Software Development · 7 min read
Four things you cannot afford to lose when you rebuild your corporate site
A new design is exciting, but a badly planned rebuild can wipe out search rankings you spent years earning, overnight. What to sort out before you move.
01Map the URLs you already have
The most common mistake in a rebuild is going live without deciding what happens to the old page addresses. Before launch, pull a list of every URL currently on the site and work out which page on the new site each one corresponds to. For addresses with no equivalent, set up a permanent redirect to the closest relevant page. Otherwise every visitor arriving from search results lands on a 404.
02Do not delete content that ranks
The old site almost certainly has pages that bring in visitors week after week. They may look dated, but they carry real value. Before the rebuild, find out which pages are getting traffic from search. Carry that content into the new design and update it where it needs updating instead of deleting it. Refreshing how a site looks should not mean throwing away what it says.
03Set up measurement on day one
The first week after launch is the week that matters most, and if measurement is not in place you cannot see what improved and what broke. Analytics tracking, form submission events and search engine verification all need to be working on launch day. Measurement bolted on afterwards will not bring back the data from the transition period.
04Plan for the first month after launch
A rebuild does not end the day it goes live. Broken links, missing redirects and search engine warnings surface over the following weeks. Decide who is responsible for watching them and set a regular rhythm for checking. When nobody plans that first month, even a good design fails to deliver the result you expected.
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