Move a site without losing what its urls earned
Every old url that holds a ranking or a backlink needs a 301 redirect to its new address on launch day. These guides cover the whole job — collecting the urls, pairing them, and importing the finished map into the platform you move to — and are written to be useful whether or not you use Silentfrog.
42 guides in 7 groups · last updated 3 oct 2026 · by Max Lorenz, Goodaim
the redirect map
what every relaunch needs, whatever it moves from or to.
301 redirects for a website relaunch: the complete checklist
Collect every old url, give each one a target, choose between 301, 302 and 410, and prove after go-live that each redirect resolves in a single hop.
read the guide →Finding the urls nothing links to before a relaunch
Old blog posts, campaign landings and discontinued products are invisible to a crawler. The six sources that find them — sitemaps, robots.txt, Search Console, logs, the archive.
read the guide →Website migration SEO checklist: before, on and after launch day
A site migration checklist in three phases — the baseline and url inventory before launch, the redirects and sitemaps on launch day, the checks and Search Console reports after — and where the redirect map fits in.
read the guide →Redirect map template: the columns that matter, with a worked example
A redirect mapping spreadsheet template for a site migration: old url, new url, status, match type, traffic and notes — what goes in each column, a filled-in example, the two formulas that catch duplicates and chains, and how it becomes an import file.
read the guide →301 vs 302 vs 410: which status code each old url needs
What a 301, a 302 and a 410 mean according to the HTTP spec and to Google Search Central, when a relaunch uses each one, where 307, 308 and 404 fit, and the mistakes each code invites.
read the guide →Redirect chains and loops after a migration: how they happen and how to flatten them
Why a relaunch produces redirect chains — old rules meeting a new map, protocol and slash normalisation, renamed targets — how to find them in a spreadsheet, a script or a crawler, and how to flatten every rule to one hop.
read the guide →How to test redirects after a migration: every row, one hop, a 200
Check that every old url resolves in one hop to the planned page with a 200: what counts as a pass, a curl loop over the whole map, a crawler in list mode, and which Search Console reports to watch in the weeks after launch.
read the guide →
when something goes wrong…
rankings dropped, 404s piling up, or a move bigger than a redesign — finding the cause and fixing it.
Traffic drop after a website redesign: find the cause and recover
Lost rankings after a relaunch? Check missing redirects first, then content, internal links, noindex and canonicals — and build the redirect map late, from Search Console data, when the old site is gone.
read the guide →Fixing 404 errors after a website migration
Where to find the 404s a migration left behind — Search Console, server logs, the old url list — which to redirect, which to answer with 410, and how to work through them by traffic.
read the guide →How to change your domain name without losing SEO
Every old url to the same path on the new domain in one hop, the Change of Address tool in Search Console, and why the old domain stays registered for years.
read the guide →Changing your url structure without losing SEO
Wildcard rules for whole folders, one-to-one redirects for renamed pages, the order they go in, and the internal links, canonicals and sitemaps that change with them.
read the guide →Google Search Console for a site migration: before, during and after
Which properties to verify, what to export before the switch, the Pages export as a url source and priority list, and the reports to watch in the weeks after.
read the guide →
special cases
shops, languages, patterns and the url variants that quietly break a map.
Ecommerce site migration redirects: products, variants, categories and discontinued items
Products at two urls, variants as parameters, filters and pagination, and products that no longer exist — which get a 301, a wildcard, a 404 or 410, or nothing at all.
read the guide →Multilingual website migration: redirects per language and hreflang after the move
One map per language that never crosses languages, redirects on every old subdomain or country domain, ?lang= parameters, and hreflang rebuilt on the new urls.
read the guide →Wildcard and regex redirects: the syntax on every platform, and when not to use them
(.*) and %1 in Webflow, RedirectMatch and $1 on Apache, nginx rewrite, Redirection regex, [name] in Squarespace, nothing in Shopify — and when one-to-one rows are the better map.
read the guide →Trailing slashes and uppercase urls in a redirect map
/about, /about/ and /About are three urls. How each platform answers for them, one row per page, rules that match every variant, and targets that do not add a second hop.
read the guide →
choosing a tool
what does the matching, what it matches on, and what it costs.
Redirect mapping tools compared (2026)
Dedicated mappers, free browser tools, Colab scripts and seo crawlers — whether each one crawls, what it matches on, and what it costs.
read the guide →Silentfrog vs Screaming Frog for redirect mapping
A general seo crawler with a near-duplicate workaround, or a tool that only builds redirect maps — where each one is the better choice, and how they split one relaunch.
read the guide →Redirect mapping in a spreadsheet vs an automated tool
When a spreadsheet is enough, what VLOOKUP and fuzzy lookup can and cannot pair, and the four steps an automated mapper takes off your hands.
read the guide →Screaming Frog alternatives for a site migration
Inventory, map, verify: which tool does each migration job instead of Screaming Frog — Sitebulb, JetOctopus, Lumar, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, httpstatus.io, Silentfrog — and what each costs.
read the guide →Free redirect mapping tools: what they do and where they stop
Browser mappers, Colab notebooks, free tiers and 301 generators — what each free option covers, the limit it hits first, and when paying is cheaper than the afternoon it saves.
read the guide →Redirect mapping with AI: ChatGPT prompts, embeddings and scripts compared
Chat prompts, embeddings, Python notebooks and deterministic slug and title matching — how each one fails, and how to use a model without importing urls it made up.
read the guide →
moving to webflow from…
the url patterns each platform leaves behind, and what each one becomes.
