How to relaunch your business without losing your Google rankings and reviews

What you've built, and where it lives

An established business has three assets worth protecting in a relaunch: its reviews, its search visibility and its contact points (domain, email and phone). They live in different places, so they need different care.

• Reviews: on your Google Business Profile (and other review sites), independent of your website.
• Search visibility: attached to your website's page addresses and content.
• Email: set by your domain's DNS records, usually separate from the website host.

Step 1: List every page address you have today

Before anything changes, export a list of your current page addresses from your sitemap, your website platform or Google Search Console. Include pages that get visits from search or links from other sites, even old ones.

Step 2: Map old addresses to new pages

Google's guidance on site moves is to decide, for each old address, where it should redirect, and to use server-side permanent redirects (301 or 308). Send each old page to the closest matching new page, not everything to the home page. Avoid long chains of redirects.

Step 3: Keep your redirects in place

Google advises keeping redirects for as long as possible, generally at least one year. If you also change domain name, Search Console has a Change of Address tool to tell Google about the move.

Step 4: Protect your email before touching the domain

When a domain is pointed at a new website host, the email settings (MX records and related verification records) must stay as they are. Write them down first and check them again after the switch. Losing email for a day costs more than any website improvement gains.

Step 5: Update your Google Business Profile, don't replace it

Keep your existing Business Profile. Update the name only if your legal or trading name really changed, and update the website link, hours, services and photos. Creating a new profile would start your reviews from zero.

Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and how well known a business is, and that you can't pay for a better local ranking. A complete, accurate profile and replies to reviews help.

What to expect after the switch

Google says small and medium sites usually take a few weeks for most pages to be re-indexed after a move. Some movement in search positions during that time is normal. Watch Search Console for errors and fix any old address that shows “not found”.

Questions

Sources

• Google Search Central: Site moves with URL changes
• Google Business Profile Help: Tips to improve your local ranking on Google

General information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Rules differ by location; check with your own adviser.