Top SEO Considerations When Rebuilding a Website

Everyone loves a new website… It’s like having a fresh start – a fresh user experience, an updated navigation, everything where you want it because nothing extra has been bolted on. 

However, I’ve also experienced many that have turned into an SEO disaster because they were not approached strategically. I’ve seen too many beautiful new websites launch with traffic dropping off a cliff because SEO wasn’t considered until after development was complete.

(This isn’t just an intro – it’s true. The latest case was for an International College in Ireland that had been ranking for over 5000 terms globally and had a steady stream of organic applications. An agency sent their new site live “streamlining it” – aka stripping out hundreds of pages and redirecting them – and they went to 0 applications in three weeks. We’ve had to replace that traffic with ads while we work on rebuilding their SEO). 

For us agencies, these considerations are particularly important since we’re often balancing client design requests against technical requirements – and WE are the web professionals in this deal. Therefore, it is up to us to get it right for them. 

So, let’s dive into the critical SEO factors you should address in every website rebuild:

1️⃣ Pre-Migration SEO Healthcheck

Before touching a single line of code, conduct a comprehensive SEO and Content audit of the existing site. This is something I do for every rebuild project, and it’s consistently proven to be invaluable. 

Why it matters: This gives you a baseline of current web performance and identifies what’s working (to preserve) and what’s broken (to fix). Without this, you’re essentially guessing at what needs attention.

Key actions:

• Run a technical SEO audit to identify existing issues
• Document current rankings for important keywords
• Analyze which pages drive the most organic traffic
• Review Google Search Console for crawl errors and warnings
• Identify pages receiving backlinks from external sites

2️⃣ Content Planning & URL Preservation

The URLs that have built authority over time are like digital real estate – you don’t want to abandon them without good reason.

Why it matters: When you change URLs without proper planning, you’re essentially throwing away hard-earned SEO equity. This is EXACTLY what happened with the college site mentioned above.

Key actions:

• Identify high-performing pages through analytics / Google Search Console (if you’re an SEO Stack User, this even has a report for you so it’s super simple)
• Map existing URLs to their new equivalents in your site plan
• Preserve successful URL structures whenever possible
• Conduct content gap analysis against competitors to find new opportunities
• Plan a logical hierarchy for navigation and internal linking

Quick tip: Before finalizing your permalink structure, consider how it will affect existing URLs. Sometimes maintaining a slightly less-than-ideal structure is better than changing everything.

3️⃣ Performance-based Foundation

Core Web Vitals are now a ranking factor, and many sites struggle with performance issues. You don’t want the new site you build to perform WORSE than the site it is replacing. 🙄

Why it matters: A website rebuild is an opportunity to start fresh with performance as a priority, rather than trying to optimize something you’ve inherited and putting some sticky-plasters over the top.

Key actions:

• Select hosting optimized specifically for performance
• Choose a lightweight, well-coded theme (or build a custom one)
• Check that your page builder (if you’re using one) doesn’t create performance issues
• Implement proper caching solutions from day one
• Create an image optimization process – either in code or through a third party CDN
• Minimize plugin bloat by carefully selecting only necessary tools and uninstalling anything the site doesn’t need before launch! 

Pro tip: Consider managed WordPress hosting platforms like Rocket, Kinsta, or Cloudways that offer server-level optimizations. For themes, look at those built with performance in mind like GeneratePress, Kadence, or a custom solution using Twig or Underscores.

4️⃣ Structured Data Implementation

Structured data helps search engines understand your content and can lead to rich results in SERPs. It isn’t always very straight forward, but there are plenty of tools out there to make this process easier. 

Why it matters: Building schema markup into templates from the start is far more efficient than adding it later, and it ensures consistent implementation across the site.

Key actions:

• Identify the most valuable schema types for the client’s industry
• Build schema into WordPress templates rather than adding manually
• Test implementation before launch using Google’s testing tools
• Include local business markup for relevant clients

5️⃣ Comprehensive Migration Checklist

The actual migration process requires careful planning to ensure nothing falls through the cracks – we did a whole SEO Weekly on this back in week 16. 😍

Why it matters: The migration process is where all the pieces of the jigsaw have to come together coherently. You’ve got a great looking staging site, this is the process to (technically) morph old into new.

Key actions:

• Create and test a comprehensive 301 redirect strategy – this could have been a point on its own! 
• Transfer analytics tracking codes and set up proper event tracking
• Set up or transfer Search Console properties
• Generate and submit a new XML sitemap
• Configure robots.txt appropriately
• Implement SSL and force HTTPS for all pages
• If you want to be a bit more advanced, also implement an llms.txt file for the GPT crawlers too

6️⃣ Post-Launch Validation

Your site is live – phew… 😅

Well, almost “phew”… Your job isn’t done when the site goes live – in many ways, that’s when the real SEO work begins.

Why it matters: Even with perfect planning, issues can arise during migration. Catching them early minimizes potential damage.

Key actions:

• Conduct a post-migration SEO healthcheck – and fix ANYTHING it throws up
• Verify all redirects are working as expected
• Check indexation status in Search Console after 3, 10 and 20 days
• Request re-crawling of important pages
• Monitor for traffic drops or ranking changes
• Address any new issues promptly

An SEO Mindset

I hope what this post has highlighted is that SEO has to be a consideration in your website project from day one, not an afterthought. This means:

• Including SEO requirements in the initial project scope and pricing
• Building SEO checkpoints into your development timeline
• Having clear communication between designers, developers and SEO specialists
• Setting realistic client expectations about post-launch performance

Remember, a website (re)build is an opportunity to build a stronger SEO foundation based on your performance stack. I know that most of us got into this because we “just like building websites” – and all this stuff gets in the way a little… But don’t waste the opportunity to build something that is beautiful AND performs way above expectations for your client. 

I’d love to know if you’ve had (or have heard of) any other SEO rebuild nightmares… Drop a summary below 👇