Website relaunch: redirects that keep your visitors

Why a relaunch can cost visitors

A new design often brings new addresses: /about.html becomes /about, a category gets a new name, the blog moves to /news. The old addresses do not disappear. They stand in search results, in bookmarks, in newsletters and on other websites that link to you. If such an address shows an error page after the relaunch, the visitor leaves, and search engines have to find your new pages on their own.

What a redirect plan is

A redirect plan is a table with two columns: every old address on the left, the new address that replaces it on the right. Google calls this mapping the old URLs to the new ones and describes it as an important step of a site move. From the plan you build the redirect rules for your server. When a browser or a crawler asks for an old address, the server answers with the new one.

301 and the other redirects

• 301 and 308 are permanent redirects on the server. Google treats the target as the main address and shows it in search results. For a relaunch, this is the right kind.
• 302, 303 and 307 are temporary. Google follows them but keeps showing the old address. Use them only when a page is away for a short time, for example during maintenance.
• A meta refresh in the page is an option when your server cannot redirect. Without a delay Google reads it as permanent, with a delay as temporary.
• A redirect in JavaScript is the last resort. Google only sees it if the page is rendered, and rendering can fail.

How to map old to new URLs

1. 1Collect all old addresses: from the sitemap, from server logs or your analytics and from the links report in Search Console. These are the sources Google names.
2. 2Include files, not only pages: images, PDFs and other downloads that you host. They can have search traffic and links of their own.
3. 3Give each old address the new page with the same content. If several old pages become one new page, redirect all of them to that page.
4. 4Mark pages that are gone for good and have no replacement. They should answer with 404 or 410, not with a redirect to some other page.
5. 5Read the plan line by line, starting with the pages that have the most visitors or links. This is our advice, not a rule of Google: mistakes there cost the most.

Common mistakes

• Chains: an old address leads to another old address and only then to the new page. Googlebot follows up to 10 hops, but Google advises redirecting straight to the final address. Each extra hop makes visitors wait.
• Everything to the home page. Google warns against sending many old addresses to one unrelated page such as the new home page. Visitors do not find what they were looking for, and Google may treat it as a soft 404.
• Forgotten images and PDFs. If only the pages are in the plan, image links and downloads break.
• Temporary redirects for a permanent move. A 302 tells Google that the old address is coming back.
• Internal links that still point to old addresses. Every click then goes through a redirect. Google recommends changing internal links to the new addresses.

What to check after go-live

• Test the redirects: single addresses with the URL Inspection tool in Search Console, many at once with a script or a crawler. Each old address should lead to the right new page in one step, with 301 or 308.
• Check the canonical tags. Every new page should name itself as canonical, not an old address.
• Submit the new sitemap in Search Console.
• If you move to a new domain, use the Change of Address tool in Search Console. It is meant for moves to another domain or subdomain, not for new paths on the same domain.
• Watch Search Console and your analytics for a few weeks: visits to the old addresses should fall, visits to the new ones should rise. Google writes that rankings can fluctuate for a while during a move.
• Keep the redirects for as long as possible, according to Google generally at least one year.

Plan the redirects with Do4U

The Redirect plan tool matches the addresses of your old website to those of your new one. You paste two lists, one address per line, and get a plan: for each old page the new page, the reason for the match and a level of certainty. The code ignores differences such as www, upper and lower case, file endings and tracking parameters. Only pages that stay unclear go to the AI, and it can only choose from your list of new addresses. The code checks for chains and loops. You export the rules as .htaccess, nginx or CSV; unsure matches stay in the file as comments.

Do4U builds the draft, you check and decide. Test the redirects on the live site. No plan can promise how search engines will rank your new pages.