How to Build a Complete 301 Redirect Map

A redirect map is the migration source of truth: every important old URL receives an explicit decision before the new website goes live. That decision may be “keep the URL,” “301 to a genuine replacement,” or “return 404/410.”

Start with a complete URL inventory

Export URLs from the CMS, XML sitemaps, Search Console, analytics, server logs, backlink tools, and a crawl. No single source contains everything.

• Original URL
• New destination
• Required HTTP status
• Page type and indexability
• Metadata action
• Evidence, traffic, backlink, and ownership notes

Do not redirect URLs that are staying the same

The safest migration keeps valuable paths unchanged. Mark those rows as 200 so the team knows the URL, Canonical, content purpose, and metadata must remain stable.

Use a 301 only for a meaningful replacement

A permanent redirect should send visitors to the closest page that genuinely replaces the old purpose. Redirecting every removed page to the homepage creates a poor experience and may be treated like a soft 404.

• Old About page to the new About page
• Old Contact page to the new Contact page
• A consolidated article to the stronger replacement guide
• An old category to the equivalent new topic hub

Know when 404 or 410 is correct

If a page has no useful replacement, removal is more honest than an irrelevant redirect. Review traffic and backlinks first; then use 404 or 410 according to the hosting and removal policy.

Preserve more than the path

For unchanged articles, compare title, description, Canonical, robots, Open Graph, Twitter metadata, structured data, images, publication dates, and internal links. A URL can remain the same while its SEO signals accidentally change.

Test on staging and again after launch

Check responses without automatically following redirects so you can see the first status. Then follow the chain and confirm it ends on a working 200 page.

• No redirect loops or multi-hop chains
• Clean destination URLs without index.html
• Real 404 and 410 responses
• HTTPS and preferred hostname
• Updated sitemap containing final URLs only
• Redirects retained for at least one year

A real SEOWithJack example

The SEOWithJack WordPress migration produced a 53-row status map, preserved 27 article URLs, retained the original active Rank Math redirect, and tested legacy pages as 301, 404, or 410 before any DNS change.

Official references

• Google site-move guidance
• Redirects and Google Search
• Troubleshoot crawling errors