301 redirects and backlinks: a recipe for a clean move
Before you move a site, find out which old URLs other sites actually link to. Everything else can be tidied later, but those cannot.
Step one: list the URLs that carry links
This costs 2 credits for one call, up to 1,000 rows.
curl "https://rankbrainmarketing.link/api.php?action=toppages&q=old-domain.com&per=1000&sort=ref_domains&order=desc&key=sk_live_..."Ingredients and method
- 1
Export
Save the response as a spreadsheet. The top 100 URLs usually hold most of the link value.
- 2
Map
Give each URL one destination on the new site, the closest match in meaning. Blanket redirects to the home page waste the signal.
- 3
Redirect
Use a 301 for permanent moves. Serve it in one hop, because chains slow crawling and sometimes get dropped.
- 4
Test
Request every mapped URL and confirm a 301 followed by a 200. Anything else goes back on the list.
- 5
Re-pull after the refresh
Our index updates monthly, so check
refdomainson the new domain in four to six weeks.
Common ways this goes wrong
Chains are the first. Old URL to a temporary page to the final page doubles the hops and invites mistakes.
The second is mixed signals. A 301 that points to a page carrying noindex, or one blocked in robots.txt, throws the value away. Fetch each destination and read the headers, not just the status line.
Third come case and slash variants. A link to /Page/ and /page can be two URLs on some servers, and both may have inbound links. Add both to your map.
Fourth is subdomain splits. Decide on www or non-www before the move, then redirect the other host in one rule, and keep the sitemap on the host you chose. Use a crawler such as Screaming Frog on the old site before it goes away, because the pages you forgot are the ones that bite later.
Questions people ask at this stage
Do 301s lose link value? Google has said since 2016 that 301s do not lose PageRank. Hold that lightly, because a redirect to an unrelated page may simply be treated as a soft 404.
What about the www subdomain? Pick one host, redirect the other to it, and update the sitemap. It sounds obvious, yet split hosts are among the most common indexing messes.
Spam links to an old domain also follow the redirect. Check the spam runbook before keeping a redirect for years.
When you run the final check, count the 301 redirects backlinks depend on, not the total number of redirects. A thousand tidy redirects for pages with no links matter far less than ten for the pages everyone cites.
Worked mapping, invented for illustration
| Old URL | Referring domains (made up) | New destination | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| /blog/trail-shoes-2019 | 42 | /guides/trail-shoes | Closest match in meaning |
| /blog/tent-sizes | 18 | /guides/tents | Section page, acceptable |
| /tag/misc | 1 | (none) | Let it return 410 |
| /about-us | 9 | /about | Simple rename |
How long until you can judge it
Give it six weeks at least. Google recrawls old URLs at its own pace, and large sites take longer.
Our link index refreshes about monthly, so the first new-domain snapshot may still show a gap. Do not roll back on the first look.
Screaming Frog crawls the old site to catch URLs the link index never saw. Search Console lists the pages Google already shows. Our toppages call covers the third view, the pages that other sites link to.
Our recommendation
Map the top hundred by hand
Automation is fine for the long tail. The URLs that attract links deserve a human decision, because each one is a vote you do not get to cast twice.
- Prefer closest-match pages over the home page.
- Keep redirects live for at least a year.
- Recheck unindexed pages after the move.