Moving to a new website: how to protect search traffic

Why a move can cost you search visibility

Search engines know your site as a set of addresses. Each has a history, links pointing at it and a place in results. A new platform often changes every one of those addresses.

If the old addresses stop working, that history has nowhere to go. Links break, listings vanish, and the engine has to start over. The words on the page are rarely the cause. The addresses usually are.

That is why a redesign that looks wonderful can still lose visitors. The look was never the part search engines were reading.

Take inventory before you change anything

Make a list of every page on the current site while it still works. Export it from your platform, from the sitemap, or from Search Console. Add the pages that receive visitors and the pages other sites link to.

This list is the most valuable thing in the project. Without it you will not know what you broke. Save a copy somewhere you will find it in a year.

Do this early. Once the old site is switched off, some of this information is much harder to recover, and a platform may delete it along with the account.

• Every address on the live site, including old ones you forgot about.
• The title and description currently used on each page.
• Which pages get visitors, from your analytics.
• Which pages other sites link to, so you can protect them.
• Forms, phone numbers and booking links that must keep working.
• Any page you plan to remove, with a reason.

Build the redirect map

For each old address, pick the new address that serves the same purpose. Then set a permanent redirect from one to the other. Our page on 301 and 302 redirects explains the difference and why it matters here.

Do not send everything to the homepage. A visitor who clicked a plumbing page expects a plumbing page. A mass redirect to the front door looks like a missing page to a search engine.

Where a page has no match, let it return a proper not-found response instead of faking one.

Keep what already works

A migration is not the moment to rewrite every page. Pages that earn visitors should keep their main content, their headings and their internal links. Change the design around them first.

Improve content later, one page at a time, so you can tell which change did what. Changing the platform, the addresses and the copy at once makes any result impossible to read.

If you are also reworking the look, our guide to website redesign covers what is safe to change.

Test on a staging copy before launch day

Build the new site where search engines cannot see it, and test there. Click every redirect from your list. Confirm each one lands on the page you chose, in one hop.

Check that the staging copy is blocked from indexing, and then check the live site is not. The most common launch mistake is leaving the block on after going live.

Test forms, phone links and the mobile layout. Then keep the old site files until you are sure nothing was missed.

Watch closely after the switch

On launch day, submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console. Then check the coverage report for new errors, and spot-check old addresses to confirm they redirect.

Expect movement. Search engines need time to relearn a site, and results can wobble for a while. No one can say how long, so judge by what the reports show, not by the calendar.

Fix broken links and redirect errors as they appear. Our page on 404 pages covers what to do with the ones that stay missing.

Tell everyone the address changed

If the domain stays the same, most of this is simple. If the domain changes, you have more to update. Search Console has a change-of-address tool for a move between domains, and it is worth using.

Then update the places that point at you. Edit your business profile, directory listings, social profiles, email signatures and printed material. Ask the sites that link to you most to update the link.

Keep the old domain registered and its redirects running. Letting it lapse breaks every link that still points there.