Log in
Build Your Site
5 Website Redesign Mistakes That Could Harm Your SEO
You could harm your SEO when you redesign your websites! Let's check out this article to find out the 5 common mistakes when redesigning your website.
Redesigning websites is inevitable in the digital marketing era. How much do you know about web design? It may be for enhancing the brand name, enhancing the user interface, or in response to new trends in technology. However, most businesses fail to think about a key consideration for website design: SEO (search engine optimization).
Suppose your website was meticulously redesigned for months with stunning visual effects and a silky interactive experience, but when you launched it online, you find that the initially stable search ranking has collapsed, and organic traffic has dropped dramatically. What's worse, the keywords that once brought good conversions have disappeared from the top few pages of search results. This isn't a particularly uncommon situation, and the cause is often simple: SEO isn't included in the redesign's main strategy, though it is a significant factor in web design.
SEO is not just about keywords and backlinks. It is about website design, content crawlability, user experience, and how search engines read and rank your pages. Not doing SEO redesign is like building a house that is pretty on the outside but has a poor foundation. It may be pretty, but it can collapse at any time.
An optimally changing website is one that makes it easy for search engines to identify your content. Do not confuse them and allow your website to mistake your presence for a strange new face. By 2025, while better algorithms will optimize search results, the conjoining of web design and SEO will become more significant than ever before.
So how do you enhance your redesign to more than a pretty picture, yet make search rankings stabilise or boost? The key is to add SEO thought during the planning stage, not after you've created the site and tried to fix it. What comes next will take you deep into how to balance design and search optimization when redesigning a website. So your new site isn't only pretty but can continue to provide quality traffic.
Follow the guide to learn how to redesign websites for improved SEO performance while avoiding practices that could harm your SEO.
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a formal system of optimization methods. It aims to improve the natural visibility of various digital content on search engines. Its essence is to allow search engines to make accurate connections with target users through technical means and content optimization.
SEO is a linking systemunder which high-quality content can be merged with specific users, in facilitating search engines to get to know the priority of content better. More beneficial organic traffic can be attained. As a first qualifier in the digital marketing scene, whether content is accessible to the desired audience or not, SEO is a determining factor.
5 redesign website mistakes that can negatively impact your SEO
1. Not performing an SEO Audit prior to Redesigning Your Site
Lacking an SEO audit before you redesign websites can be a costly error. SEO audit is a crucial step in the redesign process, and it is not just about reviewing the performance of your current site. And spot potential flaws and areas for improvement. By looking at all aspects, from keyword use, page ranking, sources of traffic, website hierarchy, backlinks, and others. You will be able to see what is going well on your present site and what could be done better. This data will give a definitive direction for your redesign so that your current SEO advantages will be exploited the most in the new layout.
Unless you do a complete SEO audit, you may inadvertently make changes to your website that compromise its SEO performance. For example, accidentally changing the website's page hierarchy, erasing critical content, or neglecting your existing keyword structure can cause your ranks to decline and even cause your existing traffic and conversion rates to plummet.
An SEO audit should include some of the most critical steps: First, identify your targeted keywords for your website through keyword research. And analyze your current top 20 performing pages and traffic. Second, determine which key pages are not ranking correctly, what pages need to expand or update their content, and whether technical problems or structural concerns need to be tackled. Also, conduct a competitive analysis so you can see how your competition optimizes their sites and you can discover your own gaps and space for optimization.
In web design, it is essential to continue the existing keyword strategy and page optimization. To avoid losing current rankings and traffic, it is critical that primary page factors are considered. Titles, meta descriptions, URL structure, and content should reasonably accommodate target keywords. Neglecting to perform these factors can result in a loss of keyword ranks and organic traffic.
The mistake most website owners make when redesigning websites is to postpone SEO optimization until the last phase of the design or worse. It ignores the importance of SEO altogether. From website planning to content creation, from technical deployment to page design, SEO should always be done at all times. To ensure the effect of the redesign, you need to develop an extensive SEO checklist at the outset of the project to ensure that all links are fully taken into account for SEO. To prevent affecting search traffic and rankings by design changes. It is a key consideration for website design.
Image by Canva
2. Dumping high-performing content
If your current content is doing well, don't delete or alter it lightly, as this can lead to a loss of traffic, inbound links, and featured snippets, which ultimately impacts your website's SEO performance. Search engines put a high value on user experience, particularly by merging search intent with search results to decide which pages should be given priority. If you delete or alter high-performing content, it can impact your website's ranking directly, especially in a competitive field where keyword relevance and content value are most important.
It is also important for youto update and keep your website content fresh. If you do not update your content during the process of redesigning, you can provide visitors with outdated or incorrect information, which in turn affects your website's credibility. According to search engines, being timely and useful in the content presented on a regular basis is the key to ranking at the top. Consequently, as the redesign is being done, it should also be remembered to make your current content valid, informative, and pertinent to what your audience will require.
