Changing your domain or reorganising your URLs is the single most reliable way to lose search visibility you’ve spent years building. It’s also completely survivable when it’s planned properly. The difference is almost entirely in the redirect mapping and what happens in the weeks afterwards.
Every old URL goes to its closest equivalent, or it 404s deliberately. Those are the two acceptable answers.
What this covers
Three related jobs. Moving to a new domain, usually after a rebrand or a name change. Restructuring URLs on the same domain, such as flattening a deep hierarchy or fixing a folder structure that stopped making sense. And consolidating several domains into one.
All three depend on the same thing: every old URL that had value ending up at the right new URL, in one hop, with nothing important left behind.
Who it’s for
This suits businesses about to change something structural:
- rebranding or changing trading name
- moving from a compromise domain to the one you actually wanted
- consolidating separate sites or country domains
- restructuring URLs that have grown organically and stopped making sense
- anyone who has already moved and lost visibility
The problems it usually solves
Everything redirected to the homepage. The most common and most damaging shortcut. Google’s own guidance warns that redirecting a large number of old URLs to the homepage may be treated as a soft 404, which means the value doesn’t transfer and the pages simply disappear.
Redirect chains. Old URL to intermediate URL to final URL. Each hop is an opportunity to lose something, and chains accumulate across successive migrations until nobody remembers why.
Redirects removed too early. Change of Address help advises keeping redirects in place for at least 180 days. In practice I’d keep them considerably longer, because there’s rarely a good reason to remove them at all.
The sitemap still listing old URLs. After the move the sitemap frequently still lists the previous addresses, so you’re asking search engines to index URLs you’re redirecting away from.
Nobody watching afterwards. Migration problems appear over the following fortnight, not on launch day. Without scheduled monitoring, a drop gets noticed a month later when it’s much harder to diagnose.
What’s included
- A full URL inventory of the existing site, including every URL with traffic, links or impressions
- A redirect map, one to one wherever a matching page exists, with a documented decision for every URL where one doesn’t
- Chain elimination, so every redirect resolves in a single hop
- Internal link updates, so links point at new URLs rather than relying on redirects
- Sitemap regeneration for the new structure
- Search Console setup, including the Change of Address tool where it applies
- A launch day checklist and a monitoring schedule for the weeks afterwards
- A post-migration review with the drop pattern, if any, diagnosed
The rule I’d apply to any migration
Every old URL goes to the closest equivalent page, or it goes to a 404 deliberately. Those are the two acceptable answers. Redirecting something to the homepage because there’s no obvious match is the decision that causes most migration damage, and it’s usually made under time pressure on launch week.
Where a page genuinely has no equivalent, a considered 404 is more honest than a redirect to something irrelevant, and search engines handle it better.
What you get
- The redirect map, as a file your developer can implement directly
- A documented decision for every URL, including the deliberate 404s
- A launch checklist
- Monitoring and a written review afterwards
Limitations
Some fluctuation after a migration is normal even when everything is done correctly, and recovery time varies with site size and how often you’re crawled. Anyone promising no impact is guessing.
A migration also can’t improve a site that has underlying content or authority problems. Moving them to a new address moves them intact.
What this won’t solve
Redirects don’t transfer everything indefinitely, and a move is never completely free. The aim is to lose as little as possible and recover quickly, not to make the change invisible.
Talk to the person doing the work
There is no account manager here and no team to be handed to. If you get in touch, it is me who reads it, me who looks at your site, and me who does the work if we go ahead.
Get in touch, or start with a free assessment.
Engagement and price
There are no list prices here, and that is deliberate. What a piece of work costs depends on the state of the site, how much of it there is and what you actually need, none of which I know before looking at it.
So it starts with a free analysis. I look at your site, your Search Console and who you are really competing with, then come back with what I would do first and what it would cost to do. No obligation attached, and if the honest answer is that you do not need me yet, I will say so.
How the work gets done
URL inventories and redirect testing run through the technical SEO checks, with traffic and link data from the crawl and data integrations and new sitemaps built through the sitemap toolkit. This service sits under site migrations, and the Kwiat migration case study covers a full move.
FAQ
Will I lose rankings if I change domain?
Some short-term movement is normal even on a well-executed move. Done properly, with one-to-one redirects, updated internal links and a correct sitemap, most visibility transfers. Done by redirecting everything to the homepage, a great deal of it disappears and doesn’t come back.
How long should redirects stay in place?
Google’s Change of Address guidance suggests at least 180 days. I’d keep them permanently where possible, since there’s rarely a good reason to remove them and old links keep sending people for years. Removing them early is a self-inflicted loss.
Can I redirect old pages to my homepage?
You can, and it’s the most damaging common shortcut. Google warns that redirecting many old URLs to the homepage may be treated as a soft 404, meaning the value doesn’t pass. Either map to the closest equivalent page or return a deliberate 404.
When should I involve you in a rebrand?
Before the new site is built, ideally while the URL structure is still a decision rather than a fact. Redirect mapping is much easier against a structure designed with it in mind, and some structural mistakes can’t be undone cheaply once launched.
Moving domain or restructuring?
Get in touch before launch. That’s when this work protects the most.