Above the Fold”

“Above the fold” refers to the content visitors see before scrolling. While there's no magic SEO formula for what must appear there, this prime real estate should quickly communicate what you offer, who it's for, and why someone should keep exploring.

Clear, benefit-led, customer-focused copy creates a stronger first impression and helps visitors understand where they've landed. From there, strategic, creative SEO copywriting can carry that clarity throughout the rest of the page.

5. Overlooking Page Speed

Nobody wants to wait for a web page to load. Slow-loading pages can frustrate visitors, increase abandonment, and contribute to a poor overall page experience.

Pay attention to this when redesigning your website. If you’re not careful, you may end up with messy, redundant code or large, slow-to-load media that drastically impact your page loading time. In this mission to transform your website design, be sure to optimize your page loading speed, too.

6. Neglecting Mobile Users

You likely always have your smartphone with you, and your clients are no different. Ensuring that your redesigned website is mobile-friendly is an absolute must to engage your target audience effectively.

Make sure your pages load quickly on mobile devices, and your content still looks appealing (and readable!) on smaller screens. Optimizing your website for mobile users is crucial for creating a strong experience for customers on the go—and for ensuring Google can effectively crawl, understand, and index your mobile content.

7. Dead-End URLs

Once again, this common error directly impacts both user experience and SEO.

Some pages may gain new or changed URLs when you redesign a website. When content moves, use proper permanent redirects to send visitors and search engines from the old URL to its relevant new destination.

If a page has been removed entirely and there's no appropriate replacement, a proper 404 or 410 response may be the better choice. Whatever you do, avoid redirecting unrelated old URLs to your homepage simply to eliminate errors.

8. Using an Outdated XML Sitemap

Your XML sitemap helps search engines discover the URLs you consider important and provides another signal about which URLs you prefer to have indexed.

When a redesign changes your website's URLs or structure, make sure your sitemap reflects the new site and submit it through Google Search Console. It's also worth checking your internal links, redirects, canonical URLs, and indexing settings to ensure they're all pointing search engines toward the correct versions of your pages.

9. Forgetting About Indexing

A beautiful new website can't perform in search if Google can't properly crawl and index it.

Before and after launch, check that important pages aren't accidentally blocked by noindex settings or robots.txt directives, confirm canonical URLs point to the intended pages, and use Google Search Console to inspect priority URLs and monitor indexing.

A redesign changes what visitors see. Don't forget to check what Google sees, too.

The Takeaway

A successful redesign needs strategy behind what visitors see and what happens behind the scenes. Website architecture, user experience, content, SEO & GEO, redirects, indexing, and technical performance all need to work together.

That's exactly why The Brand Brew®'s Digital Presence goes beyond website design. We bring your website, SEO & GEO, content, photography, social media, and other digital touchpoints together as one connected online ecosystem—built with clarity and guided by strategy.

Already have a website? Our SEO & GEO Website Audit can uncover what's working, what's holding you back, and what needs attention before your next redesign.

Book a call and let's give your digital presence the right kind of glow-up.