Most rebrand plans are full of design work: the logo, the colours, the new homepage copy. The part that decides whether you keep your traffic usually gets a single line near the bottom, something like “set up redirects”.
That line hides a lot. Domains that need to stay yours, hundreds of old URLs, a Search Console setting, and a long list of places where the old name is still printed.
This checklist breaks launch week into the order things actually need to happen, so nothing gets left for the morning after.
Two weeks before: protect what you already have
Start with the things that are hard to fix later. None of them take long, but all of them get harder once the new site is live.
Keep the old domain. Turn on auto-renew and check the expiry date. Letting
oldbrand.comlapse is the most expensive mistake in any rebrand, because someone else can register it and every old link goes with it.List every domain you own. Country domains, typo domains, campaign domains, the
wwwand non-wwwversions. Each one will need a destination.Export your old URLs. Pull them from your sitemap, your analytics (pages with visits in the last year) and a backlink tool. This list becomes your redirect map.
Check email. If your team sends email from the old domain, its MX records have to stay in place. Moving the website should not move your inbox by accident.
One week before: build and test the redirect map
A redirect map is a simple two-column list: old URL on the left, new URL on the right. Every important page gets its own row.
Match pages one to one.
oldbrand.com/pricinggoes tonewbrand.com/pricing, not to the homepage. Google treats mass redirects to the homepage much like missing pages, which we cover in should you redirect old pages to the homepage.Use patterns where the structure stays the same. If
/blog/keeps its slugs, one wildcard rule covers the whole section.Use 301 redirects. A rebrand is permanent, so the redirects should say so.
Avoid chains. If an old page already redirected somewhere else, point it straight at the final new URL.
If your new site runs on the same platform, test the rules on a staging domain first. The goal is to launch with a map you have already checked, not one you are still writing.
Launch day: switch, then check
Launch day is mostly about order. Put the redirects live at the same moment the new site goes live, not a few days later. Every hour in between is an hour of broken links for visitors and crawlers.
Then test, starting with your most visited pages. Run a handful of old URLs through the redirect tester and look for three things: a single hop, a 301 status code, and a final page that returns 200. Check both http and https, and both www and non-www, because each of those is a separate URL.
Tell Google about the move
Once the redirects are working, use the Change of Address tool in Search Console. It tells Google your site has moved from one domain to another and helps move your search results to the new one. You need to be a verified owner of both the old and the new property, and Google asks you to set up the redirects first.
Submit the new sitemap at the same time. Our guide to using Search Console after changing domains walks through the reports worth watching in the weeks after.
The first week: update the links you control
Redirects catch everyone you can’t reach. For everything you can reach, update the link directly. It saves visitors a hop and makes the new name visible straight away.
Your own website: navigation, footer, internal links and canonical tags should all use the new domain.
Profiles and listings: social bios, Google Business Profile, app stores, directories and marketplaces.
Email: signatures, templates, automated emails and the footer of your newsletter.
Paid campaigns: ads and tracking links should point at new URLs, not at redirects.
Partners: ask the sites that send you the most traffic to update their links.
Printed material is the one place you can’t edit. Brochures, packaging and QR codes will keep sending people to the old domain for years, which is exactly why the redirects need to stay.
After launch: watch, and keep the redirects
Expect some movement in search for a few weeks while Google recrawls. Google’s own site move guide suggests keeping redirects for as long as possible, generally at least a year, and points out that from a visitor’s point of view they can stay forever.
In practice, the old domain usually earns its keep long after launch. Our post on what to do with your old domain after a rebrand covers the long-term options.
Where Redirect Supply fits in
Redirect Supply handles the redirect side of a rebrand without keeping the old website running. You connect oldbrand.com with a few DNS records, and HTTPS is set up automatically, so old https links keep working.
On the Free plan, one domain gets a catch-all rule that sends everything to one destination. Paid plans add path rules and wildcards, so /pricing can land on /pricing, and you can import a whole redirect map from a CSV instead of typing it rule by rule. Built-in analytics show which old URLs are still getting visits, which helps when you decide what to keep.
A rebrand changes the name on the door. The checklist is what makes sure people can still find the door.
