A website redesign SEO checklist for WordPress before you rebuild a site that already has search value.

Before changing the website, crawl the current site and export important URLs, titles, descriptions, headings, canonical tags, status codes, internal links, images, schema, and sitemap entries. This creates the baseline for the redesign.

Keep URLs that already have rankings, backlinks, traffic, or business value whenever possible. When a URL must change, map it to the closest matching new page instead of redirecting everything to the homepage.

A redesign should improve clarity without removing the content Google already understands. Preserve important service descriptions, proof, FAQs, headings, location relevance, and internal links while improving the layout.

Create a redirect map before launch, test every important old URL, and confirm the new pages use clean canonical tags. This prevents broken paths, duplicate versions, and avoidable crawl confusion.

Transfer or improve titles, descriptions, Open Graph tags, schema, sitemap entries, GA4, conversion events, form tracking, and Search Console readiness before the redesigned site is opened to search engines.

After launch, inspect key URLs, submit updated sitemaps, check crawl/indexing status, watch for 404s and redirect errors, verify Core Web Vitals, and compare impressions or clicks after Google recrawls the site.