When should I run a site audit after a redesign?
Before the new site goes live
Crawl the current site and save the results, including URLs, titles, status codes and internal links. That snapshot becomes your baseline. Without it, you may struggle to tell which losses came from the redesign and which were already there.
Pull a list of the top landing pages from analytics before launch, not just the pages in your sitemap. Those high-traffic URLs deserve the closest attention when you map redirects.
The first week after launch
Crawl the fresh site as soon as it goes up, and watch for redirect chains, 404 errors and accidental noindex tags. Check that old URLs point to the right new pages, with a one-to-one match where possible. Submit an updated sitemap so search engines find the new structure faster.
Give the new site a few weeks before judging its rankings.
Follow-up checks
Recheck the site a few weeks later, once search engines have revisited many pages. Look at Search Console coverage and performance trends by section. Fix any new errors before they pile up across the site.
Compare organic traffic by section against the saved baseline, and pay attention to any drop that lasts past the first month.
Common mistakes
- Launching a redesign with no saved crawl of the old site.
- Redirecting every old page to the homepage instead of the closest match.
