The website migration checklist: redesign without losing rankings

Rankings belong to URLs. When a new website changes the addresses of its pages and nobody tells Google where they went, the rankings those pages earned are thrown away. Almost every lost-rankings story comes down to that.

Our own migration, as the example

On 31 October 2026 we moved wedee.com.au off WordPress onto a fast, static, server-rendered site. The old site had 90 URLs that Google knew about. After the move:

• 83 redirect permanently (301) to the matching new page
• 4 kept exactly the same address
• 3 retired on purpose with a “gone” (410) response, because they were thin pages with nothing worth keeping
• Every http and www address points to one version: https://wedee.com.au

Every one of the 90 old URLs still answers. We will publish the ranking comparison here once Google Search Console has enough data after the move.

Before the move

1. List every URL the old site has. Crawl the site, export the sitemap, and pull every page with impressions from Google Search Console. The crawl alone misses pages.
2. Record where you rank now. Top pages, top queries, traffic by page. You need a before picture to compare against.
3. Map every old URL to a new one. One row per URL: keep, redirect to the closest matching page, or retire. Never send everything to the homepage.
4. Keep the content that ranks. If a page ranks, its words, headings and title are part of why. Improve them; do not throw them away.
5. Back up everything. A full hosting backup plus a copy of the old site's files and database, so you can roll back in minutes.
6. Carry over the technical details: page titles, meta descriptions, structured data, image addresses other sites link to, and analytics and tag manager.

On launch day

1. Put the redirects live at the same moment as the new site. Not a day later.
2. Test every old URL. We checked all 90 automatically: each must land on a working page in one hop.
3. Check the new site is not blocked. A robots.txt or noindex tag left over from the staging site is the most common launch disaster.
4. Check what Google sees. The page content should be in the HTML the server sends, not only built by JavaScript afterwards.
5. Submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and request indexing for the most important pages.
6. Clear any caches, so visitors and search engines get the new pages.

The weeks after

1. Watch Search Console daily for crawl errors and pages Google cannot reach.
2. Compare rankings and traffic with your before picture, page by page.
3. Fix anything that dropped, starting with the pages that bring in enquiries.
4. Keep the redirects in place for good. Other sites will keep linking to the old addresses for years.

The mistakes that lose rankings

• No redirects, or redirecting every old page to the homepage
• Rewriting or deleting the content of pages that ranked
• Launching with the staging site's noindex tag still on
• Changing the domain and the site structure at the same time without a full map
• Forgetting image and PDF addresses that other sites link to

Rebuilding your website? Our websites start at $2,900 + GST and include this migration process. Tradies who start a 6 month SEO package before 31 December 2026 get the new website free.

Want this applied to your business? Ask for a free SEO and AI search audit. Our SEO specialist reviews your site and shows you the results on a call, with no obligation.

Common questions

Will a new website lose my Google rankings?

Not if every old URL is mapped to a new one with a permanent 301 redirect, the content that ranks is kept, and nothing blocks Google on launch day. Lost rankings almost always come from missing redirects or deleted content.

What is a 301 redirect?

A permanent redirect that tells browsers and Google a page has moved to a new address. Google passes most of the old page's ranking signals to the new one.

How long do rankings take to settle after a migration?

Some movement for a few weeks is normal while Google recrawls the site. With complete redirects, rankings usually settle within weeks rather than months.

Sources. URL counts from WEDEE's own migration on 31 October 2026, checked with an automated test of every old address.