Plan 301 Redirects for a Site Migration Without Losing SEO

The problem Migrations lose traffic in predictable ways: old URLs that 404, everything redirected to the homepage, chains through legacy rules, and the occasional loop. Building the map by hand in a spreadsheet takes days and still misses things.

What it does

• Matches old to new URLs by exact URL, normalised path (case, slash, .html/.php), slug, then fuzzy slug + title similarity
• Learns your section changes from confident matches (e.g. /shop/* → /flowers/*) and uses them for harder matches
• Ranks every URL by clicks and backlinks, so high-value pages are never left unmatched
• Flattens chains through your existing redirects and flags loops before launch
• Writes nginx (location =), Apache (RedirectMatch ^…$) and Netlify/Cloudflare Pages _redirects files, with review lines marked

Why this beats prompting it yourself Redirect maps have to be exact. A script matches every URL the same way, shows the match type and confidence for each row, and catches chains and loops a chat answer won't.

Use cases

• Platform moves (WordPress → Shopify, Webflow, Next.js)
• Dropping .html/.php, renaming /blog to /journal, merging sections
• Cleaning up legacy redirect chains after years of changes

Pairs with: Keyword Cannibalization Finder, Content Refresh Audit, Internal Link Audit.