Yup, I redesigned my website.
Again.
Yes, this is the second time I've done this in 2026.
Apparently I'm having a classic millennial midlife crisis, but I can't afford a Porsche, so I'm taking it out on my website. And this time, I went a little rogue.
I drew things on my kitchen counter and photographed them. I crumpled up paper to make backgrounds. I created animations, changed layouts, and had an entire 90s-inspired fauxtoshoot.
The new Inside the Square is weird, creative, and considerably more me.
But underneath all those new design elements was a much less exciting project.
I retired hundreds of old pages, changed my website structure, created new content, updated URLs, and reconsidered what I want Inside the Square to be known for.
Which meant I had one very important question to answer:
How do you redesign an entire Squarespace website without completely confusing Google?
That's what I’m talking about in episode 106 of Think Inside the Square.
First, are you refreshing or redesigning?
These are two very different projects, and the distinction matters when it comes to SEO.
A website refresh might involve updating your colors, changing your fonts, replacing old photos, or editing the content on a few pages. Your website structure stays mostly the same.
If that's what you're doing, you don't need an elaborate SEO migration plan. You can request re-indexing in Google Search Console for pages with meaningful content changes, but there probably isn't much else to worry about.
A website redesign is a much bigger project.
We're talking new pages, new URLs, new navigation, different content, updated keywords, and potentially an entirely different website structure.
That's what I just did.
And when you change that much, you need to make sure both your visitors and search engines understand where everything went.
My Squarespace website redesign SEO checklist
This is the checklist I used for my own redesign, organized into four phases: before you build, before you launch, immediately after launch, and one week later.
01 / Before you redesign
Review your existing search performance. Open Google Search Console and check the Performance report. Look at the search queries bringing people to your site and which pages are getting impressions and clicks.
Decide what you want to be known for. What people currently find your website for might not match what you want your business to be known for next.
Audit your existing pages. Decide which pages you're keeping, updating, redirecting, or retiring.
Identify valuable legacy content. Pay particular attention to pages with search traffic, backlinks, or useful content that your audience still needs.
Create your URL mapping list. Document old URLs and their new destinations before you start removing pages. Use permanent 301 redirects for pages that have genuinely moved.
Plan helpful destinations for retired content. If there isn't a relevant replacement, consider a dedicated explanation page or allow a genuine 404 rather than redirecting everything to your homepage.
For my redesign, this meant taking a hard look at the hundreds of tutorials I'd created over the years.
A lot of them didn't represent the direction of Inside the Square anymore.
So I removed hundreds of old tutorials, kept a small selection of useful resources, and made sure visitors following old links had a way to understand what had changed.
Not everything needs to come with you into the next version of your business.
But don't leave people completely stranded.
02 / Before you launch
Review your Squarespace URL mappings. Make sure old URLs point to relevant, working destinations.
Check your page titles and SEO descriptions. Your new content should reflect what each page is about and what you want it to rank for.
Check your H1 headings. Make sure every important page has a clear primary heading.
Review your navigation and internal links. Visitors should be able to find the content that matters.
Check your images. Look for missing images, appropriate alt text, and unnecessarily large files.
Test the website on a real phone. Don't rely exclusively on Squarespace's mobile editor.
Test your buttons, menus, and interactive elements. Pay particular attention to anything that depends on a hover effect.
Make sure important pages are accessible to search engines. Check that you haven't accidentally hidden pages from search or left password protection enabled.
Test everything again. Seriously.
That last one might sound excessive, but I promise it's worth it.
Squarespace's mobile editor can give you a general idea of how a layout will look, but it isn't a perfect representation of every device.
Open the site on your phone.
Click the navigation. Press the buttons. Scroll through the pages.
You might be surprised by what you find.
03 / Immediately after launch
Test the live website. Make sure the domain loads correctly and your important pages are accessible.
Verify your URL redirects. Test the old URLs directly to confirm they're going where they're supposed to.
Check for broken links and missing images.
Review your page titles and important content on the live site.
Open Google Search Console. Confirm your new pages can be crawled and indexed.
Submit or resubmit your sitemap. For a typical Squarespace site, you'll find it at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.
Request indexing for your highest-priority new or significantly updated pages.
Check Bing Webmaster Tools. Make sure Bing also has access to your updated sitemap.
One thing I want to make clear here: resubmitting a sitemap doesn't make Google instantly understand your new website.
