Website Redesign Checklist: Planning, Content and SEO

A website redesign checklist keeps the project tied to business goals and protects what already works — your content, your search visibility and your tracking — while you change the rest. The essentials are: agree why you are redesigning, record how the current site performs, inventory every page, decide what happens to each one, protect SEO during the switch, and check everything in the weeks after launch. The checklist below is organised in that order.

Phase 1: Before anyone designs anything

Agree the reasons

• Write down the specific problems the redesign must solve: outdated brand, poor mobile experience, hard-to-edit CMS, low enquiry rate, missing services, slow pages.
• Turn each problem into a measurable goal where you can, such as more form submissions from service pages or fewer support calls asking for opening hours.
• Name one decision-maker for sign-off, plus the people whose input is needed (sales, operations, compliance).
• Agree what is out of scope, so the project does not quietly become a rebrand, a new booking system and a new CRM at once.

Benchmark the current site

You cannot judge the new site without a baseline. Export and save:

• Traffic, conversions and conversion rate by page for the last 12 months, so seasonal patterns such as Ramadan and summer are visible
• Top landing pages from organic search and the queries they appear for, from Google Search Console
• Pages that receive backlinks from other websites
• Current page speed results for key templates

Our GA4 reporting guide explains where to find the conversion data.

Phase 2: Content inventory and decisions

List every URL

• Crawl the current site with an SEO crawler and export every URL, including PDFs and old campaign pages.
• Add each page's traffic, conversions and backlink count to the spreadsheet.

Decide each page's fate

Decision	When to choose it
Keep	Performs well and is still accurate; migrate with light edits
Improve	Has traffic or links but is outdated or thin; rewrite
Merge	Several weak pages cover the same topic; combine into one stronger page
Remove	No traffic, no links, no business purpose; redirect or retire
Create	A service or question the old site never covered

Be careful with "remove". Pages that look unimportant sometimes bring steady search traffic. For guidance on updating rather than deleting, see our article on content refreshes.

Assign the writing

• Give each page to be written or rewritten an owner and a deadline.
• Decide whether Arabic versions are needed and who will produce them.
• Collect photography, video, logos and proof you have permission to use.
• Start content before design is final; late content is the most common cause of delays.

Phase 3: Design and build

• Design key templates (homepage, service page, article, contact) using real content, not placeholder text.
• Review designs on a phone first; most customers will see that version.
• Keep primary calls to action and contact routes (call, form, WhatsApp) obvious on every template.
• Check basic accessibility: colour contrast, keyboard navigation, form labels and image alt text.
• Make sure editors can update common content without a developer.
• Rebuild tracking in the new site: analytics, conversion events, ad pixels and consent handling.

Phase 4: SEO safeguards

Most ranking losses after a redesign come from changed URLs without redirects, lost content and blocked crawling. Our detailed guide to website migrations without losing rankings covers redirects and checks in depth. At checklist level:

• Keep existing URLs wherever the page is staying; change them only for a real reason.
• Build a redirect map from every old URL that is changing to its closest new equivalent.
• Carry over page titles, meta descriptions and headings for pages that rank well, improving rather than discarding them.
• Keep the staging site blocked from search engines — then remember to remove the block at launch.
• Check internal links point to final URLs, not staging addresses or redirects.
• Prepare an updated XML sitemap.

Phase 5: Launch day

• Choose a quieter period for your business and avoid launching just before a weekend or public holiday when the team is unavailable.
• Confirm the noindex block is removed and robots.txt allows crawling.
• Test a sample of redirects, including your highest-traffic old URLs.
• Submit every form and tap every WhatsApp and call button; confirm messages arrive in the right inbox.
• Check conversion events fire in analytics and ad platforms.
• Submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console.
• Confirm SSL works on every version of the domain.

Phase 6: The first month

• Watch Search Console for crawl errors, not-found pages and indexing changes, and fix missing redirects promptly.
• Compare traffic and conversions with your benchmark, allowing for normal fluctuation in the first weeks.
• Review recordings or heatmaps on key pages to spot new friction.
• Collect feedback from sales and customer service on what customers are saying.
• Keep a list of improvements for the next phase rather than treating launch as the finish line.

Key takeaways

• Set measurable goals and benchmark the old site before starting.
• Inventory every URL and make a deliberate keep, improve, merge, remove or create decision.
• Start content early and design with real content on mobile first.
• Protect SEO with preserved URLs, a full redirect map and careful launch checks.
• Monitor closely for a month after launch and fix issues fast.

For the design and build itself, work with our sister company WOT Innovation. Wot Digital can support the SEO side of the move through our SEO services, from benchmarking to post-launch monitoring.