Changing website without losing rankings: 301 redirects and checklist

To change your website without losing your Google rankings, every old address that gets visits or links needs a permanent redirect (301 or 308) to the new page that replaces it. On top of that you need a new sitemap, a site Google can crawl without obstacles and a few weeks of monitoring in Search Console. Done carefully, most of your visibility can be kept, but no migration is neutral: Google itself warns that rankings will fluctuate temporarily during the move. What you can avoid is the drop caused by pages that simply go missing.

Why do rankings drop when you change website?

Google doesn't rank "your website"; it ranks individual pages at specific addresses. When a site is rebuilt, those addresses often change without anyone noticing: a WordPress site with paths like /2021/03/post-title/ or /category/services/ moves to a cleaner structure, language prefixes change, or one service page is merged into another. If the old address returns a 404 error, everything it had earned (links from other sites, history in Google, visits from bookmarks) is left hanging.

The other usual causes are more mundane:

• A noindex tag or a robots.txt block used to hide the site while it was being built, which nobody removes at launch.
• Trimmed copy: the new design is cleaner, but the paragraphs that answered what people were searching for have gone.
• Internal links still pointing to old addresses, forcing visitors and crawlers through redirects.
• A sitemap that still lists pages that no longer exist.

What is a 301 redirect, and why won't a 302 do?

A redirect is the server's way of saying "this page now lives at another address". According to Google's documentation on redirects and Google Search, 301 and 308 status codes mean a page has moved permanently, and Google uses that as a signal that the new page is the one to show in results. 302, 303 and 307 are temporary: Google doesn't treat them as a signal that the target is the preferred version, and it may keep the old address in its results.

How the redirect is done matters too. Google recommends server-side redirects over any other method; an instant meta refresh is treated as permanent but a delayed one as temporary, and JavaScript redirects are a last resort because Google may never see them if the page fails to render. If your provider suggests "a plugin that redirects with JavaScript", ask for alternatives.

How do you prepare a redirect map?

The map is a two-column table: old address and new address. It is the single most important part of the migration and must be done before launch, not the day after, when the errors start showing up. Google's guide to site moves with URL changes suggests building the list of old addresses from several sources:

• The site's current sitemap.
• Search Console: pages with impressions and clicks, plus the links report.
• Analytics: pages that get visits, including landing pages from social media and campaigns.
• Server logs, if you have access to them.
• Files that rank too: images, PDF data sheets, catalogues.

Once you have the list, each row follows a few simple rules. Every old page goes to its closest equivalent, not the home page: Google advises against sending lots of old addresses to an unrelated page. Redirects should point straight to the final destination, without chains (A → B → C). And content that is genuinely gone, with no replacement, can return a 404 or 410: that's more honest than a forced redirect.

Our own case: more than 300 redirects

When we moved the Somia Digital website from WordPress to Next.js, the address structure changed from top to bottom: articles, services and languages. The map ended up with 316 redirects. The lesson we learned is that the map isn't finished once it's written: we had to review and test it address by address on the production server, because what works locally doesn't always behave the same way live. If you're migrating, ask someone to check the redirects on the published site, not just on a staging copy.

What if you're changing domain as well?

If you're moving, say, from old-company.com to company.co.uk, you also need Search Console's Change of Address tool. It tells Google that the whole domain has moved and, according to Google's own help page, the process continues for 180 days after you start it. To use it you must be an owner of both properties in Search Console and have at least the old home page redirected with a 301 to the new one (ideally every page).

You don't need it, however, to move from http to https, to switch between the www and non-www versions, or to reorganise paths within the same domain: in those cases redirects and the sitemap are enough.

Website migration checklist

Before launch

• A complete list of old addresses (sitemap, Search Console, analytics, files).
• A 301 redirect map from every old address to its new equivalent, with no chains.
• Ranking content reviewed: if a page got visits for a particular search, the new content must still answer it.
• Titles, descriptions, self-referencing canonical tags and, for multilingual sites, hreflang using the new addresses.
• Internal links updated to the final addresses.
• Analytics and cookie consent ready on the new site.

On launch day

• Remove any noindex or robots.txt block that was only meant for the staging phase.
• Switch on the redirects and test a wide sample on the live site, checking they return 301 or 308, not 302.
• Submit the new sitemap in Search Console. Google's sitemap guidelines ask for absolute URLs and canonical versions only.
• If the domain changes: use the Change of Address tool in Search Console.

The following weeks

• Check the page indexing and sitemaps reports in Search Console: 404 errors, redirects and pages not indexed.
• Compare the queries and pages with the most clicks before and after the switch.
• Update the links you control: Google Business Profile, social media, directories, email signatures and listings with suppliers or trade associations.
• Keep the redirects: Google recommends keeping them for at least a year, and longer if possible.

How long does Google take to settle on the new site?

It depends on the size of the site and how often Google crawls it. The official guide talks about a few weeks or more for most pages of a medium-sized site to move over to the new addresses, and longer for large sites. During that time it's normal to see movement in rankings and traffic. That's why it makes no sense to promise you "won't lose anything": what can be done is to remove the avoidable causes of loss and watch the first few weeks closely so anything that goes wrong is fixed straight away.

A practical tip for seasonal businesses, like so many on the Costa Brava: avoid launching the new site just before your busiest months. If there is some fluctuation, it's better for it to come when searches are lower and there's room to react.

A new website without starting from scratch on Google

The redirect map and the follow-up checks are part of the job when we build the new website, not an extra that gets forgotten. We do this for businesses in Girona, Barcelona and the Costa Brava as part of our web design service, and if what you mainly need is to recover or strengthen your visibility, you can see how we approach SEO. If you're about to change website, or already have and your traffic has dropped, send us the old and new addresses or message us on WhatsApp and we'll talk it through.

We checked this article against Google Search Central documentation in October 2026.