Your new website is ready. The design is finished, the content is approved, everything has been tested, and the launch date has finally arrived. There’s just one thing left on the list: redirects.
Can you launch now and deal with them tomorrow? Technically, yes. Your new website can go live without redirects in place. But if existing URLs are changing, it’s usually not a good idea.
Your old URLs don’t stop existing in the rest of the internet just because you’ve launched a new website. People may still reach them through Google, backlinks, bookmarks, old emails, or links shared years ago. If those URLs suddenly stop working, your shiny new website can launch with a surprising number of dead ends.
What happens if you launch without redirects?
Imagine your old website has a service page at:
example.com/services/web-design
On the new website, that same service lives at:
example.com/services/websites
The moment you launch the new site, the old URL may stop working. Someone clicks an old Google result, follows a backlink from another website, or opens a bookmark they saved six months ago. Instead of reaching the new service page, they land on a 404.
The new website itself can be working perfectly. The problem is that not everyone enters through its homepage or navigation. Your old URLs are already out in the world, and a website launch doesn’t update all of those links automatically.
That’s what redirects are there to solve.
Search engines need a clear route too
Google may already know hundreds or thousands of URLs from the old version of your website. Some of those pages might rank in search, receive organic traffic, or have backlinks from other websites.
If a page moves permanently, a 301 redirect creates a clear connection between its old and new locations:
Old URL → New URL
Without that redirect, Google encounters a missing page at the old address and separately discovers a page at the new one. You’ve removed one of the clearest signals that the two URLs represent the same content.
That doesn’t mean a few hours without redirects will automatically destroy your rankings. Website migrations take time for search engines to process anyway. But there’s very little benefit in deliberately creating that gap when the redirects can be prepared before launch.
You don’t need to solve every old URL first
This is where redirect planning can start to feel overwhelming. You export the old website and suddenly have a spreadsheet containing hundreds or thousands of URLs. Does every single one need to be perfectly mapped before you can launch?
Not necessarily.
If time is limited, start with the URLs that have something to lose. Prioritize pages receiving organic or referral traffic, URLs with valuable backlinks, pages ranking for important searches, and your main product, service, company, or content pages. You should also include any URL that clearly has a new equivalent on the website you’re about to launch.
Your first redirect map might look like:
/about-us → /company
/services/web-design → /services/websites
/our-work → /projects
/contact-us → /contact
You can continue working through lower-priority URLs afterwards. The important thing is that your most valuable old routes aren’t broken on launch day.
Don’t use the homepage as an emergency fix
If the redirect map isn’t finished, there’s a tempting shortcut: send every old URL to the new homepage.
That certainly makes the 404s disappear, but it doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. Someone following an old link to your pricing page is probably looking for pricing. Someone clicking a backlink to a specific article probably wants to read that article. Dropping both visitors onto the homepage makes them start their journey again.
Search engines care about relevance too. Redirecting an old URL to an unrelated destination can be treated more like a missing page than a meaningful move.
So don’t create redirects simply for the sake of having them. If an old page has a relevant replacement, send it there. If the content is genuinely gone and there’s nowhere useful to send someone, a 404 or 410 can be the better response.
Make redirects part of the launch
Redirect planning is much easier while you still have the old website in front of you. You can see what existed, compare it with the new structure, and decide what should happen to each important URL before anything disappears.
A practical launch process looks like this:
Collect the important URLs from the old website.
Match moved pages with their closest destinations on the new website.
Prepare permanent redirects for those URLs.
Update internal links so they point directly to the new URLs.
Update canonical URLs and your sitemap.
Test the important redirects.
Launch the new website.
Test the old URLs again once the new site is live.
Watch for unexpected 404s and add missing redirects where needed.
The redirect map doesn’t have to be perfect forever on launch day. You’ll probably discover a forgotten URL afterwards, especially on a large or older website. That’s normal. What matters is having the important routes working from the beginning and a way to catch anything you missed.
What if the website is already live?
Maybe the new website launched yesterday and nobody set up the redirects. There’s no reason to panic, but there’s also no reason to wait any longer.
Start with your most valuable old URLs and get those redirects working first. Look at analytics and search data to see which old pages received traffic, check backlinks to important pages, and watch for 404s that visitors are actually reaching. Those signals will help you decide what to fix next.
You can then work through the remaining URLs based on whether they have a relevant destination. A late redirect is still much more useful than leaving an important old URL broken indefinitely.
A new domain makes redirects even more important
If the migration also involves changing domains, redirects become an essential part of connecting the old website with the new one.
Launching:
newbrand.com
doesn’t automatically tell someone visiting:
oldbrand.com/services
where the website has gone. You need to keep control of the old domain and make sure its useful URLs lead to the right places on the new one.
The old website itself doesn’t need to remain online just to make that happen. Redirect Supply can handle the redirects separately from the old website and hosting, allowing the old domain to keep sending visitors to the new site after everything else has moved.
This also means redirect planning can become part of the migration itself rather than something that depends on keeping obsolete infrastructure alive afterwards.
Launch the website and the redirects together
So, can you launch a new website before setting up redirects? Yes, the website will still launch. But if existing URLs are changing, there’s rarely a good reason to separate the two.
Prepare the important redirects before launch and test them as soon as the new website goes live. Then monitor what happens afterwards and fill in any gaps you discover. You don’t need a perfect redirect for every URL your website has ever created, but the pages that still have traffic, rankings, backlinks, or a clear replacement should be ready.
Your new website may be ready for launch. Make sure the old URLs know where to find it.
