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A redesign almost always starts with the mock-up. It makes sense, it is what people see. It is also what loses traffic: when the site structure is drawn before anyone knows which pages earn their keep, pages that had been receiving visits for years disappear without anyone having decided it. Sorting the existing site happens before the first screen, and it happens on data. It is the first step of any migration to a static site, and it holds for any technology.
In short
Every page of the old site gets one of three decisions: keep, merge or delete.
The decision is made on data: visits from search engines, inbound links, enquiries or sales.
A deleted page that has a replacement is redirected to it; without one, it answers “gone”, never with a redirect to the home page.
Redirects go in before launch, and stay in place for at least a year.
Why sort before you design
Google puts it plainly in its documentation on site moves: it is important to map your old site’s URLs to the new ones. That mapping only exists if every old page has received a decision. Without it, the redesign creates pages nobody can find, and visitors arriving through an old link or a bookmark land on an error.
Sorting also serves the project itself. A page you decide to delete is not rewritten, mocked up or translated: that budget goes elsewhere. Our article on what a business website costs shows how much carrying over the existing site weighs in a quote.
The inventory: the data that decides
From the current site to the redirect map
- List
Every address, crawled and read from the sitemap actually served.
- Measure
Visits from search engines, inbound links, enquiries or sales, page by page.
- Decide
Keep, merge or delete, with the reason written next to it.
- Redirect
The old address to new address map, in place before launch.
Three sources are enough for most sites: a crawl of the old site, sixteen months of Search Console (the most it keeps, enough to see a full season), and your analytics or CRM to know which pages bring enquiries. Inbound links come on top for older pages, which often have more than people think.
Keep: what earns, even a little
A page that receives visits from search engines, links from other sites or enquiries is kept. At the same address if possible: that is the safest option, because there is nothing to redirect. If the new structure requires another address, a permanent redirect to the new page passes on both the visitor and the signal.
Keeping does not mean keeping as is. The redesign is the time to check that a page that earns loads fast on mobile (see Core Web Vitals explained for business leaders) and remains usable with a keyboard or a screen reader (see what the EU accessibility obligation changes).
Merge: two pages for the same question
After ten years, a site often has several pages answering the same question: two articles written five years apart, an offer page and a news item on the same subject. They split the visits and compete in the results. In one content audit, we concluded on 11 merges out of 63 articles, including four that were competing for the same intent.
A merge keeps the best of each page in a single one and redirects the others to it. Google explicitly allows it in the same documentation: redirecting several old URLs to one new page is fine when their content has been consolidated there.
Delete: cleanly, or not at all
A page with no visits, no links and no enquiries, or whose content has become wrong, can go. It still has to go cleanly.
Don’t redirect many old URLs to one irrelevant single URL destination, such as the home page of the new site. This can confuse users and might be treated as a soft 404 error.
So two answers are possible. If a page replaces the one that leaves, a permanent redirect leads to it. Otherwise, the address says it no longer exists: according to Google, all 4xx errors (404, 410), except 429, are treated the same, and the address eventually drops out of the index. A 410, which says “gone for good”, is still clearer for whoever reads your logs.
On this site we did both: the pricing page, removed in September 2026, redirects to the page that groups our offers, which replaced it; three ghost pages, with no content and no replacement, have answered 410 since August 2026.
What the data taught in the field
From the field
An “obvious” purge is not always the right one
On an online store we work with, 449 of the 684 products had never recorded a sale. Removing them all looked obvious; cross-checked with Search Console, many of them were nevertheless receiving traffic, and the purge would have sacrificed 1,229 clicks. Only 130 products were dead on both counts.
The other two lessons come from catalogues that move. Palmora Property, a real estate listings portal whose listings change every day, learned it the hard way: its 404 pages went from 3 to 429 in two months, and 140 replacement pages had to be rebuilt from the repository history. On an online plush toy store we are putting back on its feet, the rule became: put the redirect in place before removing the page, never after. 172 unpublications were made that way. And a redirect is checked with the right tool: on the same store, a first check counted 516 temporary redirects that were in fact permanent, because Shopify does not answer the same way depending on the program asking.
After launch
The redirect map is not archived on switchover day. Google recommends keeping redirects for as long as possible, generally at least a year, and warns that visibility may fluctuate temporarily during a move. Three things follow:
- Update internal links to the new addresses, so that visitors do not go through a redirect every time.
- Watch Search Console in the following weeks: pages in error, excluded pages, queries that drop.
- Check the rules on the real host: the order between redirects and files is not the same everywhere, as our static site hosting comparison shows.
What a redesign lets you change
A redesign is also the time to change what costs you: leave a WordPress that keeps getting hacked, rebuild forms and search on dedicated services, or give an editor to a team that publishes often with a headless Astro and Sanity site. Pages rewritten with the help of AI get reviewed like the others, and whether to disclose it is decided page by page.
Our migration to a static site starts with this inventory: every address gets a decision, the redirect map is set up and checked before the switchover, then Search Console is watched for fourteen days. For a smaller site with no history to carry over, the business website starts directly from your offers.
Frequently asked questions
Should I keep the same addresses during a redesign?
When possible, yes: a page that keeps its address has nothing to redirect and loses nothing. When the new structure requires new addresses, each old page that receives visits or links is redirected to the page that replaces it, one by one, never in bulk to the home page.
How long should redirects stay in place?
Google recommends keeping them for as long as possible, generally at least a year. In practice a redirect costs almost nothing to maintain: keeping it longer protects old links and bookmarks. Do update your own internal links to the new addresses, though.
Should a deleted page return 404 or 410?
For Google, both are treated the same: the address eventually leaves the index. A 410 says more clearly that the page is gone for good, which helps when reading logs. The real point is elsewhere: never redirect a page that has no replacement to the home page.
Can I delete old blog posts?
Those that receive no visits, no links and no enquiries, and whose content is no longer accurate, yes. The others get updated or merged into a more recent article on the same subject. Look at sixteen months of Search Console before deciding: a post may only serve one season.
Sources
- Google Search Central, site moves with URL changes (new tab)developers.google.com
- Google Search Central, HTTP status codes (new tab)developers.google.com
Jim · founder of Brain Plus AI
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