It helps Google discover the pages you want it to know about.
Redirects, internal links, accessible content, and time are all part of the process.
And when you've completely changed your website structure, search engines might need a little while to sort everything out.
04 / One week after launch
Review Google Search Console again. Look at impressions, clicks, and indexing reports.
Check for unexpected 404 errors. Some might be perfectly intentional; others might reveal a redirect you forgot.
Verify your most important redirects again.
Check that your new pages are being discovered and indexed.
Look for old URLs still appearing in search results. Remember that search engines don't update everything instantly.
Review your website analytics. Look for unusual changes in traffic and visitor behavior.
Fix any issues you find and continue monitoring.
And one very important reminder:
Don't panic if your traffic changes.
When you make major changes to your website, fluctuations can happen.
That doesn't automatically mean something is wrong, and it doesn't necessarily mean your redesign was a success either.
Give search engines time to process the changes, but keep watching for technical problems that need your attention.
One week is your first follow-up checkpoint, not the finish line.
One more thing: Squarespace and AI visibility
While working on this redesign, I also explored Squarespace's AI visibility features, including support for llms.txt.
An llms.txt file is a plain-text file intended to help AI systems understand important content on a website.
There's still debate about how widely it's used and whether it has a measurable effect on AI visibility, so I wouldn't treat it as a replacement for traditional SEO.
But it's an interesting feature, and I wanted to experiment with it.
I gave AI my new sitemap, my most important pages, and my business goals. Then I asked it to help me draft an llms.txt file, with one specific instruction:
Ask me five questions or fewer to get the information you need.
That gave me a starting point I could review and add to my website.
Is it going to magically make Inside the Square appear in every AI-generated answer?
Probably not.
But it was worth exploring as part of a much larger redesign.
A redesign is more than a new coat of paint
The fun part of redesigning a website is making it look different.
New typography. New images. New layouts. Weird little animations.
I clearly had way too much fun with that part.
But a successful redesign also means understanding what you're changing, why you're changing it, and what happens to everything you're leaving behind.
For Inside the Square, this redesign wasn't just about aesthetics.
It was about building a website that represents where the business is going next, instead of where it used to be.
And yes, I'm hoping this version lasts a little longer than the last one.
If you're ready to push your own Squarespace projects beyond the standard design settings, enrollment for Beyond the Basics is now open.
It's my course for Squarespace designers who want to use AI to build creative custom solutions while keeping their own expertise and judgment at the center of the process.
Use the tools. Trust your judgment.
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This transcript was automatically generated by Descript AI and. may contain error.s
[00:00:00] I am going through a classic millennial midlife crisis right now, but I can't afford a Porsche, so I'm taking it out on my website. I have recently redone everything on my website for the second time this year, and I just launched a brand new Inside the Square yesterday. Personally, I'm pretty excited about it.
[00:00:19] I went really cool and kind of rogue with all of the design elements that I added. I'm talking about sketching things out on my kitchen counter and photographing them and turning them into elements on the page. I crumpled up paper and took pictures of that to make backgrounds. I had an awesome "fauxtoshoot" with a real 90s zine vibe to it.
[00:00:37] It was a ton of fun. But that is not what this episode is about. What I want to talk to you about in this episode is what I did that no one's going to see, the incredibly important behind-the-scenes aspects of a website redesign that a lot of people don't really think about until it's too late. I'm Becca from Inside the Square, and in this episode of Think Inside the Square, I'm going to be sharing with you what I did before, during, and after my website redesign fauxtoshoot" to make sure that I didn't leave Google wondering where everything went.
[00:01:10] Because what's the point of redesigning your website and making it look awesome if no one's going to see it? So in this episode, we're talking about SEO, search engine optimization, and what you need to think about if you're going to be redesigning a Squarespace website. For a transcript of this episode, along with the links to any resources I'll mention, visit insidethesquare.co/podcast.
[00:01:32] And I should mention, before I go any further, the term "Squarespace" is a trademark of Squarespace, Inc. This content is not affiliated with or endorsed by Squarespace, Inc. It's just my opinion as one Squarespace designer to another.
[00:01:46] Now before we get into the good stuff, we've gotta talk about the difference between a refresh and a redesign, because those are two very different things.
[00:01:53] If you're playing around in Squarespace and you found a really cool new font that you want to use, and you changed up some of your colors in your color palette, maybe swapped out a couple images for some fresh headshots that you got taken, I think it's very important to understand that is a refresh.
