Redesign if your site runs on software that still gets security updates and holds up on a phone. Start again if it fails either test, because fixing that means replacing most of the site anyway. Whichever you choose, point every old address at its new page with a permanent redirect. Google’s own guide says those redirects don’t cost you PageRank, and to keep them for at least a year.
Check what it runs on
If your site is WordPress, it runs on a programming language called PHP. WordPress recommends PHP 8.3 or newer. The PHP project only supports 8.2 and later, and 8.2 gets its last security fixes on 31 December 2026. Anything older has reached what PHP calls end of life, and PHP tells anyone still on it to upgrade as soon as possible.
You can see where yours stands in the WordPress dashboard, under Tools, then Site Health. WordPress flags it there when the PHP version is out of date.
Ask your host to move the site to a supported version. If the site breaks when they do, the theme or the plugins it leans on need replacing, and that’s rebuild work whatever it ends up being called.
On Wix or Squarespace there’s no version to check. The question there is whether your content can come with you when you leave, which we went through in Wix or Squarespace vs a custom website.
Then look at it on a phone
Google ranks your site on what it sees on a phone. Its documentation says it uses the mobile version of a site’s content for indexing and ranking.
Put your home page through Google’s PageSpeed Insights. It reports the three measures Google calls Core Web Vitals, and Google has published what counts as good for each one.
| Measure | What it tracks | Good |
|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint | How long the main content takes to appear | Within 2.5 seconds |
| Interaction to Next Paint | How quickly the page responds to a tap or a click | 200 milliseconds or less |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | How much the page jumps around while it loads | 0.1 or less |
Google measures these over real visits, and a page passes when at least three in four visits are good on each measure. If your site doesn’t get enough visits for that, PageSpeed Insights says it can’t show real-user data. The lab test underneath is still worth reading.
A slow score on its own doesn’t decide anything. A heavy photo at the top of the home page is a redesign fix. If the layout itself falls apart on a narrow screen, the templates were built for a desktop, and new templates are most of a rebuild.
Find the pages people already find
Open Google Search Console and go to the Performance report. Its Pages tab lists the addresses on your site that turn up in Google, with the clicks each one gets. Those are the addresses to protect, whichever way you go.
If you’ve never set up Search Console, do that before anything else. It’s a free service from Google, and the rest of this article leans on it.
When a redesign is enough
If the software is supported and the site holds up on a phone, a redesign is usually the cheaper road. The addresses stay where they are, so there’s nothing to redirect, and the pages that already rank can keep what they say while the design around them changes.
We don’t have a separate redesign price. A redesign is quoted against the same packages as a new build, because the work is close to the same: a business website of up to six pages is $1,500, and a custom website of up to eight is $2,500.
When starting again is cheaper
Start again when the platform is out of support or the layout fails on phones at the template level. Fixing either means replacing most of what’s there. Patching it now and rebuilding a year later means paying twice for the same pages.
Ownership is the other reason. If you can’t log in to your own site, or the domain sits in someone else’s account, a rebuild is the time to fix that. Setting up redirects needs control of both, so it has to be sorted before the move.
Will starting again lose our rankings?
Google has a guide for exactly this, called Site moves with URL changes. It doesn’t pretend nothing will move.
Primary source, verbatim
Expect temporary fluctuation in site ranking during the move.
The same guide says permanent redirects, the 301 and 308 kinds, don’t cause a loss in PageRank. It gives a timescale too. For a small or medium site, most pages take a few weeks to move in Google’s index, and bigger sites take longer.
So some movement while Google catches up is expected. A lot of the guide is about the map: a list of every old address and the new page it should go to.
How the move is done
- List every old addressStart with the pages Search Console shows getting clicks, then add the rest from your sitemap. Google’s guide counts images and other embedded files too.
- Decide where each one goesMatch each old page to the new page that answers the same question. Where nothing does, pick the closest page a visitor would still find useful.
- Redirect each one permanently, in one hopGoogle recommends permanent redirects such as 301 and 308, set up on the server, and says to avoid chains of redirects.
- Update your own links and your sitemapChange the links inside the new site to the new addresses, then submit the new sitemap in Search Console.
- Leave the redirects in placeGoogle’s guide says to keep them for as long as possible, and generally at least a year.
When we moved six of our own pages
On 9 October 2026 we moved six articles from this site to our sister site, c4site.com.au. Each old address now sends a permanent redirect straight to its new page, in one hop. Here are two of them. Open either old address and you’ll land on the new one.
| Old address | Where it goes now |
|---|---|
| c4studios.com.au/ai-indemnity-you-already-have/ | c4site.com.au/articles/ai-indemnity-you-already-have/ |
| c4studios.com.au/one-page-ai-policy/ | c4site.com.au/articles/one-page-ai-policy/ |
Each one is in our redirect file twice, with the slash on the end and without it, so both spellings land in the same place.
What we couldn’t establish
We looked for a published figure on how often redesigns lose search traffic. Every one we found came from SEO companies or trade press, measured on other people’s sites with third-party tools. None came from Google or from published research, so there’s no percentage in this article.
Google doesn’t say how long the ranking wobble lasts, only that most pages on a small or medium site take a few weeks to move, and we haven’t guessed. It’s also too soon to say how our own six pages are doing on their new site. They moved on 9 October 2026.
Sources
Every figure in this article was read at the document itself.
Common questions
- How much does a website redesign cost?
- We quote a redesign against the same packages as a new build: $1,500 for a business website of up to six pages, or $2,500 for a custom website of up to eight. If only a few pages need work, we’ll quote just those.
- Can we keep our domain name?
- Yes. Your domain is separate from the website on it, so a new site can go up on the same domain. If your page addresses stay the same as well, there’s nothing to redirect.
- How long do the redirects need to stay?
- Google’s guide says as long as possible, and generally at least a year. It also notes that redirects are slow for visitors, so point your own links straight at the new addresses.
- Will a redesign fix our Google rankings?
- Not by itself. A site that loads quickly and works on a phone helps, but what your pages say and which other sites link to you count as well. If rankings are the real problem, our article on whether small businesses need SEO is a better place to start.