The redesigned website is ready, but an old link in a customer’s saved email now opens a generic homepage. The page technically loads. The customer’s task has still been interrupted.
A redirect map connects the old site’s useful addresses to their intended destinations. Preparing it before launch makes migration a content decision as well as a server configuration job.
Inventory the addresses people already use
Collect URLs from the current site, sitemaps, available analytics and known external links. Include important PDFs and campaign pages, not just menu items. Record where each URL came from so that an unusual address can be investigated rather than discarded.
Use a worksheet with old URL, current purpose, destination, decision and test result. The purpose column is valuable: two pages with similar slugs may serve different audiences.
Choose the closest meaningful destination
Google Search Central’s site-move guidance recommends mapping old URLs to appropriate new ones and avoiding irrelevant mass redirects to a homepage. When content has genuinely disappeared without a replacement, the correct response may be an appropriate not-found status rather than a misleading redirect.
For example, an old installation guide should lead to the current guide for that product, not the company news page. If several old articles become one consolidated guide, check that the new page actually covers their useful material.
Test the journey, not only the status code
Open the old address and verify the final page, protocol, hostname and content. Look for loops and unnecessary redirect chains. A permanent redirect that ends on the wrong language version is still a bad migration outcome.
Test a representative sample during preparation, then the complete map after deployment. Keep the results in the worksheet. A green deployment dashboard does not establish that every content relationship was preserved.
Update the new site’s own references
Internal links should point directly to the intended new URLs. Review canonical tags, sitemaps and any language annotations as part of the move. Check that staging restrictions have not accidentally remained on pages intended for public indexing.
Continue monitoring broken links and search-console reports after launch. A redirect map is a record to maintain when exceptions appear, not a guarantee of rankings or immediate reindexing. Its immediate benefit is more concrete: a visitor following a known link has a sensible place to arrive.