Website redesign and SEO: how to protect old URLs with a redirect map

Before the new design goes live, list every old URL and decide what happens to each one: it stays, moves, is merged or is removed. URLs that move or are merged are sent to their replacement with a permanent redirect on the server, removed URLs return 404 or 410, and the whole list is tested before and after launch. If your page addresses do not change, you do not need any redirects at all.

This approach reduces technical errors, but it cannot guarantee rankings. Google's site move guide says rankings can fluctuate for a while as the pages are recrawled. On a medium-sized website, Google can take a few weeks or more to start showing the new URLs.

Types of change and the SEO work that follows

A redesign can mean new colours, or it can mean a new CMS, menu structure and domain all at once. The amount of SEO work depends on what actually changes.

What changes	Redirects	Extra work
Design only, URLs unchanged	None	Compare the content, titles and links of the old and new versions
CMS	Only if the URL pattern changes too	Settle the URL pattern before the pages are built
URL structure on the same domain	Every URL that changes	Redirect map, canonical tags, sitemap, internal links
Domain	All old URLs	Everything above, plus the Change of Address tool in Search Console

Google advises making one change at a time. For example, move the domain first and change the layout afterwards. That way, if rankings shift, it is easier to tell which change caused it.

Keep addresses that are still clear and still in use, even when the page is completely redesigned. Every URL that stays the same is one redirect you do not have to create, test and maintain.

How to collect the list of old URLs

The website menu is not enough, because pages that still bring in visitors may not appear in it. Combine the following sources in one spreadsheet, then remove the duplicates.

• The current sitemap.
• The page list from the CMS.
• The Links report in Search Console, for pages that receive links from inside and outside the website.
• Server logs or analytics, for the most visited URLs.
• Files with their own address: images, videos, and PDFs such as catalogues or price lists.
• Addresses printed or embedded outside the website: ads, social media profiles, brochures and QR codes.
• Existing redirect rules from earlier changes.

Choose a date range that reflects your business's usual patterns. For a school uniform seller, the last three months of data could miss pages that only get busy in the run-up to the new school year.

The spreadsheet needs only eight columns: old URL, page purpose, visits, decision, destination URL, expected status, test result and test date. Fill in the first four before design work starts, so the pages that matter to customers are included in the plan.

Four decisions for every URL

Every row in the spreadsheet ends in one of these decisions. A page that looks dated is not necessarily useless, so judge it by its content and by what it does for customers.

Decision	Used when	What happens to the old URL
Keep	The address still fits the content	Still returns 200 at the same address
Move	The content is the same, the address changes	Permanent redirect to the new address
Merge	Several pages are combined into one	Every old URL redirects to the combined page, which actually contains their important content
Remove	The content has expired and has no replacement	Returns 404 or 410

Google's crawlers treat all 4xx statuses the same, except 429. So you do not need to spend long choosing between 404 and 410.

A made-up example: an inventory of 50 URLs

Suppose a website has 50 old URLs. After a row-by-row review, 35 URLs stay, 10 move, 3 articles are merged into one new guide, and 2 promotion pages are closed.

Those figures show the workload. There are 13 redirects going to 11 destinations, because three articles share one merged address. Two URLs must return 404 or 410. The new website has 46 live pages (35 + 10 + 1). Testing covers 50 rows of old addresses, while the content check covers 46 live pages. These numbers can go straight into the time estimate for a quote.

Rules for writing the redirect map

The redirect map is that same spreadsheet, narrowed down to the old address, the destination and the expected status. For the same made-up website, part of it looks like this.

Old URL	Decision	Destination	Status
/services/web-design	Move	/services/website	301, then 200
/articles/catalog-guide	Keep	Same address	200
/articles/phone-product-photos	Merge	/guides/product-photos	301, then 200
/promo/eid-2024	Remove	None	404 or 410

Permanent redirects on the server

Use a server-side 301 or 308 redirect. In Google's documentation on redirects, both count as permanent, so the destination address is the one shown in search results. A 302 or 307 counts as temporary, so the old address tends to stay in the results. According to Google's site move guide, a permanent redirect also does not reduce PageRank. Use a JavaScript redirect only when nothing else is possible, because Google can miss it if rendering fails.

Addresses that follow a pattern can be written as a single rule. If every article simply moves from /articles/article-name to /blog/article-name, the developer writes one rewrite rule, not hundreds of lines.

Redirect to equivalent pages

Point each URL to a page with equivalent content. Google asks you not to redirect many old URLs to one irrelevant page, such as the home page, because it confuses visitors and can be treated as a soft 404. A soft 404 is a page that technically loads, but whose content Google treats as equivalent to a page that was not found. Merging several articles into one new guide is still fine, as long as their content really moved there.

