Full Transcript
Lauren: Okay, so my friend has had the same website for like five years. It's kind of embarrassing at this point... but she's terrified to get a new one because she's afraid she's gonna lose all her Google rankings. Is that a real thing?
Honor: Welcome to the 805 Web Minute with Lauren and Honor... We make interwebs and website stuff make sense... Let's get into it.
Honor: So... her fear is actually completely valid. The data on this is pretty scary.
Lauren: Oh no. How scary are we talking?
Honor: Nearly 9 out of 10 website redesigns fail to improve SEO. And a badly done redesign can drop your traffic by 40 percent.
Lauren: Wait... 9 out of 10? That's like... almost everyone!
Honor: Yeah. And here's the part that really hurts... the average time to recover lost rankings? About 18 months.
Lauren: 18 months! That's a year and a half of your business just... not showing up on Google?
Honor: Potentially, yeah. But here's the thing... these aren't random disasters. They're the same four mistakes happening over and over again.
Lauren: Okay, what are the mistakes? Because now I need to know.
Honor: Number one, and this is the biggest... missing redirects. When you get a new website, the page addresses often change. Like, maybe your services page used to be slash services, now it's slash what-we-do. If you don't set up what's called a redirect... basically a forwarding address... Google treats that as a completely new page.
Lauren: Oh! So all the Google trust you built up on the old page just... disappears?
Honor: Gone. Start from zero. And mistake number two is even lazier... some people just redirect everything to the homepage.
Lauren: That's like... if the post office couldn't figure out your new address, so they just sent all your mail to city hall. And you're like, cool, I guess I live at city hall now?
Honor: Ha! Exactly. Google hates it. Visitors hate it. Your rankings tank.
Lauren: What's number three?
Honor: Forgetting to flip the switch. When websites are being built, they usually have a tag that says, \"Hey Google, don't list me yet, I'm not ready.\" And if someone forgets to remove that tag when the site goes live...
Lauren: Google just... ignores you?
Honor: Completely. Your website literally won't show up in search. At all.
Lauren: That's terrifying. It's like opening a store but forgetting to unlock the front door. You're just sitting there wondering why no one's coming in.
Honor: And number four... losing all the important metadata. Your titles, descriptions, the text on your images... these are the signals Google uses to understand what your pages are about. When websites get rebuilt, this stuff often just gets forgotten.
Lauren: So it's like... you moved to a new house, but you left all your furniture behind. And now you're sitting on the floor wondering why it doesn't feel like home.
Honor: Perfect analogy. Four mistakes. All preventable. All incredibly common.
Lauren: Okay, so what's the extra? Like, can you actually redesign a website without losing rankings?
Honor: Absolutely. Google's own documentation says when redirects are done correctly, you don't lose your ranking power. The trust transfers from old pages to new pages. You might see a small dip for a few weeks while Google figures things out, but that's temporary... not permanent damage.
Lauren: So the difference between disaster and success is just... someone actually doing the work correctly?
Honor: That's it. Planning. Attention to detail. Someone who understands both design and how Google works.
Lauren: Okay, so the moral of the story is... before you get a new website, ask your web designer one question: What's your SEO migration plan? If they look at you like you're speaking another language... run.
Honor: Exactly. Ask about redirects specifically. If they don't have a plan to map every old page to its new equivalent, that's your red flag.
Lauren: And if you don't want to worry about any of this... give YouGrow a call!
Honor: Yeah, with us, SEO isn't an afterthought... it's part of the process from day one. Redirect mapping happens before any code is written. Your site launches fast... days, not months... and when it goes live, I verify Google can find everything. 79 dollars a month, month-to-month, cancel anytime. And I'm local... Arroyo Grande... you can actually call me.
Lauren: Love it. Alright, this has been 805 Web Minute. Thanks for listening.