[00:02:09] That is not a redesign. Now, does Google care that you have a new color palette? Probably not, but you should tell them anyway. Once you make some changes to the content on your site, maybe you adjusted a few titles, you swapped out a few images, but the core content's still there, you should still submit those pages to Google Search Console and ask it to re-index, take a look at the new stuff that you've added.
[00:02:33] But you don't need to resubmit your sitemap. You don't need to worry about URL redirects. That is a simple refresh, and you should not stress over the SEO of that. But if you're doing what I just did, a redesign, we're talking about everything that used to exist, it's gone. You started on a brand-new site.
[00:02:52] You've got brand-new content, brand-new pages linking to other pages, new images, new keywords, new page titles, new H1s, new everything. That, my friend, is a redesign, and that is what we're talking about here in this particular episode. So if you redesigned your everything, where do you begin? Let's start with step one.
[00:03:13]
[00:03:14] Before you launch, I want you to find out what you currently rank for and then figure out what you want to be known for, because chances are that's two different things. So open up Search Console. Hopefully, you have this installed. If not, this redesign is a perfect time to make sure Google's getting this data.
[00:03:30] But let's say you've already done this hard work here. You're looking at Search Console. Open up the Performance tab and check out the queries and pages. Queries and pages is going to tell you what people were searching when you showed up, and this is incredibly important.
[00:03:45] Then I want you to evaluate all of the pages on your website and think, " Okay, am I gonna keep this? Am I gonna redirect it to something new? Or am I gonna scrap it entirely?" Don't be afraid to scrap it entirely, but if it's a page that got a lot of traffic, something that was showing up a lot according to your analytics and your Search Console data, I strongly recommend that you at least redirect it to something else.
[00:04:11] Not just a 404 page, but make some kind of landing page that lets people know why this has changed. Now, you'll also see some content in there that might support the old you and not the what you wanna be known for right now version of you. Don't be afraid to edit that content a little bit, but leave some legacy stuff there so people and Google aren't too confused when they get to your new website.
[00:04:33] At first when I did this redesign, I was gonna remove every single tutorial that I've ever made, and the truth is, I have removed hundreds. But I didn't just remove them completely. I kept a top 10 list. I told people where to go to find them, and that way, even if Google stumbles or there's an old backlink out there somewhere, people won't land on my site and go, "What the heck?
[00:04:56] That wasn't the right thing." They're gonna land on my site and go, "Oh, I was looking at something old. Here's something new." So think about that. What do you wanna be known for? What were you known for? Do you keep the things? Do you direct them somewhere else? Or do you scrap it entirely and not leave people hanging?
[00:05:13] All right, let's move on to point number two You are about to hit that button to launch. Before you do that, I want you to triple check literally everything. I want you to triple check those old links. Double check your redirect list and make sure you're sending things to the right places. Open up the demo site on your phone and click around on different things.
[00:05:34] Make sure it's usable. If you've only looked at the mobile editor on your computer right there in Squarespace and you haven't actually looked at it on a phone, you are in for an afternoon of surprises, my friend, because the mobile editor in Squarespace, it's designed to look like different sizes of screens, not necessarily one specific device.
[00:05:54] So you will very quickly find that the layout you actually have on your phone is very different than the layout you're seeing on the screen. Things will be a little bit off. So please take the time to triple check everything. I want you to pop that site open on your phone, click around your navigation, select buttons, make sure hover effects weren't doing something important because there are no hover effects on a phone.
[00:06:15] Make sure that everything looks good. And triple check your redirect list. Inside Squarespace, it's called URL mappings, but anything that was on that list of a URL that you're gonna scrap or something you're gonna forward somewhere else, make sure that that is on your redirect list. Double check it and triple check it.
[00:06:33] Okay? All right. Let's move on to step three. Let's assume that you've launched. What are you gonna do right after? Let's assume everything went awesomely and your redesigned website is now available on your own domain, and you're very excited and ready to rock. I need you to do something for me that's probably gonna make you roll your eyes. Test it again. I'm sure you expected to hear me say that.
[00:06:56] I really do want you to double-check all of those redirects that you've set up. Make sure everything is going where it's supposed to. Make sure that the page titles are accurate. Make sure there are no broken images. Make sure everything is clickable. Make sure you're ready to rock, and most importantly, that those old URLs that should be redirecting somewhere else, make sure that works, because your very next step is to resubmit your sitemap to Google.
