How to Plan an E-commerce Website Redesign Without Killing Your SEO

Why SEO Dies During Redesigns

Let’s start with the common culprits behind post-redesign traffic drops. If you know what not to do, you can avoid the pitfalls:

Poor URL Mapping & Missing Redirects:

Changing URL structures without a proper redirect plan is the #1 SEO killer. If your new site’s URLs don’t match the old ones, you must map every old URL to its new URL and set up 301 redirects. Otherwise, users and Google will hit dead-ends (404 errors), causing a loss of backlink equity and rankings.

In fact, studies show 90% of organic traffic loss during site migrations is caused by improper redirects . Missing or broken redirects basically tell Google that your content vanished, so your rankings vanish too.

Lost On-Page SEO Elements:

A full redesign often means new templates and content structure. It’s easy for crucial on-page SEO elements to get lost in the shuffle. Title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, structured data markup – if these aren’t carried over or are left blank on the new site, you’re effectively wiping out the SEO optimizations that made your pages rank.

I’ve seen teams launch a beautiful new UI only to realize they forgot to migrate optimized content and meta tags. Remember, if content that used to exist is removed or drastically changed, it can’t rank anymore .

The same goes for technical SEO like schema markup and alt tags – lose them and you lose rich snippet potential and relevance.

Changing Too Many Things at Once:

Sometimes a redesign coincides with other big changes – a new domain, new platform (say, moving to Shopify), or restructured site architecture. Each of these changes can hurt SEO if not handled carefully. When you combine multiple changes simultaneously, the risk multiplies .

Google’s John Mueller has noted there’s no magic way to avoid any traffic dip when everything changes at once – you can only minimize it. Major moves like a domain change or HTTPS upgrade layered on top of a redesign mean there are many variables if rankings drop. It becomes hard to diagnose issues because everything is different.

The lesson: try not to overhaul URL structure, content, and platform all on the same day. If you must, planning and testing are absolutely critical (more on that below).

Those are the big three: broken redirects, lost content/metadata, and too many simultaneous changes. In short, SEO “dies” during redesigns when it’s an afterthought. Now, let’s talk about how to make SEO a forethought at every stage of your project.

Pre-Migration SEO Audit: Start with a Solid Baseline

Before writing a line of new code or tweaking your design, audit your current site’s SEO. This is a fundamental step I never skip. You need a clear picture of what works on your existing site so you can preserve it through the transition. Here’s my pre-migration checklist:

1. Crawl Your Existing Site:
   Run a crawl of your current website (using a tool like Screaming Frog) to capture all the URLs and key on-page data. This gives you a full inventory of your site structure. Save this crawl data! It’s incredibly useful for mapping URLs and ensuring nothing gets left behind . With a saved list of all old URLs, you can systematically plan redirects and later verify that each one resolves correctly on the new site.
   
   
2. Identify Your Top Pages & Traffic Sources: Dig into Google Analytics and Search Console to find which pages are driving the most organic traffic and for what keywords. Also note your top landing pages for SEO and any pages with notable conversion value. These are the pages you cannot afford to lose in the redesign. Document their current performance metrics and rankings . For example, if your “/pricing” page brings in loads of Google traffic, you better make sure the new site has a page targeting those same terms (and that it’s properly redirected).
   
   
3. Collect Backlink Data: Use Search Console, Ahrefs, SEMrush or your tool of choice to export a list of backlinks to your site and the pages they point to. Why? Because if you have high-authority sites linking to a specific blog post or product page, you need to preserve that link equity. Make sure any page with important backlinks either remains at the same URL on the new site or is mapped with a redirect. Jot down the most linked pages as ones to handle with care . (Pro tip: after launch, you can even reach out to really important referring sites and ask them to update the link to your new URL – not critical if you have 301s, but helpful for long-term cleanliness .)
   
   
4. Export On-Page SEO Elements: While crawling the site or using SEO tools, export all your current meta titles, meta descriptions, headers, and image alt text from key pages. This acts as a backup of your on-page SEO. During the redesign, you’ll want to retain or improve these elements, not accidentally wipe them. By having them in a spreadsheet, you can hand it to your content or dev team and say “make sure these are implemented on the new pages.” If the current tags are well-optimized, keep them the same to start – you can always tweak later once the new site is stable.
   
