How long after a redesign should I expect a temporary dip in traffic?

Some temporary fluctuation during re-indexing is normal and usually resolves within two to four weeks if redirects and indexing are set up correctly. A dip that persists past a month, or that hits enquiries harder than traffic, usually points to one of the checklist items above, not normal settling.

Do I need a redirect for every single old URL, even minor ones?

Ideally yes, but prioritize any URL that had real traffic, rankings, or backlinks. A blog post nobody ever visited matters less than a service page that used to rank on page one — start with your highest-traffic URLs from analytics.

How do I know if my conversion tracking actually broke versus enquiries genuinely dropping?

Submit a real test enquiry and watch for it in your ad platform's conversion reporting and your analytics in real time. If the test doesn't show up within a reasonable window, tracking is broken, not demand.

Can a redesign actually improve SEO if done correctly?

Yes — a faster, better-structured site with correct redirects and indexing can improve rankings over time. The risk described here comes specifically from skipped technical steps during migration, not from redesigning in general.

Who should be responsible for checking this, the designer or a separate SEO review?

Design and SEO/technical migration are different skill sets. Even a great designer or developer can miss redirect mapping or tracking re-installation if it isn't explicitly part of the launch checklist — it's worth a dedicated review before and after launch.

SEO/AEOFeb 3, 2026

Your Website Redesign Looks Better. Where Did the Enquiries Go?

A redesign that quietly kills your enquiries almost never fails because the new site "looks worse" — it fails because something structural broke during the switch: redirects, indexing, form tracking, or conversion tracking, usually more than one at once. The good news is these failures are checkable in an afternoon, not a mystery that takes months to diagnose.

Why Does a Better-Looking Site Sometimes Convert Worse?

Design and performance are separate problems. A visually stronger site can still lose enquiries if the pages that used to rank on Google no longer exist at the same URL, if the new site accidentally blocks search engines from indexing it, or if the contact form that used to fire a tracked event now fails silently. None of those show up by looking at the site — they show up in traffic and conversion data, which is exactly why they get missed.

What's the Redirect Check?

Every URL that existed on the old site and had earned rankings or backlinks needs a 301 redirect to its closest equivalent on the new site. Skipping this sends visitors and search engines to a 404 page, and Google treats that old ranking as gone — not paused, gone, to be earned back from scratch. Pull your old sitemap and check every URL redirects somewhere real.

What's the Indexing Check?

What to Check	How It Silently Breaks Enquiries
robots.txt	A staging-environment "disallow all" rule sometimes ships to production by accident
Meta robots tags	A "noindex" tag left on pages after launch tells Google to drop them from results
XML sitemap	An outdated sitemap still pointing to old URLs slows re-indexing of the new ones
Google Search Console	Should show a spike in indexing requests right after launch, not a silent drop in indexed pages

What's the Forms Check?

Submit a real test enquiry through every form on the new site and confirm it actually reaches you — email, CRM, wherever it's supposed to land — and that the submission fires whatever conversion tracking event your ad platforms rely on. A form that looks fine visually but fails to fire a tracking event will make your ad campaigns look like they stopped working, when the real problem is invisible measurement, not demand.

What's the Conversion Tracking Check?

Confirm Google Analytics, Google Ads conversion tracking, and any other pixel-based tracking were re-installed correctly on the new site, not just copy-pasted from an old template that references URLs or elements that no longer exist. A redesign is the single most common time tracking silently breaks, because it's rebuilt from scratch rather than migrated.

How Do You Run This Checklist Without It Taking Days?

Redirects, indexing, and forms can each be verified in under an hour with the right tools — a redirect checker, Search Console's URL inspection tool, and one real test submission per form. Conversion tracking takes slightly longer since you need a real test conversion to confirm the event fires. Doing all four before undoing the redesign or blaming the design itself saves weeks of chasing the wrong fix. This is exactly the audit our SEO & AEO team runs immediately after any client redesign.