Moving your website without losing your Google rankings

Google knows your old website page by page. Every URL has its own history: search terms it appears for, links from other sites, visitors who have bookmarked it. Launch a new site with different addresses and no redirects, and Google finds only error pages at those old addresses. The value you built up does not move across by itself.

That applies to a redesign with a different menu structure, a move to another system and a new domain name alike. The approach is the same each time.

Start with a URL inventory

Before anything changes, make a list of every address the old site has. Use several sources, because none is complete:

• The current sitemap: the pages the site lists itself.
• A crawl of the site: a crawler also finds pages missing from the sitemap.
• Search Console: the Performance report shows which pages get impressions and clicks, the Links report which pages have links from elsewhere.
• Your analytics: which pages attract visitors, including through ads or newsletters.

Put everything in one spreadsheet and note for each old URL what happens to it: stays the same, moves to a new address, is merged with another page or is dropped.

One 301 redirect per page

A 301 redirect tells browsers and search engines that a page has moved permanently. Google then passes the signals of the old URL to the new one.

The rules

• One to one: each old page points to the new page with the same content. The old “boiler servicing” page goes to the new servicing page, not to the homepage.
• Not everything to the homepage: Google often treats a mass redirect to the homepage as a page that does not exist. The value is then lost.
• No chains: point straight to the final address, not through two or three hops.
• Dropped pages: if a page has no successor, redirect to the most closely related page or let it return a 404 or 410 on purpose.
• Leave them in place: Google advises keeping redirects for at least a year. Links from other sites often last much longer, so it is better not to remove them at all.

Bring metadata and content with you

A redirect takes visitors to the right place, but the new page must answer the search as well as the old one did. For each page, bring across:

• Title and description: keep or improve them, do not replace them with a generic default title.
• Headings and text: a shorter, prettier page missing half the explanation often loses rankings.
• Structured data: business details, frequently asked questions and reviews in the markup.
• Images: with descriptive alt text and, where possible, the same file names.
• Canonicals and language versions: canonical tags pointing to the new addresses and, on a bilingual site, correct hreflang references.

Internal links and sitemap

After the switch, links within your own site must go straight to the new addresses, not through a redirect. Think of links in your menu, footer, blog posts, buttons in your booking or ordering system and standard emails.

• New sitemap: containing only the final new URLs, no redirects and no error pages.
• Shield the test environment: put the test version behind a password or on noindex, and remove that at launch. A forgotten noindex on the live site is one of the best known causes of a sudden drop.
• Check robots.txt: the new site must not block anything important.

Launch day

1. Activate the redirects: at the same time as the new site, not a day later.
2. Test a sample: open twenty to fifty old URLs from your inventory and check that they land on the right page with a 301.
3. Submit the sitemap: in Search Console, for the correct domain.
4. New domain? use the Change of Address tool in Search Console so Google picks up the move sooner.
5. Check forms and bookings: a site that is found but whose contact form does not work achieves nothing.

Checks after launch

Fluctuations in the first weeks are normal: Google has to revisit the new addresses. So set fixed moments to check.

• First week: the Pages report in Search Console for new 404 errors, and your analytics for pages where traffic suddenly drops away.
• First month: impressions and clicks for your most important pages compared with the same period before.
• Ongoing: new 404s appearing through old links from elsewhere, and adding a redirect for them after all.