How to rebuild your website without losing Google rankings: migration checklist

What to do before, during and after a website change so you don't lose rankings: URL inventory, 301 redirects, Search Console and what to watch in the first weeks.

"I want a new website, but I'm afraid of losing what I have on Google." It's the most common worry before a redesign, and a reasonable one: a badly done migration can wipe out a site's traffic in a week and take months to recover.

The good news is that almost all the risk sits in one place: the URLs. If Google finds every old page where it was, or a clean redirect to its replacement, rankings are kept. This is the checklist I follow on every migration, with examples from a real case.

Before touching anything

1. Build a complete URL inventory

Looking at the menu isn't enough. You need every URL Google knows:

The current sitemap, if there is one.
Search Console → Pages and the Performance report, exporting pages with impressions.
The Internet Archive (web.archive.org): it shows old URLs that are no longer linked.
A crawl with a tool like Screaming Frog.

In the psychology practice case, the Internet Archive returned 22 URLs. Search Console revealed some twenty more nobody remembered: the demo pages that came with the WordPress template, in English, still shown by Google.

2. Mark which pages bring traffic

From Search Console, export clicks and impressions per page for the last 3-12 months. Those are the URLs you cannot lose under any circumstances.

3. Take a snapshot of the current state

Save rankings, clicks per page and the DNS configuration before changing anything. Without a "before" snapshot you won't know whether something went wrong, or by how much.

During the migration

4. Keep URLs whenever possible

The best redirect is the one you don't need. If /terapia-emdr-vigo/ existed, on the new site it should stay at /terapia-emdr-vigo/, trailing slash included. In the real case, 17 of 22 URLs were kept identical.

5. 301-redirect everything that changes

Every URL that disappears needs a 301 (permanent) redirect to its closest equivalent, not to the home page by default:

Old service page → new service page.
Blog category → blog index.
Discontinued service → the most related page.

Redirects live on the server (.htaccess on Apache or LiteSpeed, Vercel or Netlify config…). Avoid chains: if /a redirects to /b and /b to /c, point /a → /c directly.

6. Keep the titles and content that ranked

A page that ranked well shouldn't suddenly lose its title and main headings. Improving the copy, yes; rewriting it entirely on migration day, better not: if something drops, you won't know whether it was the new site or the new content.

7. Check the technical side before going live

No leftover noindex from the staging version (it happens a lot).
Correct canonical tag on every page.
A robots.txt that doesn't block anything important.
A real 404 for what doesn't exist (not a blank page with a 200 code).
HTTPS and a single version of the domain (with or without www), with a single redirect hop.

After going live

8. Search Console, the same day

Submit the new sitemap and remove the old one if it errored.
Request manual indexing of the home page and the pages that brought the most traffic.
Check the Pages report for 404 errors or unexpectedly excluded pages.

9. Test the redirects from outside

Go through the inventory and check that every old URL answers with a 200 or a single 301 to the right page. A simple script can automate this.

10. Be patient with the data (and watch the right numbers)

In the first two weeks rankings move around and don't mean much. One confusing detail: average position can get worse when a better site launches, simply because Google starts showing it for many more searches. What matters are clicks and the specific pages you care about.

Rebuilding your website? I'll review your current site and plan a migration that keeps your rankings

Frequently asked questions

How much traffic do you usually lose when changing websites?

With a well-done migration, a few days of fluctuation and nothing more. Big drops almost always come from URLs that disappear without a redirect or a forgotten noindex.

Can I move from WordPress to another technology without losing rankings?

Yes. Google doesn't care what the site is built with, only that URLs, content and the technical side remain correct. It's the playbook I follow when I rebuild a site in web design and SEO in Ourense.

Do pages with no visits need redirects too?

It's worth redirecting everything Google has indexed. A 301 makes Google forget the old URL faster than a 404 and keeps whatever little authority it had.