Redirect straight to the final address

Googlebot can follow up to 10 hops, but Google recommends redirecting straight to the final destination. Where that is not possible, ideally keep the number of hops to 3 or fewer. Every hop adds to the visitor's waiting time.

Chains usually come from forgotten old redirects. For example, /web-services was redirected to /services/web-design long ago, and the redesign now redirects /services/web-design to /services/website. The fix belongs in the old rule: change the destination of /web-services to the final address.

Keep redirects for at least a year

Google advises keeping redirects for as long as possible, generally at least a year, so that all signals pass to the new URLs. For visitors, they are worth keeping for good, because people can keep following old links that sit outside your website. Record the map in the website documentation, so it is not deleted when the server is moved or the configuration is cleaned up.

Content and technical signals on the new pages

Open the old page and the new design side by side. Service descriptions, specifications, office addresses and contact options are easily lost when a page is trimmed to fit the design. Text moved into an image also counts as a loss, because it cannot be searched, copied or read aloud properly.

Once the content is complete, check these six technical signals on every page template.

Signal	Correct state
rel="canonical"	Points to the page's own new URL, written as a full address
Internal links	Go straight to the new URL, not through a redirect
Sitemap	Contains only the new URLs
hreflang	If used, points to the new URLs
noindex	Removed from public pages
robots.txt	The production version, no longer blocking the whole website

A canonical tag does not replace a redirect, although the two are often mentioned together. A canonical tells Google which URL you prefer among identical or very similar pages. Visitors who open an old address can only reach the new page through a redirect.

Testing before launch

Test everything on a staging copy of the website with restricted access. The spreadsheet already holds the expected results, so the tester only has to compare. Here is the breakdown for the 50-URL example.

Group	Count	What is checked
Kept addresses	35	Status 200, correct content, correct canonical
Moved or merged	13	Permanent redirect to the destination written in the map, destination returns 200
Removed	2	Status 404 or 410, no internal links pointing there any more

To check a single URL, a developer can run this command in a terminal.

curl -sIL https://example.com/services/web-design

A correct result includes these lines.

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
location: https://example.com/services/website

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Two 301 lines mean there is a chain. A 302 line means the redirect is still temporary. For dozens of URLs or more, Screaming Frog in list mode can open every old URL and follow the redirects to the final address. Its free version is limited to 500 URLs per crawl (checked 1 November 2026). URL Inspection in Search Console is useful, but its live test does not tell you that it followed a redirect, so do not use it to check this map.

Beyond the URL list, also test the forms, the WhatsApp button, the menu and the images on a phone. Then agree on two things before the launch date: who can postpone the launch if an important function fails, and how to roll back to the old version. The rollback plan must account for orders and form submissions that come in after the new website is live.

Launch-day steps, in order

Pick a time when traffic is low, so fewer people are affected if something goes wrong. For small to medium websites, Google recommends moving all URLs at once. Large websites may move section by section.

1. Back up the old website, including the database.
2. Publish the new version and turn on the redirects.
3. Remove the noindex tags and robots.txt blocks that were only meant for development.
4. Open a sample of important URLs from a device that is not logged in as an admin.
5. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console.
6. If you are moving to a new domain or subdomain, use the Change of Address tool. Moving paths on the same domain does not need it.
7. Update the links you control: social media profiles, Google Business Profile, ad campaigns, and links from the partners that send the most visits.

Monitoring after launch

Note the launch date in your analytics reports, then watch the Page indexing report in Search Console. Its labels appear in your account's language. Google also names the Sitemaps report as a monitoring tool: the number of indexed pages from the old sitemap should fall, and the count for the new sitemap should rise.

What you see	Cause to check first	Action
"Redirect error"	A chain that is too long, or a redirect loop	Redirect straight to the final address
"Not found (404)" on a URL that should have moved	A row missing from the map	Add a redirect to an equivalent replacement
"Soft 404"	Many URLs sent to the home page, or an empty page returning 200	Redirect to a relevant replacement, or return 404
"URL marked 'noindex'" on a public page	A setting carried over from the test copy	Remove the noindex rule
Clicks falling on particular pages	Changed content or title, or rankings still shifting	Compare the old and new content, then wait for recrawling to finish before drawing conclusions

A "Not found (404)" status on the two promotion pages that were deliberately closed is not an error. Google states that a 404 is not necessarily a problem when a page is removed with no replacement.

If a vendor handles the redesign, put the URL map, the launch criteria and the monitoring schedule into the scope of work. You can ask for the same when you discuss a website redesign with us. A website that already gets visits from search should also have an SEO review. For functional testing beyond SEO, such as the customer journey and the mobile view, use the business website launch checklist.