When can you delete an old redirect rule?
Generally never. External links, printed material and bookmarks reference old URLs for years — a URL on a vehicle wrap or a yard sign especially. Removing rules to tidy the configuration file is how traffic quietly disappears months later with no obvious cause.
Do this before the new site exists
The common failure is redirecting after launch, once someone notices traffic has fallen. By then the old URLs are already returning errors and the pages that earned them have been dropped.
List every existing URL and what it earns first. Anything with traffic, links or rankings needs a decision: keep it at the same address, merge it into a stronger page, or redirect it.
Build the map
Export your current URLs. Google Search Console shows which ones actually receive traffic; a crawl of the site gives you the rest.
Mark what each one earns. Impressions, clicks, and any enquiries you can attribute.
Decide per URL. Keep, merge or redirect. Pages earning nothing and duplicating another page are candidates to merge rather than preserve.
Map each redirect to the closest equivalent page. Not the homepage. A redirect to a page that does not answer the original query is treated as a soft error and helps nobody.
Use the right status code
301 for anything permanent — a page that has moved for good. This is almost always what you want in a rebuild.
302 only when the move is genuinely temporary and the original will return.
Getting this wrong is common: a 302 on a permanent move tells search engines to keep the old URL, which is the opposite of the intent.
Test before launch, not after
Check each redirect resolves in one hop to a page that returns 200. Two things to look for specifically:
Chains. A redirects to B redirects to C. Collapse them so A points straight at C.
Loops. A points to B and B points back to A. The page becomes unreachable.
Then watch
For the first few weeks after launch, check Search Console for a rise in 404s and crawl errors. A handful is normal. A spike means something in the map was missed, and it is much cheaper to fix in week one than in month three.
Expect some ranking movement either way — a rebuild changes more than URLs. What redirects prevent is losing the ranking entirely.
What nobody can promise
That rankings survive a migration untouched. Redirects preserve the signals a URL had earned, which is the best available protection, but search results move for reasons no agency controls. Anyone guaranteeing your positions through a rebuild is guaranteeing something they cannot deliver.
If you would rather not do it
James handles the mapping, configures the redirects, tests every one before launch and watches Search Console afterwards. It is part of every rebuild rather than an extra.
Frequently asked questions
Should I use a 301 or a 302?
301 for anything permanent, which is nearly always the case in a rebuild. 302 only when the original URL will genuinely return. A 302 on a permanent move tells search engines to keep the old URL, which is the opposite of what you want.
Can I just redirect everything to the homepage?
No. A redirect to a page that does not answer the original query is treated as a soft error. Map each URL to its closest equivalent, and merge rather than redirect where two pages covered the same thing.
Will redirects protect my rankings?
They preserve the signals a URL had earned, which is the best protection available — but a rebuild changes more than URLs and results move for reasons nobody controls. Anyone guaranteeing your positions through a migration cannot deliver that.
When should the redirect work happen?
Before launch. Doing it afterwards means the old URLs are already returning errors by the time anyone notices, and recovering is slower than preventing.