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Redesigning your agency's website without losing your SEO
A new, better-looking website can make an agency vanish from Google on the very day it goes live. It is not inevitable: it is almost always a matter of addresses.
By Mehdi, Lead Technology & Development 4 min read
A website redesign is like moving house: everyone thinks about the furniture, nobody thinks about forwarding the mail. For Google, the mail is the address of your old pages. Each one has built up links, rankings and sometimes years of history.
If those addresses return an error after launch, Google gradually drops them from its results, along with the visits they brought. Here is how to avoid it, based on what Google says and what we see in audits.
What Google recommends when addresses change
Google asks for permanent redirects, such as 301 or 308: each old address automatically sends visitors to the new one. Google states that these redirects do not lose the value the page has built up, and advises avoiding redirect chains by pointing straight to the final destination. Source: Google Search Central, retrieved 31 October 2026.
In other words, it is not the redesign that costs rankings: it is the forgotten addresses.
What we see in audits
In October 2026 we audited the website of a Walloon estate agency built on a property software template. The template had never been cleaned up before launch. We found:
- an “agency” page carrying the name and address of another agency, in Cannes;
- five template demo pages, visible to Google;
- ten pages about French cities listed in the sitemap, returning a server error.
None of these defects shows up when you browse from the home page. Google sees them all, because it crawls the site page by page, including the pages nobody opens.
The launch-day checklist
- List every address of the old website before replacing it, sitemap included.
- Match each old address to its new page, one by one, with a 301 redirect.
- Delete the template demo pages before launch, not after.
- Check that the new sitemap only lists pages that respond correctly.
- Check on the day that every old address reaches the right page in a single hop.
That check takes a few minutes with a script. It saves you from discovering three months later, in your analytics, that valuation requests have dropped.
What an agency website should add
A successful redesign does more than break nothing. It connects the website to your property software, so listings are always up to date, and gives every branch and every target municipality its own page. That is how we build our real-estate websites.
Questions to ask before the redesign
- Who lists every current address, and when?
- Who writes the redirects, and who checks them on launch day?
- Will listings come automatically from your software, or have to be copied over?
- Will every branch and every target municipality get its own page?
If the answer to any of these questions is vague, clarify it before signing rather than discover it after launch.
What a client says
« Merci KLIX pour la création de mon site. Super rapide, super aimable, toujours disponible. Je recommande à 100%. » (Translated from French: “Thank you KLIX for building my site. Super fast, super friendly, always available. I recommend them 100%.”)
What to remember
- A redesign does not cost rankings; addresses without redirects do.
- Every old address should reach its new page in a single hop.
- Template demo pages must be gone before launch.
- The check happens on launch day, not three months later.
Planning a redesign? We list your current addresses before launch and check the redirects on the day. Request a free audit or get in touch.