WordPress to Webflow: the 301 redirects you need (and the ones you don't)
Trailing slashes, date-based post urls, category and tag archives, the plugin's own redirect table — what each WordPress url pattern becomes on Webflow and which ones get a wildcard.
read the guide →Squarespace to Webflow: redirecting date-based blog urls and everything else
The publish date in every blog url, filters as query strings, the shop folder, and the url mappings box nobody remembers to copy.
read the guide →Wix to Webflow: the redirect map for /post, /product-page and the copy-of pages
One url folder per Wix app, one wildcard row per folder, the legacy /single-post/ blog, and the pages Wix named itself.
read the guide →Shopify to Webflow: redirects for products, collections and the pages that stay behind
Two urls per product, a prefix on every page, and the first decision: does the shop move or stay on a subdomain?
read the guide →HubSpot CMS to Webflow: redirects across subdomains, blog tags and /hubfs files
One sitemap per connected subdomain, landing pages that usually stay behind, three kinds of blog archive, and the flexible pattern redirects that have to be expanded first.
read the guide →
moving between other platforms
relaunches that don't end on webflow: the url patterns each move leaves behind, and the importer they end in.
WordPress to Shopify redirects: WooCommerce urls into /products/ and /collections/
Fixed prefixes, no wildcards, one row per product, category, page and post — and the /shop urls Shopify refuses to redirect.
read the guide →Magento to Shopify redirects: .html urls, category paths and store codes
A suffix, a category path and a store code on every url, years of url rewrites to flatten, and an importer that only knows exact pairs.
read the guide →Wix to WordPress redirects: /post/ urls, old #! links and the Redirection import
The permalink that keeps every Wix post url, one regex rule per Wix app folder, and why no WordPress plugin can see a #! link.
read the guide →Squarespace to WordPress redirects: date-based blog urls, /blog/ slugs and the plugin import
What the WordPress export carries, why %monthnum% can't reproduce Squarespace's dates, category query strings, /s/ files and the url mappings.
read the guide →WordPress to Framer redirects: wildcards, the Redirect Sync csv and date-based posts
Framer's * and :1 wildcards, the from,to csv its Redirect Sync plugin imports, and which WordPress urls need a rule, a row or nothing.
read the guide →Webflow to Framer: the redirects a migration needs
Same folder and same slugs mean no redirect; renamed collections become one Framer wildcard each, category collections get their own path, and the list goes in through Redirect Sync.
read the guide →
importing the map into…
the same two-column file, a different header and a different wildcard for each importer.
How to import 301 redirects into Webflow (CSV and wildcards)
The two-column fromUrl,toUrl file, how one wildcard row replaces a whole folder, which rows to leave out, and what to do before the import replaces what the site already has.
read the guide →How to import a 301 redirect csv into WordPress (Redirection, Yoast, Rank Math, .htaccess)
No importer in core, so the file goes into a plugin or .htaccess. The csv each one expects, the regex notation for wildcards, and the caches to clear afterwards.
read the guide →How to add 301 redirects to Squarespace in bulk (URL mappings from a csv)
No file import, a text box instead: /old -> /new 301 per line, [name] as the wildcard, first match wins, about 2 500 lines fit.
read the guide →How to import 301 redirects into Wix from a csv (URL Redirect Manager)
Keep the template's headers, 500 rows per file, wildcard rows become group redirects in the manager, and the error report tells you which rows were refused.
read the guide →How to import URL redirects into Shopify from a csv
Redirect from,Redirect to with paths, no wildcards at all, the store prefixes that cannot be redirected, and the overwrite option for a store that was redirected before.
read the guide →How to bulk upload URL redirects to HubSpot from a csv
500 rows per upload with a column-mapping step, 140 characters per url, and flexible pattern redirects with :slug for whole folders.
read the guide →From a redirect csv to .htaccess or nginx rules
One line of shell per server: RedirectMatch lines for Apache, a map for nginx, wildcards as $1, and a curl test before dns moves.
read the guide →How to bulk import redirects into Framer from a csv
Framer's own Redirect Sync plugin reads a from,to csv of relative paths; * and :1 for whole folders, rules applied in order, redirects on the Pro plan.
read the guide →Bulk redirects on Vercel, Netlify and Cloudflare from one csv
vercel.json up to 2,048 rules, Netlify _redirects, Cloudflare Pages _redirects and Bulk Redirects lists — one-line conversions, and the defaults that are 302 or 307 instead of 301.
read the guide →
THE TOOL BEHIND THE GUIDES
Skip the spreadsheet: crawl both sites and get the redirect map
Silentfrog crawls the old and the new site, matches every url and downloads the file your platform imports. The first 50 pages are free, with no signup.