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From old website to Sitebite: setting up redirects

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Already have a website and switching to Sitebite? Chances are page URLs will change. Without redirects, you lose visitors who follow your old links, and you lose the SEO value your old pages have built up with Google. A few redirects prevent that.

What exactly is a redirect

A redirect automatically sends visitors and search engines from an old URL to the new one. A 301 redirect is the standard: it signals that a page has permanently moved, and Google transfers the SEO value (rankings, backlinks) to the new URL.

When you need redirects

  • Your existing website gets a new URL structure on Sitebite (e.g. /menu.html becomes /menu/).
  • You’re setting up a completely different domain, or moving from a subdomain to your root domain.
  • You’re removing pages that won’t come back, but that still have visitors or backlinks (redirect those to the most relevant replacement page).

How to approach it

  1. Take stock of your old URLs. Use Google Search Console (Pages report) or a sitemap crawl to find all existing pages that get traffic or visibility.
  2. Create a mapping table from each old URL to its corresponding new URL on Sitebite. When in doubt: redirect to the most relevant page, not the homepage.
  3. Put the redirects live as soon as your new site and domain connection are active, ideally on the day of the switch itself.
  4. Check the most important old URLs after going live: do they load through to the right new page with no error?
  5. Keep an eye on Search Console for the first few weeks after migration for 404 errors, and add further redirects where needed.

Watch out when changing domains

Also moving to a new domain name? Make sure your old domain stays active (don’t let the registration lapse) until the redirects have been in place for a while. That way, traffic from old backlinks and bookmarks still lands correctly too.

Want to know more about technical SEO after migration? Check out sitemap, robots.txt and redirects: technical SEO with no developer.

Haven’t connected a domain yet?

Sort that first via connecting your own domain to your restaurant website, or read how to register or transfer a domain.

Ready to switch? Try Sitebite and migrate with no SEO loss.