Guide
Website Migration URL Guide
Plan the redirects for a website migration or redesign: inventory old URLs, map each one to its closest new page, test before launch, and verify after go-live.
Most traffic lost in a migration is lost through URLs: old pages that 404, redirects that all point at the homepage, or chains left over from the last redesign. A redirect plan built before launch prevents almost all of it.
1. Inventory every old URL
Combine a crawl of the current site, the XML sitemap, the pages with traffic in analytics and pages with external links. Old campaign URLs and printed links are easy to forget; ask marketing and sales for theirs.
2. Map each URL to its closest match
Every old URL should redirect to the new page that best replaces it, not to the homepage. If content is genuinely gone, a 410 is more honest than a redirect to something unrelated. Keep the mapping in a spreadsheet with columns for the old URL, new URL and owner.
3. Use one permanent hop
Use 301 or 308 redirects for permanent moves, and point each old URL straight at its final destination. If the site has been migrated before, update the old redirects too, so older URLs don’t chain through the previous structure.
4. Test before launch
On a staging environment, run the full list of old URLs through a URL checker. Every one should end at its mapped destination in one hop. Fix the spreadsheet or the rules until it does; it’s far cheaper than fixing them after search engines have seen the errors.
5. Verify after go-live
Run the same list against production on launch day, then again a few days later once caches and CDNs have caught up. Watch for 404s in your server logs and search console, and add redirects for any old URLs you missed.