   
5. Plan Your URL Mapping & Redirects Early: With the full list of old URLs and your list of high-priority pages, you can now create a URL migration map. In a simple spreadsheet, map each old URL to the new URL where that content will live. If something isn’t one-to-one (e.g. you have a page that’s getting removed entirely), decide where to redirect it – perhaps to the closest related category page or the homepage. The goal is that every old URL will 301 redirect somewhere relevant on the new site . By planning this now, you’ll discover any gaps (“oh, we don’t have a replacement for page X, what do we do?”) before launch. This mapping document will be your best friend when setting up redirects during development and for double-checking them after launch.
   
   

Completing a thorough pre-migration SEO audit like the above might seem tedious, but believe me, it’s far easier to preserve your SEO than to recover it after a free-fall. You’re essentially creating an insurance policy for your traffic. As the saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail – and nowhere is that truer than in an SEO migration.

Key SEO Tasks During the Rebuild

Now that you’ve got your blueprint (the audit and planning done), it’s time to actually redesign or rebuild the site with SEO in mind from day one. I work closely with our design and development team throughout the build to ensure we’re not inadvertently creating SEO problems. Here are the key SEO tasks during the build phase:

Maintain URL Structure Whenever Possible:

One of my mantras is “don’t fix what isn’t broken.” If your current URL structure is logical and SEO-friendly, try to keep URLs the same on the new site for as many pages as you can . For example, if your product pages are at /products/blue-widget now, you ideally want to keep that exact URL in the redesign. Every URL change is a risk (even with redirects), so minimize them unless there’s a good reason.

Sometimes a new platform like Shopify will enforce a slightly different URL format; if so, map it carefully, but otherwise avoid arbitrary URL changes like changing /blog/ to /resources/ just for style. Consistency is your friend.

Carry Over (or Improve) Your On-Page SEO:

Ensure that the on-page optimizations you documented are implemented on the new pages. That means unique title tags, meta descriptions, H1 headings, and image alt tags on each page, similar to the old site’s where applicable.

If you’re updating copy or design, it’s a perfect time to improve SEO elements (e.g., maybe rewrite a meta description to be more compelling), but don’t launch with blank or generic metadata. Also retain your site’s structured content hierarchy – use proper header tags (H1, H2, H3) in the new design just as before, so Google can interpret the page structure. Basically, don’t let the web developers treat SEO text as an afterthought.

I often provide our devs a checklist of these items per page template, to bake in during development.

Implement Structured Data Markup:

This is a step many overlook. If your current e-commerce site uses structured data (schema.org markup) for products, reviews, breadcrumbs, etc., the new site should have it as well – ideally in the same or improved form.

Structured data helps search engines understand your content and can yield rich results (stars, pricing, etc.) in SERPs. For instance, on a Shopify site we might add Product schema for all product pages. Make sure to update any IDs or details in the JSON-LD for the new URLs, and test the markup.

If you didn’t have schema before, a redesign is a great time to add it. It can improve your search visibility by making your results more attractive. Align the structured data with your new site content and format so it remains valid .

Use Canonical Tags to Prevent Duplicates:

E-commerce sites often have duplicate or very similar content (think product variants, filtered category views, etc.). In your new site build, double-check that canonical tags are set appropriately to point to the primary page version.

For example, the canonical for a sorted or filtered product grid should usually be the main category page URL without parameters. If you’re migrating to Shopify or another platform, configure canonical tag behavior for things like pagination or tracking parameters. Proper canonicals ensure you don’t accidentally introduce duplicate content issues that could confuse Google .

It’s much easier to set these correctly during development than to fix them after launch when you notice half your pages are dropping from the index.

Optimize Images and Media for Speed:

A redesign often means new visuals and maybe higher resolution images. Ensure your dev/design team optimizes images (compress them, use next-gen formats, srcset for responsive images, etc.) so that page load times stay fast . Large, uncompressed images or fancy new sliders can slow down your site, which hurts both user experience and SEO (Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor).

At Fourmeta, our developers know to compress images and minify code as part of any build. We want that new site to be slick and quick. Also, carry over your image alt text from the old site (updating if needed) so you maintain image SEO and accessibility.

Speed optimization and proper alt tags might not sound like “SEO migration” tasks, but they absolutely are – I consider them integral to the SEO checklist during a rebuild.

Retain Internal Linking Structure:

Pay attention to your internal links in the new site. During a revamp, menus and link widgets often change. Make sure that important pages are still easily reachable through internal links. For example, if your old homepage linked directly to your top categories, your new homepage should likely do the same. Also, update any hard-coded internal links in content or navigation to point to the new URLs.

You don’t want the new site accidentally still linking to old URLs (that then redirect) – that creates unnecessary redirect hops. During development, I like to run a crawl on the staging site too, to see if all internal links are pointing cleanly to where they should.