[00:07:20] We need to tell Google, "Hey, we just made a bunch of changes. Here's where the new everything is." Now, if you're like me and you have hundreds of old pages that need to be re-indexed and directed somewhere else, this is going to take some time. So I strongly recommend doing this, and then a week later, let's go back and double-check your work.
[00:07:43] That's the final phase of making sure that we've optimized our redesigned website. It happens a week after launch, and here's what you're gonna do
[00:07:51] Going to see traffic changes. Things are gonna wobble. That is perfectly normal and perfectly okay. In fact, if you don't see any traffic changes, that's kind of a red flag that something went wrong somewhere, okay? So I want you to rest assured that seeing things happen on that chart where things are going to decrease and increase for all kinds of weird stuff, super normal for the first week, okay?
[00:08:14] You're hopping back into Search Console because I want you to double-check all of the pages that should be de-indexed, all of the pages that are pointing somewhere else.
[00:08:22] A redesigned website should look different, but it should not leave search engines wondering what's going on. Now, one thing I wanna mention here is that I keep saying Google, Google, Google, but Bing still exists, and some people use it. So if you get a chance, check out Bing's Webmaster Tools, and make sure you follow the same steps for getting your new site re-indexed there as well.
[00:08:43] We've gotta update everybody. Now, one more thing I wanna mention is a new feature from Squarespace inside its SEO AI visibility feature. We have a file type that we can add to a site
[00:08:55] Called an LLMS. this is something that's being used by AI crawlers to understand exactly what your site content is about. Now, there's definitely mixed information out there about how effective this is, but the fact that Squarespace has prioritized making this a part of its AI visibility is making me pay attention.
[00:09:16] So I actually had AI generate one for me. I shared the new sitemap that I have, I shared my top most important pages, and I shared a list of my top business goals, all in a single prompt with AI, and I said, "Hey, I need you to help me create this LLMS. What information do you need from me to make this magic happen?"
[00:09:37] Now, to be clear, I told it to ask me five questions or less, because I've noticed if you leave stuff open-ended with a lot of AI out there, it's gonna ask you a bunch of questions, and you'll rarely get to exactly the destination you were hoping to get to. So again, I said, "Hey, here's my new sitemap. Here are my top pages.
[00:09:55] Here are the major business goals that I have with this redesign. I need you to help me create an LLMS file for my website. Ask me five questions that will get you the information you need to get this done." It asked me the questions, bing, bang, boom, I've got something to copy and paste right into my AI visibility feature there inside Squarespace.
[00:10:16] All right. Let's recap this here really quickly. Refresh versus redesign. You changed colors, you changed fonts, you've got some cool new images. That's a refresh. Don't stress. Send that over to Google Search Console if you're changing up one or two pages and ask it to review the content there.
[00:10:33] But if you're doing what I did and you're scrapping everything and starting over, you've got a lot more work to do. I want you to evaluate what you're gonna keep, what you're gonna redirect, and what you're gonna let go of, and make sure that everything you used to have is going where it needs to go.
[00:10:49] Because as soon as you hit that button and launch everything , you've got to let Google know that things have changed. You're going to see a lot of fluctuation in your analytics and in Search Console, and that's okay. That's what's supposed to happen. Just make sure that it understands what's happening and you're the one to tell Google.
[00:11:07] The last thing you want is for it to be confused. Also, don't forget about Bing Webmaster Tools. Make sure that everything is showing up there for people that use Bing as a search engine, and there are different AI models that use Bing as well. So definitely pay attention to Bing. That's pretty darn important.
[00:11:23] All right. We went through a bunch in this episode, and I wanna thank you for sticking around with me.. I'm Becca from Inside the Square. If you want a transcript of this and if you want a copy of the redesign list that I went through myself, the whole process start to finish of exactly what I checked on my website before I hit publish, head on over to the show notes, insidethesquare.co/podcast/106.
[00:11:48] Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I would love it if you checked out my new website. I had way too much fun creating all those hand-drawn doodles and animations and adding some vibrant pops of color, new pictures, new layouts, new everything. I'm super excited about it. So go check it out, let me know your opinion, and if you want any help with your own redesign, I'm here for you.
[00:12:10] hello@insidethesquare.co. You can email me anytime. Thank you so much for tuning in, and most importantly, have fun with your Squarespace website. Bye for now.
[00:12:21]
