Redesign the site without giving up the rankings it already has
We rebuild an ageing site on Next.js while keeping its Google rankings — full URL inventory, mapped 301 redirects, and daily monitoring for three weeks after cutover.
The problem
A redesign that goes wrong does not look wrong on day one. It looks better, more current, and everyone is pleased. Three weeks later organic traffic has halved and nobody can explain it, because by every other measure the new site is an improvement. The cause is almost always mechanical: old page addresses changed without redirects pointing to the new ones, so Google keeps arriving at pages that no longer exist and gradually drops them from results. Or the new design quietly discarded text that had been accumulating value for years — a service page of a thousand words became three tidy paragraphs because that looked cleaner, and the reason the page ranked went with the words that were cut. Plenty of companies postpone a redesign for years precisely because of this scenario. They would rather live with a site that looks dated than risk the traffic that currently brings enquiries at no extra media cost. The dilemma is real: the old site no longer convinces anyone, but it does rank, and nobody wants to trade one weakness for a worse one.
What we build
Nothing about the design changes until the existing site has been inventoried. Every URL currently live is recorded along with how much search traffic it brings, which tells us which pages carry value that must not be lost and which can be restructured freely. Each old address is then mapped to a new one with a permanent 301 redirect, so a visitor or a crawler landing on the old URL ends up on the right new page rather than a not-found error. Text that earned its rankings is not thrown away; it moves across and gets rewritten inside the new design rather than against it, with a better heading structure than it had before. The new build runs on Next.js, which improves load speed independently of content — meaning rankings have room to rise rather than merely survive. Before anything goes live, the new site runs in parallel on a staging address where speed, structure and every redirect are checked one by one against the inventory. After cutover we watch traffic daily for two to three weeks, so anything that did not go as planned is caught immediately instead of a month later when it is far harder to unpick.
What you get
- Full inventory of existing URLs with traffic per page
- Redirect map from every old address to its new counterpart
- New design built on Next.js with measurably better load speed
- Content migrated and restructured without losing accumulated value
- Staging deployment and pre-cutover check of every redirect
- Daily traffic and ranking monitoring for three weeks after launch
Stack
Timeline
The inventory and redirect map take one to two weeks and happen before any design work begins. Design and build run three to six weeks depending on page count. Cutover itself is a single switch, scheduled for a low-traffic hour, and the project stays open for a further two to three weeks of monitoring before it is formally closed.
Indicative cost
Redesigning a corporate site of up to ten pages, including the full redirect map and SEO checks, runs between €2,000 and €5,500 depending on page count and how much material has to be carried over. An online store costs more because of the product catalog, and we quote it only after the initial inventory rather than guessing up front.
Frequently asked questions
Will I lose my Google rankings after the redesign?
Not if it is done properly. Every old address redirects permanently to its new counterpart and the text that carried value is kept. The risk exists only when a redesign happens without that mapping — which is exactly the work we do before anything else changes.
Does the current site have to go offline while you work?
No. The new design is built on a separate staging address and the existing site stays live and indexed until the replacement has been fully checked. The switch happens in one moment, usually at a low-traffic hour.
Is a redesign cheaper than building a new site from scratch?
Usually, because the content and the information architecture already exist and do not have to be invented again. Indicatively from €2,000 for a straightforward corporate site, scaling with page count and the volume of material being migrated.
Who watches the traffic after the switch, and what if a page drops?
We do, through Google Search Console, for two to three weeks after launch. If a page loses ranking unexpectedly we fix it at no extra charge, because that monitoring window is part of the delivery rather than a separate service.
Can I keep my current CMS or do I have to move?
In most cases we recommend moving to the system we pair with Next.js, since it is faster and simpler to work in day to day. If you have a specific reason to keep what you have — an integration, an editorial workflow, a licence already paid for — we look at it together during the inventory phase before committing either way.
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