Website redesign SEO checklist for small businesses

Start with what your current website does well

A redesign brief should identify the pages customers already use before deciding what the new site should look like. Record your services, enquiry routes, useful downloads and links to any customer portal. Ask the person handling the build who owns the content review, who approves the copy and who will check the finished journeys.

Export your existing page URLs and review Search Console, analytics and enquiries where available. Keep a copy of the starting position. A low-traffic page may still answer an important customer question, so traffic alone should not decide whether it stays.

Make a page decision before making a redirect

For each old page, record its purpose, proposed new address and whether it is being retained, combined or removed. Keep working URLs where practical. If a page moves, use a permanent redirect to its relevant replacement. Update internal links, canonical URLs and the sitemap to use the final addresses. Check missing-page responses for content that has no replacement.

Consider a fictional service business with separate pages for repairs and installations. A cleaner menu need not mean merging both into a generic services page. Ask whether visitors still need different details, photographs and enquiry questions for those two jobs. The new page plan should preserve useful distinctions.

Put the enquiry journey in the brief

Write down what should happen after someone contacts you. Specify the required form fields, the recipient, any acknowledgement and where a record is kept. Include the agreed privacy information and consent controls for tracking. A form that looks correct is only part of the delivery: its success, error and notification paths also need checking.

If the site connects to an existing booking service or portal, include that route in the review. The Kennway Francis website example shows public service information alongside a link to an existing creditor portal.

Check the release before and after launch

• Pages: Review approved copy, page titles, descriptions, headings and images on the agreed URLs.
• Navigation: Follow the important service, contact, download and portal links on desktop and mobile.
• URL changes: Test each agreed redirect, the final destination and its canonical; avoid unnecessary redirect chains.
• Visibility: Keep staging out of search and check that the intended public pages can be crawled and indexed after launch.
• Enquiries: Test delivery using agreed test details, with a clear owner for any failures.
• Handover: Record account ownership, supplier costs, backups where applicable and the scope of future support.

Review outcomes after the release

Monitor indexing, search activity and enquiries against your starting point. Google may need time to process URL changes, and rankings can fluctuate. An accessible sitemap helps discovery but does not guarantee indexing. Keep a list of issues and check the affected URLs again after fixes.

Google's site-move guidance explains URL mapping, redirects and monitoring in more detail. A checklist reduces avoidable mistakes; it cannot promise unchanged rankings.

Explore CDM's website redesign service or use the redirect checker to inspect an individual old URL. A tool result supplements the full page plan; it does not replace it.