Even when you don't redesign websites, it remains an elementary SEO best practice to monitor and modify content from time to time in order to have pages. It will always attract visitors and provide top-quality content that is much loved by search engines. In the event that you are required to edit some of your content. You should ensure the page title, H1, and H2 titles. Also, connecting words are kept up for consistency and stability in SEO.
Remember, when updating performing content, you must tread carefully. One thing is that you want the content to be the best that it can be in terms of quality and content pertinence. The other is that you do not want to update too much to affect search rankings. For example, if you lose keywords during the content update, you will experience a ranking loss. Deleting or altering pages that generate high traffic to your site can be detrimental to past SEO work. While changing websites, you need to know which pages generate the most traffic and conversions. It should be preserved and optimized on the new site.
Most importantly, you need to transfer all the good content from the previous website. Such as blog posts, white papers, videos, and images—to the new website. Although this process might be heavy, it needs to be done in order to preserve existing SEO value. The engaging blog pages and articles on the previous website will also produce SEO value on the new website. Everything doesn't need to be rewritten once you redesign websites. You just need to optimize the use of the keywords in the existing content to get more organic visits to the new site. Content is always the foundation of the success of a website. Not only does it attract visitors, but it also increases the visibility of the site. If content migration is neglected or is outdated, old and irrelevant content is allowed to remain. It can lead to a loss of search engine visibility and even affect the overall performance of the site.
Image by Canva
3. Missing the opportunity to change above-the-fold content
When redesigning websites, the above-the-fold is a significant factor in site design. You may naturally focus on the above-the-fold design and look. However, it is also important to make sure the content is well optimized and well written. From the SEO perspective, the originality and quality of the above-the-fold content have a key contribution to search engine rankings. While the visual elements are great for drawing eyeballs, such as stars like hero images, search engines will ignore the potential of these pages if the value for 'above the fold' is lacking and fails to directly address user needs. It is a key consideration for website design.
Ensure that the content above the fold is not mere repetition but meaningful content. To ensure that it is not mere illustrations but contains unique, interesting, and relevant content. This copy must simply state the main value of the page. And assist in enhancing the website's search engine visibility. Google quite explicitly suggests that website owners offer distinctive and useful content above the fold. It is probably an easy tactic to place redundant information atop each and every page. But this lazy tactic can damage your site's rankings, decrease user experience, and impact conversion rates.
Apart from this, the above-the-fold content should also contain brief and clear calls to action (CTA), for instance, requesting users to scroll down the page, click on a specific link, or watch a video. By placing these interactive elements close to the fold, you can increase the interaction of the users, which in turn further improves SEO performance and conversion rates.
Ensure mobile-friendly responsive when you redesign websites. The content above the fold use value is even more critical on the phone where screen real estate is reduced and the user is more likely to look at basic information first. Making the above-the-fold content brief, nice-looking, and speedy enough to condense the gist of the site could actually amplify the SEO impact of the site in addition to attracting more traffic.
4. Missing mobile optimization
According to MobiLoud approximately 62.45% of all Internet traffic worldwide is from mobile devices. Hence, it is absolutely necessary to optimize your website's mobile function.
Since people are increasingly depending on mobile phones and smart devices to access the Internet, it is equally important to optimize your website for mobile devices as well. If your site lacks a smooth experience for mobile users, you may lose search positions or even decrease visibility among mobile users. On mobile devices especially, there are fewer opportunities for getting clicks due to the smaller display and tougher click activities. Therefore, to get more mobile conversions, your site must initially reach the top of the SERP.
Page loading speed is essential for mobile optimization. On Mobile or desktop platforms, users will leave the website and go somewhere else if the page loads slowly. In the case of mobile devices, the need for speed is greater.
In short, mobile optimization is not an optional extra function but a fundamental part of the site redesign. If you ignore this, you could lose traffic and ranking chances, which will ultimately affect your business performance. Making your site's mobile experience as smooth, fast, and intuitive as it is on the desktop is one of the secrets to boosting SEO performance.
Image by Canva
5. Failing to fix broken links before release
Fixing every broken link before releasing a new version of your site is crucial. If you release a site with a high number of broken links, before the problem is even known and the links are fixed, your SEO rankings may be already compromised. Not only will you spend a great amount of money and time repairing the problems, but the repair may not even restore the previous SEO results. It is a key consideration for website design.
Conclusion
Redesigning websites can lead to some common mistakes that will negatively impact your SEO. Avoiding these mistakes can make your website function as well after redesigning it as it used to. Follow the five tips listed above, you can redesign websites for better SEO performance.
Other than that, you can also use Wegic to change the website. Wegic is a web designer that allows you to chat with AI. You can tell Wegic's AI assistants what you want, and they will help you complete your ideas. Furthermore, Wegic can optimize your SEO to the best extent possible and avoid the mistakes in this article. Let's try it out for free now!
Click the picture here to find out Wegic's best practices! ⬇️
https://wegic.ai/best-practices
Written by
Kimmy
Published on
Mar 28, 2025
Share article
Read more
Our latest blog
Webpages in a minute, powered by Wegic!
With Wegic, transform your needs into stunning, functional websites with advanced AI
Free trial with Wegic, build your site in a click!