Getting a new website without losing your place on Google

Most businesses that come to me already have a website. It is old, or slow, or built on something nobody can log in to any more, but it has one thing a brand new site does not: years of Google knowing it exists. Customers have bookmarked its pages, other sites link to them, and some of those pages turn up when people search.

A redesign can throw all of that away in an afternoon. Not because the new site is worse, but because every old address quietly stops working on launch day. This article is about the one job that prevents that, why it is easy to skip, and how to tell whether it was done.

• Every page on your old site has an address, and Google, your customers and other websites all know those addresses. A new site usually changes them.
• Each old address needs a permanent redirect to the page on the new site that replaces it. Google's own advice is to use "HTTP permanent redirects if possible, such as 301 and 308."
• Pointing everything at the home page does not count. Google says that "might be treated as a soft 404 error" — in other words, as a page that does not exist.
• Keep the redirects for at least a year, and ideally for good.
• Expect a wobble. Google says to "expect temporary fluctuation in site ranking during the move", and that it can take "a few weeks or more" to settle.
• Keep your domain. If the address in the browser bar stays the same, most of the risk goes with it.

Every page has its own address. On a typical small business site built a few years ago, they look something like this:

• yoursite.com/services.html
• yoursite.com/about-us
• yoursite.com/blog/2021/04/spring-cleaning-tips

A new site is organised differently, so the same pages end up somewhere else: yoursite.com/services/deep-cleaning, yoursite.com/about, yoursite.com/library/spring-cleaning. Moving from Squarespace, Wix or WordPress to anything else almost always changes them, because each platform names its pages in its own way.

On launch day the domain starts pointing at the new site, and every one of the old addresses now leads nowhere. Anyone following an old link — from a bookmark, a Facebook post, a directory listing, a supplier's website, or Google itself — gets a "page not found".

Google's handling of that is simple. Its documentation says pages that return a "not found" error and "are already indexed … are removed from the index." So the pages that used to bring in customers are not just broken. They are taken out of Google.

A redirect is a short instruction on the server: this page now lives over there. A visitor never sees it happen. They click the old link and land on the new page.

The kind of redirect matters. A permanent one (a "301") tells Google the new address replaces the old one for good. Google's page on redirects says a permanent redirect is used "as a signal that the redirect target should be canonical" — the version to show in search. A temporary one (a "302") tells it the opposite: keep showing the old address, this is only for now. Plenty of website builders default to temporary. On a redesign that is the wrong one.

It also matters where the redirect lives. Google's recommendation is "server side permanent redirects if technically possible". A redirect done with JavaScript in the page can work, but Google warns that "if you set a JavaScript redirect, Google might never see it if rendering of the content failed", and says to use them only if nothing else is possible.

The shortcut I see most often is a single rule that sends every old address to the new home page. It looks tidy: no "page not found", ever.

Google's guide to moving a site names this exact shortcut and asks you not to: "Don't redirect many old URLs to one irrelevant single URL destination, such as the home page of the new site. This can confuse users and might be treated as a soft 404 error."

A "soft 404" is Google deciding a page is really missing, whatever the server says. The customer who clicked a link to your gutter cleaning page and landed on a generic home page has had the same experience, and is just as likely to leave.

So each old page goes to its closest match on the new site. Three old pages about related services can all go to one new page that covers them — Google says consolidating like that is fine. What does not work is pointing things at a page that has nothing to do with them.

And if a page is gone for good — a service you stopped offering, a 2019 promotion — it is better to let it say so honestly. Google's guidance is that removed pages should "correctly return an HTTP 404 or 410 error response code on the new site."

The hard part is not the redirects. It is making the list. Google's guide suggests starting with the pages that matter most, from the old site's sitemap and your analytics, then filling in the rest from server logs and whatever system the old site was built in.

In practice, for a small business, the list comes from four places:

1. The old site's sitemap, usually at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml, if it still has one.
2. Search Console, if the old site was connected to it. Its Pages report lists what Google has actually indexed, and its Performance report shows which of those pages people find through search. Those are the ones that cannot be allowed to break.
3. Your analytics, for the pages people visit most.
4. A crawl of the old site, following every link from the home page, to catch whatever the others missed.

Don't forget the things that are not pages. Google's list includes "images and downloads (such as PDF documents) that you host" — a menu, a price list, a form customers print. Those get linked from other places too.

Do all of this before the old site is switched off. Once the domain points somewhere else, the old site's sitemap and page list go with it, and the only way left to find the old addresses is to wait for complaints.

For a site the size of most small businesses, Google's advice is to move everything at once: "We recommend moving all URLs on your site simultaneously instead of moving one section at a time." No half-old, half-new period.

Then a short checklist:

• Test the redirects. Take the list of old addresses and visit them. Every one should land on the right new page, not the home page and not an error.
• Fix the links inside the new site. Google asks for internal links to point straight at the new addresses rather than through a redirect.
• Submit the new sitemap in Search Console, which Google says "will help Google learn about the new URLs."
• Update the links you control — your Google Business Profile, Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, email signatures, printed QR codes. A redirect catches them, but the direct address is better.
• Watch Search Console for a few weeks. New "not found" errors there are old addresses that slipped through the list, and each one can still be given a redirect.

How long until things settle? Google's own estimate: "For medium-sized websites, it can take a few weeks or more for Google to gradually start showing the new URLs instead of the old ones." Rankings may move around in that time. That is normal, and not a reason to undo anything.

And keep the redirects. Google says "generally at least 1 year", and that "from users' perspective, consider keeping redirects indefinitely." Old links in other people's websites and old emails do not expire, and a redirect costs nothing to leave in place.

Everything above assumes the domain stays the same. If it changes too — a new business name, or a domain your old developer registered in their own name and won't hand over — the same redirects are needed, from every page on the old domain to the matching page on the new one. Google also asks for its Change of Address tool in Search Console to be used when moving from one domain to another.

That only works if you still control the old domain, and have to keep it, renewed, for as long as the redirects need to run. A domain somebody else owns can't be redirected by you. That is one of the reasons I push so hard on the domain being in your own name from day one.

If you can keep your domain, keep it. It is the single biggest thing that makes a redesign safe.

Worth asking first. If your current site is on Squarespace or Wix and the only complaint is how it looks, a new template on the same platform keeps every address and every ranking with far less risk. I wrote about when a platform is the better choice in Squarespace, Wix or a custom site.

A move is worth it when the old site is slow, can't do something you need, costs too much every month, or is locked up somewhere you can't get at it. The redirect work is what makes that move safe, not a reason to avoid it.

When I rebuild a site that already exists:

• Before anything changes, I list every address on the old site — pages, images and PDFs — from its sitemap, a full crawl, and Search Console where there is access.
• I map each one to its new home and you see that list, so you can tell me if I have sent something to the wrong place.
• Redirects are permanent and on the server, set up before launch rather than after the complaints, and they stay in place.
• After launch I test every old address on the list and watch Search Console for anything that was missed.
• If the domain is not already in your name, we sort that out first.