A well-structured internal link architecture will help search engines crawl the redesigned site efficiently and pass PageRank to all key pages.

Think of all the above as your e-commerce SEO migration game plan (your personal “don’t kill our Google rankings” to-do list). Whether you’re doing a simple facelift on the same platform or a full replatforming (say, a Shopify redesign SEO checklist if moving to Shopify), these principles apply. SEO isn’t something to “add in later” – it should be built into the new site from the ground up, hand-in-hand with design and development.

This way, by the time you’re ready to launch, you’ve already addressed most SEO considerations. Speaking of launch, let’s go over the final pre-launch and post-launch checklist to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Launch-Ready SEO Checklist

Launch day (and the period right before and after) is when you execute all your careful plans and double-check for any issues. I can’t overstate how important this stage is – you want to catch and fix errors before search engines and users do. Here’s a launch checklist I swear by:

Test All 301 Redirects:

Your URL redirect map should now be implemented on the new site (usually in your platform’s redirect manager or your server config). Before going live, test every single redirect. This can be done by uploading your list of old URLs into a crawling tool to see if they all redirect (and to the correct new URL) without errors .

After launch, do it again on the live site to verify nothing was missed or misconfigured. Any 404s or misdirected URLs should be corrected immediately. It’s tedious but absolutely worth it – one broken redirect on a high-traffic URL can mean hundreds of lost visitors.

I remember spending a good part of a day testing a client’s ~500 redirects; they all worked, and the result was we retained nearly 98% of their organic traffic post-launch. Time well spent!

Submit the New XML Sitemap:

Once your new site is live, generate an updated XML sitemap (most CMS or e-commerce platforms do this automatically, or use a plugin). This sitemap should reflect all the new URLs. Go to Google Search Console and submit the sitemap for the new site . This helps Google discover your updated content quickly.

Do the same for Bing via Bing Webmaster Tools. In the case of a domain change, also use Search Console’s Change of Address tool to notify Google of the domain switch. Basically, give search engines a heads-up: “here’s my new site structure, come crawl it.”

Also, check your robots.txt file on the live site – ensure it isn’t accidentally disallowing any important sections (sometimes staging sites have disallow rules that need to be removed). Conversely, make sure any sections you don’t want indexed (test pages, staging URLs, etc.) are still disallowed. A quick audit of robots.txt and a fresh sitemap submission are must-dos.

Final On-Page QA (Staging vs. Live):

Even with careful planning, I always do a thorough quality assurance pass comparing the staging site and live site. Sometimes a setting or meta tag that was fine on staging might not be on production. Manually spot-check a representative sample of pages on the live site for SEO elements. Are the title tags and meta descriptions present and correctly formatted? Did all your structured data make it over?

View page source or use browser extensions to verify things like canonical tags are pointing to the right URL (the live domain, not a staging domain!). Also perform a Google “site:yourdomain.com” search after a day or two to see what’s getting indexed – if you spot pages like “/staging/…” or weird duplicates, address those. Another trick: use Search Console’s URL Inspection tool on some key pages to ensure they’re crawlable and no coverage errors exist .

Essentially, treat the first week post-launch as an intense monitoring period. It’s easier to fix issues in the first 48 hours than to realize a month later that your “nofollow” tag was accidentally on every page template.

Analytics and Tracking Checks:

This isn’t pure SEO, but it’s related to your migration success. Make sure your Google Analytics (or whatever analytics) is tracking on the new site. If you changed domains, update your GA property and filters. If you had goal or e-commerce tracking, verify that it’s still working (a redesign might break tracking codes if not reinstalled).

Also, annotate the launch date in Google Analytics – this is helpful for your own records to correlate any traffic dip or recovery to the event of the migration. I often see an expected small dip in organic traffic right after launch followed by a rebound as Google processes changes.

Having that annotation “Site relaunched on X date” helps explain those trends later when reporting to stakeholders.

Monitor Rankings and Traffic Closely:

After launch, keep a close eye on your keyword rankings and organic traffic daily (or as close to daily as makes sense). Some fluctuation is normal – don’t panic if a few rankings slip temporarily. However, if you see a sharp drop across many pages or a sustained decline beyond a week or two, dig in immediately. Check Search Console for any spike in crawl errors, 404s, or indexing issues .

Often, any post-launch SEO issues can be traced to something fixable: a missed redirect, a meta robots tag left on “noindex” by accident, duplicate content that popped up, etc. The sooner you identify and remedy it, the faster you’ll recover. In my experience, a well-executed migration will see traffic normalize within about 2-4 weeks, if not sooner .

