Website redesign services that protect your Google rankings and bring more calls

We redesign sites for small and service businesses: contractors, clinics, law firms and other local companies. If you’re comparing a website redesign company or agency, ask how it handles old URLs. Before we change anything, we map every page Google already knows about. Then we design and build the new site, launch it with redirects in place, and check Search Console until things settle.

What are the signs your website needs a redesign?

Your site probably needs a redesign if it’s slow on a phone, hard to update, or no longer matches what you sell. Check it against this list:

• It’s slow to load on a phone, or hard to read and tap on a small screen.
• Customers call and say they couldn’t find your number, your prices or your service area.
• Your services have changed, but the site still lists old ones or lumps everything on one page.
• Only one person, who may have left, knows how to change anything.
• Your Google Ads send people to pages that don’t match the ad.
• Forms arrive full of spam, or don’t arrive at all.
• You can’t tell which pages bring calls, because nothing is tracked.
• The design looks older than your competitors’ sites, and it makes the business look smaller than it is.

If you ticked one or two, a few targeted fixes may be enough, and we’ll say so. If you ticked four or more, a redesign is usually the better use of money than patching an old site page by page.

What do our website redesign services include?

Our redesign service covers the SEO protection, the design, the build and the launch. Here’s what you get.

Deliverable	What it involves	Why it matters
SEO audit and crawl of the old site	Every URL, title and heading, plus clicks and impressions from Search Console	Shows which pages earn traffic and must be protected
URL map	A row for every old URL: keep, move or merge, and where it goes	No ranking page is left without a plan
Site structure and page plan	One page per main service and area, with clear navigation	Helps customers and Google find the right page
Design	Mobile-first layouts with a tap-to-call number and one clear next step on every page	More visitors become calls and form leads
Content updates	Keep what ranks, rewrite what’s thin, add the pages that are missing	Pages answer what customers ask before they call
Build	On the platform that fits your business, built to load quickly on phones	Speed and usability on the devices people use
Forms and tracking	Forms that reach the right inbox with spam protection; call and form tracking	You can see which pages bring leads after launch
Launch and monitoring	Redirects, sitemap submission and post-launch checks in Search Console	Problems get caught in days, not months

Will a redesign hurt my Google rankings?

It can, and it often does when nobody plans for SEO. But the drop is usually caused by a handful of avoidable mistakes, not by the redesign itself.

Rankings fall when:

• URLs change without redirects. Google and visitors hit errors where your pages used to be.
• Pages that rank get cut or merged without anyone checking what traffic they earned.
• Titles and headings get rewritten around a new design rather than the searches they answered.
• The test site launches still hidden. A leftover noindex rule or robots.txt block tells Google to stay away. Google lists this as a common site-move mistake.
• Many old pages redirect to the home page. Google says this can confuse users and may be treated as a soft 404.

Source: Google’s guide to site moves with URL changes.

Some movement is normal even when everything goes right. Google says to expect temporary ranking fluctuation while it recrawls a site, and that for medium-sized sites it can take a few weeks or more for the new URLs to replace the old ones. Google also says 301 and other permanent redirects don’t cause a loss in PageRank. (Source: Google’s guide to site moves) So the goal isn’t zero movement. It’s a short dip that recovers, instead of a permanent loss.

Option	Careless redesign	SEO-safe redesign
URLs	Changed to suit the new design	Kept wherever possible
Old URLs	Return errors or all point to the home page	301 redirect to the closest new page
Pages that rank	Cut or merged without checking	Kept, with content improved
Titles and headings	Rewritten from scratch	Kept or improved on the same topic
Test site	Indexed early, or launched still hidden	Hidden during review, opened at launch
After launch	Nobody checks	Search Console, redirects and errors checked

How do we protect your SEO through a redesign?

We protect your SEO with a URL map, one-hop 301 redirects, deliberate 410s for pages we drop, and a launch checklist. These are the steps.

1. Crawl the old site. We list every URL, including images and PDFs that get traffic, and pull clicks and impressions from Search Console for each page.
2. Build the URL map. Every old URL gets a decision: keep it, move it to a new address, or merge it into the closest new page. Google recommends preparing this mapping before the move.
3. Keep what ranks. Pages that earn traffic keep their topic and main content. We improve them; we don’t replace them with something different.
4. Build on a hidden test address. The new site is blocked from search while you review it, and we keep a list of every block that must come off at launch.
5. Use one-hop 301 redirects. Each old URL points straight to its final new page. Google advises redirecting to the final destination directly rather than chaining redirects.
6. Return a 410 for pages dropped on purpose. If a page is gone and has no close replacement, it returns a 410 (or 404) rather than redirecting to the home page. Google says deleted content should return a 404 or 410.
7. Update internal links and canonicals. Links inside the site point to the new URLs, and each page has a self-referencing canonical tag.
8. Submit the new XML sitemap in Search Console at launch. Our guide to generating an XML sitemap explains what it does.
9. Test and monitor. We test the redirects, then watch Search Console for “Not found” errors and indexing changes in the weeks after launch.
10. Keep the redirects. Google recommends keeping them for at least a year, and ideally longer.

Source: Google’s guide to site moves with URL changes.

If your current site already has crawl errors or duplicate pages, our technical SEO services cover those fixes.

What is our redesign process and timeline?

A redesign runs in five stages: audit and plan, content, design, build and test, then launch and monitor. You approve each stage before the next starts.

1. Audit and plan. Crawl, Search Console review, URL map and page plan.
2. Content. We gather what we need from you (services, areas, photos, reviews, licenses) and write or update the pages.
3. Design. Mobile and desktop layouts for the main page types. You review and give feedback.
4. Build and test. The site is built on a private test address. We test forms, tracking, speed and redirects.
5. Launch and monitor. Redirects go live with the site, the sitemap is submitted, and we monitor Search Console after launch.

Google also recommends changing one thing at a time where possible. If you want a new domain, a new platform and a new design, it’s safer to split them than to do all three at once. (Source: Google’s guide to site moves) We’ll tell you whether splitting the work makes sense for your site.

Which platform: WordPress, Shopify or a custom build?

WordPress suits most service businesses that edit their own pages, Shopify suits businesses that sell products online, and a custom build suits sites that need unusual features or speed without plugins. We recommend the platform that fits how you run the business, not the one we prefer to build on.

• WordPress suits most service businesses that want to edit pages themselves and add content over time. See our WordPress web design page.
• Shopify suits businesses that sell products online. See Shopify web design.
• A custom build suits sites that need speed, unusual features, or no plugins to maintain.

Changing platform usually means more URL changes, so the URL map matters even more. If you only need new pages for your ad campaigns, our landing page design services may be a smaller first step.

What does a website redesign cost?

Most small business sites cost about $1,000 for a basic build to $20,000 or more for a larger custom one, according to survey data from Clutch and GoodFirms. A redesign’s cost depends mainly on the number of pages, the platform, how much content needs rewriting and whether the site is moving platforms or domains.

After a free audit, we tell you the price before any work starts.

For a breakdown of what drives the price of a new or redesigned site, see our website design pricing guide, or read about our web design services.

Before you redesign, find out what your current site is worth to Google and where it loses calls. Request a free audit and you’ll have it within 2 business days.