Why a relaunch can cost you rankings
Google does not rate your company, it rates individual pages at individual addresses. A relaunch often changes exactly those addresses, plus content, structure and tech, all at the same time. If old addresses lead nowhere, Google loses the connection to everything your website built up over years. That is why traffic collapses after badly planned relaunches.
The good news: careful planning avoids most of this risk. There is no guarantee, Google promises nobody unchanged rankings, and some weeks of fluctuation after a relaunch are normal. Google describes the procedure for address changes in its documentation on site moves with URL changes.
Before go-live
- Create a URL inventory: record all existing addresses, including the pages that bring visitors via Google today. Search Console shows you which those are.
- Plan redirects: every old address gets a 301 redirect to the new page that matches it in content. Redirect everything to the homepage and Google treats it as a soft 404: the old addresses drop out of the index and their ranking signals are lost.
- Keep proven content: do not delete or radically shorten pages that rank. Rewriting yes, gutting no.
- Carry over titles and meta descriptions or improve them deliberately, but do not leave them to chance.
- Check internal linking: the new pages should link to each other meaningfully, not only be reachable via the menu.
After go-live
- Check noindex and robots.txt. The most common relaunch mistake of all is the forgotten block from the staging environment.
- Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and check indexing of the most important pages.
- Watch 404 errors during the first weeks and add any redirects you missed.
- Compare rankings and traffic. A short wobble is normal, a lasting drop is not.
- Look at behaviour on the new pages, for example with Microsoft Clarity. A relaunch is the best moment to become not just prettier but measurably better.
And what does all of this cost?
Price-wise, a relaunch sits in a similar range as a new build, because the actual work is the same. The details are in our post What does a website cost in Switzerland? The SEO part, meaning inventory and redirects, is the smallest item on the list, but the one with the biggest damage potential when it is missing.
Planning a relaunch and not keen on gambling with your rankings? Then let us talk before, not after. More about how we work under web design.