A new website can feel like moving into a freshly renovated shop. The paint is clean, the layout makes sense, and everything finally looks like the business you’ve built.
But imagine making that move without telling customers where anything went. That’s what can happen online when page addresses change during a redesign and nobody gives Google—or visitors using old links—a forwarding address.
Your old website may be doing more work than it appears
Before replacing anything, find out which pages bring people to the site, generate calls, answer common questions, or have links from other websites. An old service page may look dated while still being one of the main ways customers discover the company.
Save a picture of current performance in Google Analytics and Search Console. You don’t need to become a data analyst. You simply want a record of important pages, visits, inquiries, and search activity so you can tell whether the new site is working.
Then make a decision for every useful page. Will its address stay the same? Will it move? Will it become part of another page? Is it truly no longer needed?
Give every moved page a forwarding address
When an old page moves, the website can send visitors to its new location automatically. This is called a permanent redirect—usually a 301 redirect. Think of it as mail forwarding for a web page.
The destination should make sense. An old deck-repair page should lead to the new deck-repair page, not the homepage. Sending every missing page to the homepage may be convenient for the person building the site, but it’s confusing for everyone else.
Menus, buttons, and links inside the site should also point directly to the final addresses. The same is true for the site map submitted to search engines.
Launch day is the beginning of the check, not the end
Before launch, test the forms, titles, mobile pages, analytics, and page addresses. Make sure the private test version hasn’t appeared in search and that the live version won’t accidentally block Google.
Some movement in search results is normal while Google visits the new pages. That doesn’t mean panic is required. It does mean someone should watch Search Console, important page traffic, inquiries, and errors for the next several weeks.
Google recommends keeping redirects in place for at least a year. In practice, holding on to the old domain and redirects longer can protect bookmarks, printed materials, and forgotten links.
A redesign should improve how the website looks and works without erasing the history it has already earned. The safe approach is to treat it as both a design project and a careful move.
Related reading
Build a Website Content Inventory Before a Redesign
Sources
Google Search Central: Site moves with URL changes
Google Search Central: Redirects and Google Search
Planning a redesign? Talk with TechDad Technology about your website and the pages you need to preserve.