SMALL-BUSINESS WEBSITE REDESIGN CHECKLIST
Surfaced — https://upsurfaced.com

BEFORE THE REDESIGN
[ ] Name the primary audience, offer, and conversion goal.
[ ] Record a 28-day baseline: impressions, clicks, leads, sales, and page speed.
[ ] Export all current URLs and identify valuable landing pages.
[ ] Save current titles, descriptions, headings, structured data, and analytics events.
[ ] List every form, phone link, booking flow, payment, CRM, email, and third-party integration.
[ ] Confirm who supplies and approves copy, images, legal text, and credentials.
[ ] Capture a complete backup and define a rollback plan.

STRUCTURE AND CONTENT
[ ] Give each important service a useful, distinct page.
[ ] Use one descriptive H1 and a clear primary call to action on every key page.
[ ] Add real proof: process, examples, reviews, pricing guidance, and ownership details.
[ ] Match each search-intent topic to one primary page to prevent keyword cannibalization.
[ ] Write descriptive internal links between related pages.
[ ] Check spelling, factual claims, dates, prices, and contact information.

SEO MIGRATION
[ ] Keep valuable URLs wherever practical.
[ ] Map every changed or removed URL to the closest relevant live page with a 301 redirect.
[ ] Add unique titles and meta descriptions.
[ ] Add self-referencing canonical URLs.
[ ] Validate relevant structured data.
[ ] Ensure indexable pages are not blocked in robots.txt.
[ ] Keep noindex pages crawlable until search engines have processed the directive.
[ ] Generate a clean XML sitemap containing only canonical, indexable URLs.

QUALITY ASSURANCE
[ ] Test navigation and internal links.
[ ] Test forms, emails, phone links, booking links, payments, and confirmation states.
[ ] Test important templates on real mobile and desktop devices.
[ ] Check keyboard navigation, labels, contrast, focus states, and image alt text.
[ ] Optimize image dimensions, formats, and loading behavior.
[ ] Test important pages with PageSpeed Insights.
[ ] Verify the 404 page and redirect map.
[ ] Verify HTTPS and remove mixed content.

MEASUREMENT
[ ] Confirm GA4 or chosen analytics is installed once.
[ ] Track form submissions, phone clicks, email clicks, bookings, and purchases where relevant.
[ ] Filter internal/team traffic from reporting.
[ ] Verify Google Search Console ownership.
[ ] Record the launch date and baseline metrics.

AFTER LAUNCH
[ ] Crawl the production site and fix broken links or missing assets.
[ ] Submit the sitemap and inspect the most important URLs in Search Console.
[ ] Confirm redirects and canonical URLs in production.
[ ] Confirm analytics events and real lead delivery.
[ ] Monitor indexing, non-brand impressions, clicks, leads, and conversions weekly for 4 weeks.
[ ] Review results after 28 days before making major SEO decisions.

This checklist is a planning aid, not a guarantee of rankings or traffic.