If you’ve done everything right, you might even see improvements (new site speed, better content, etc. can boost SEO). The key is to stay vigilant in that early period.

Phew – we made it through the launch! By following this checklist, you dramatically increase your chances of a smooth transition. But to really bring home why all of this matters, let me share a quick case study of two very different migration outcomes.

Case Study: A Tale of Two Website Migrations

Let me illustrate the impact of planning (or not planning) SEO in a redesign with two real examples I’ve encountered:

Migration Gone Wrong – The 40% Revenue Drop:

A mid-sized online retailer approached Fourmeta after a DIY rebranding and site migration that did not go as planned. They had built a slick new site and just swapped it in, thinking “Google will figure it out.” What happened next was brutal: within a month, their organic traffic had tanked and online sales dropped by about 40%.

The cause? In our audit we found dozens of broken links and missing redirects – many of their old product pages that ranked well were now 404ing. They also launched with essentially no meta titles or descriptions on key pages (the new CMS didn’t carry them over automatically), and their Google rich results disappeared because they forgot to add back the product schema.

It was a perfect storm of SEO neglect. We got to work triaging the issues – mapping and redirecting URLs properly, adding back missing on-page SEO content, and resubmitting sitemaps. The site did recover in time, but it took a couple of stressful months and a lot of ad spend to compensate in the meantime.

The pain and revenue loss this company experienced is something I never want to see happen to another business. It all stemmed from not having an SEO migration plan. As I noted earlier, a poorly planned migration can result in massive revenue loss . Unfortunately, this client learned that the hard way before coming to us for help.

Migration Done Right – A Seamless Relaunch:

Contrast that with another client of ours in the fashion e-commerce space who recently underwent a full Shopify redesign with Fourmeta. From day one, we treated SEO as a core project component: we did the groundwork (audits, mapping, content preservation) and coordinated every change with SEO in mind.

When it came time to launch, we flipped the switch and… exhaled – their organic traffic remained steady, even ticking up slightly in the weeks after launch. There was no panic, no sudden drop. In fact, the client actually saw improved rankings for some keywords because the new site was faster and our refreshed content was better optimized.

This successful outcome wasn’t luck; it was the result of careful planning and execution of everything I’ve outlined in this guide. The client was delighted (and frankly a bit surprised) that a relaunch could be so smooth.

To me, that’s proof that with the right approach, you can redesign your website without killing your SEO – and even set yourself up to grow SEO traffic post-relaunch.

The difference between these two tales was essentially having the right expertise and preparation. The first company treated SEO as an afterthought and paid the price. The second partnered with an experienced technical team to be their SEO safety net, and it made all the difference.

Conclusion: Your Technical Agency = Your SEO Safety Net

As these examples show, failing to plan is truly planning to fail when it comes to SEO in a site redesign . But the good news is that all of the pitfalls are avoidable with the proper know-how. This is where a technical agency like Fourmeta becomes incredibly valuable. We act as an SEO safety net for our clients during redesigns and migrations.

Why a technical agency? Because relaunching a website isn’t just about pretty visuals – it’s about how the site works under the hood, how it communicates with Google, and how all the pieces (design, development, content, SEO) fit together. At Fourmeta, our developers and SEO specialists work side by side. We’ve seen those “horror story” migrations and know how to prevent them. We make sure every URL is accounted for, every tag in place, every image optimized, before your new site goes live. Having a team that “gets it” means you can focus on the exciting parts of the redesign while we sweat the technical details that keep your SEO intact.

The result? Instead of scrambling after launch to fix traffic-killing mistakes, you’ll be in the much happier position of watching your new site thrive with your rankings and revenue humming along. A proper SEO-conscious redesign can even improve your search performance as you iron out old issues and implement best practices you’d overlooked before.

So, if you’re a decision-maker preparing to relaunch your e-commerce site – whether it’s a move to Shopify, a domain change, or a long-overdue revamp – don’t go it alone on the SEO front. The cost of getting it wrong is just too high, and honestly, it’s avoidable with the right expertise in your corner. This tactical guide gave you an idea of what needs to be done. If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed or simply want an expert to ensure nothing falls through the cracks, I’m here to help.

At Fourmeta, we’ve got your back. We treat your traffic and rankings as precious assets that must be protected. Reach out to us and let’s talk about your planned migration or redesign. We’d love to be the technical partner (and SEO safety net) that makes your relaunch a success. After all, your new website should come with big celebrations – not big traffic losses. Let’s plan it right, together.

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