How to Move Your Website Without Losing Your Google Rankings
Notes from migrating a 200+ product B2B site to Astro and a Node/Postgres backend. The checklist I use so a new site doesn't wipe out years of search traffic.
The new site looks great. It launches on a Monday. By Friday the phone is quieter than usual.
That's what a bad migration looks like. Old pages that used to rank now go nowhere. Google has to start over.
I've done a few of these. The biggest was Forza, a B2B manufacturer with a 200+ product catalog. We moved it to Astro on the front and an Express and PostgreSQL backend, with leads syncing to Salesforce. Search visibility had to survive the move.
Here's the checklist I use.
1. Export every URL before you touch anything
Pull every page Google knows about. Your sitemap, Search Console, and a crawl of the live site. Products, categories, blog posts, PDFs.
That list is your contract. Every one of those URLs needs a home on the new site.
2. Keep URLs the same when you can
The safest redirect is no redirect. If a product lives at /products/widget-x today, keep it there unless there's a real reason to change it.
3. Map everything else with 301s
When a URL has to change, send it to the closest match with a permanent redirect. Not the homepage. The closest match.
A redirect map is boring. It's also the thing that saves your traffic.
4. Carry the content over, not just the design
Titles, descriptions, headings, and the actual words on the page. A new design that drops half the copy will rank like a new site.
5. Check the technical basics on staging
- Canonical tags point to the right place
- The staging site is blocked from Google, and the live site isn't
- Sitemap lists the new URLs
- Pages load fast on a phone
- Forms work end to end
6. Watch it for a month
After launch, check Search Console every few days. Look for 404s, pages that dropped out, and crawl errors. Fix them fast. Small problems caught in week one stay small.
Why this matters for Orlando businesses
A lot of Central Florida companies are on old sites that worked fine for years. Contractors, manufacturers, hospitality suppliers. The site gets dated and someone says "let's rebuild it."
Rebuild it. Just don't throw away the search traffic you already earned.
If you're planning a move and want a second set of eyes on the plan, email me. I'll look at what you have and send back a short list.