The short answer
Keep track of the pages that bring traffic, and send every old address to its new one. Before launch, list the pages that matter, map each old URL to its new URL and plan permanent (301) redirects. After launch, test the redirects, submit a new sitemap and watch Search Console. Google says it can take a few weeks or more for a medium-sized site’s new URLs to replace the old ones in search, so expect some movement while that happens.
Contents
What protects your traffic in a redesign?
Search results point to individual pages, by their address. Google treats a site move on a per-URL basis, so a redesign that changes addresses keeps its traffic only if each old URL leads to the right new page (Google Search Central: Site moves and migrations). This is the checklist, in order:
| When | What to do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Before launch | List the pages that matter | They bring the traffic and links you want to keep |
| Before launch | Map every old URL to its new URL | Each old address needs a page to lead to |
| Before launch | Update internal links, canonicals and language annotations | The new site should point to its own new URLs |
| At launch | Turn on permanent redirects | Visitors and Google reach the new page from the old address |
| After launch | Test the redirects, submit the new sitemap and monitor Search Console | Problems show early, while they are easy to fix |
Which pages should you keep track of?
Start with the important ones. Google suggests finding them in:
- your sitemaps, which usually list the pages you care about most;
- your analytics or server logs, for the pages that get the most visits;
- Search Console, for the pages that other websites and your own pages link to;
- your content management system, which can usually list every page it holds.
Include images, videos and downloads such as PDF brochures. They may already get traffic from Google or from links, and they move like any other page.
How do you map old URLs to new ones?
Decide where each old URL should go, and keep the list. A spreadsheet with one row per page is often enough for a small business website. Then:
- Pages that move: redirect each one to its new address.
- Pages you merge: redirect the old pages to the new, combined page.
- Pages you remove for good: let them return a 404 or 410 error.
- Never send everything to the homepage: Google says many old URLs pointing to one unrelated page can confuse visitors and may be treated as an error.
On the new site, change the internal links to the new URLs, give each page a canonical tag that points to itself, and, on a website in more than one language, update the language annotations (hreflang) to the new addresses.
Which redirects should you use?
- Permanent, server-side redirects, such as 301 or 308, where the server allows them. Google says 301 and other permanent redirects do not cause a loss in PageRank.
- Straight to the final page: avoid chains of redirects. If a chain cannot be avoided, keep it short; Google advises no more than 3 hops where possible.
- Kept for a long time: Google recommends keeping redirects for at least 1 year, and from the visitor’s point of view, indefinitely.
What should you check in Search Console?
- Before launch: make sure the new site keeps your Search Console verification, and that the robots.txt and noindex rules used during development are removed.
- At launch: test the redirects with the URL Inspection tool and submit the new sitemap.
- A new domain only: use the Change of Address tool when you move to a different domain or subdomain. You do not need it for a move to HTTPS, between www and non-www, or for new paths on the same domain.
- In the weeks after: watch the indexing reports and the search queries. Indexed pages should move from the old URLs to the new ones, and the new URLs should start to get impressions and clicks.
Should you change everything at once?
Google advises changing one thing at a time. If you plan a new domain, a new content management system and a new design, do them one after the other, not together. If your traffic dips at certain times, it also helps to launch during a quieter period. Some ranking fluctuation is normal while Google recrawls the site.
Redesign or rebuild?
It depends on what already works. When you ask us to redesign a website, we first assess what already works, what needs to change, and whether a focused redesign or a full rebuild makes more sense. In 2025, for example, we rebuilt the website of The CAD Service, a 3D visualisation and CAD drafting studio in Nicosia, as a new, mobile-first website.
How we wrote this: the checklist follows Google Search Central’s guide to site moves, checked 4 November 2026. The project is our own work.
