How to migrate a website without losing rankings

To migrate a website without losing rankings, map every old URL to its closest new URL, redirect each one with a permanent 301, update every internal signal to the new URLs, and tell Google about the move. Then monitor closely for several weeks. Some ranking movement is normal while Google processes the change, but a well-planned move usually recovers.

What counts as a site migration?

A site migration is any change that alters many URLs, the domain, or how pages are built. Each type carries a different level of risk.

Avoid changing the domain, the URL structure and the design all at once. If something goes wrong, it is much harder to tell which change caused it.

How do you build a redirect map?

A redirect map is a spreadsheet listing every old URL in one column and its new URL in another. Build it before launch, not after.

1. Collect every old URL from a full crawl, your XML sitemap, Search Console's Performance report and your analytics.
2. Give priority to pages with traffic, conversions or backlinks.
3. Map each old URL to the most relevant new page, one to one where possible.
4. Use 301 redirects, and redirect directly to the final URL with no chains.
5. Only map a URL to a category or the home page when no close match exists. Mass redirects to the home page are often treated as soft 404s.
6. Let truly removed pages return 404 or 410.

Our guide to redirects and broken links explains redirect types in detail.

What should you update on the new site?

Every signal on the new site should point to the new URLs, not rely on redirects.

Check these before launch:

• Internal links in menus, footers and body content
• Canonical tags, which should be self-referencing on the new URLs
• Hreflang tags, if you have language versions
• Structured data URLs, such as logos and course pages
• The XML sitemap, listing only new canonical URLs
• robots.txt, making sure the staging Disallow: / is gone
• Any noindex tags left over from the staging site

What is Google's Change of Address tool?

The Change of Address tool in Search Console tells Google that your whole site has moved from one domain to another. It only applies to domain or subdomain changes, not to http to https moves or URL changes within the same domain.

To use it, verify both the old and new properties in Search Console, set up the 301 redirects first, then submit the move from the old property's settings. Google explains the full process in Site moves with URL changes.

How long should you keep the redirects?

Google recommends keeping redirects for at least one year, and longer is better. Backlinks, bookmarks and old printed material may keep sending visitors to old URLs for years. If you change domains, keep renewing the old domain so the redirects keep working and nobody else can buy it.

What should you monitor after launch?

Watch the first few days daily, then weekly for at least two to three months. Google says a medium-sized site can take a few weeks for most pages to move in the index, and larger sites take longer.

• Page indexing report in Search Console for both old and new properties
• Not found (404) errors on the new site
• Organic clicks and impressions in the Performance report, compared page by page
• Rankings for your most important keywords
• Server logs or Crawl Stats, to confirm Googlebot is crawling new URLs
• Leads and enquiries, not just traffic

What are the most common migration mistakes?

Most migration losses come from avoidable process mistakes rather than from the move itself.

• Launching with the staging site's robots.txt block or noindex tags.
• Redirecting everything to the home page instead of to matching pages.
• Using 302 temporary redirects for a permanent move.
• Forgetting images, PDFs and old campaign URLs in the redirect map.
• Deleting redirects a few months later to "clean up".
• Moving during peak admission season, when a temporary dip costs the most enquiries.

Site migration checklist

1. Crawl the old site and export every URL.
2. Build and test the redirect map on staging.
3. Benchmark traffic, rankings and indexed pages before launch.
4. Launch, then crawl the old URL list to confirm each returns a single 301 to a 200 page.
5. Submit the new sitemap and, for domain moves, the Change of Address request.
6. Monitor weekly and fix 404s quickly.

Spider can help on both sides of the move. Crawl the old site before launch to export its URLs, then crawl the new site to catch broken links, redirect chains and stray noindex tags. Scheduled re-audits with alerts can warn you if key pages break in the weeks afterwards.