A new site usually looks better than the old one. But if the old one brought you requests from Google, a careless move can cut that traffic for weeks or months. Most of the risk sits in a few details that are easy to handle if you deal with them before the domain is switched.
Before the move: record what you have
- Export the list of pages. Collect every address of the old site: cars, prices, terms, blog articles, location pages. The old sitemap (often /sitemap.xml) or a crawler will give you the list.
- Find the pages that bring traffic. In Google Search Console open the performance report for the last 3–6 months and sort pages by clicks. A handful of pages often bring most of the visits. These must not get lost.
- Save titles and descriptions. For the top pages, copy the page title and meta description. If they work, keep them or improve them carefully.
- Note the language versions. If the old site has /en/ or /ru/ pages, list them as well.
Map old addresses to new ones
Every old page that had traffic or links needs a new home. Write a simple table: old address, new address. A car page goes to the same car's new page, a blog article to the same article, and a page you drop goes to the closest page that replaces it, not to the home page.
The old addresses then need permanent (301) redirects to the new ones. Agree with whoever runs the new site how and when the redirects are set up, and test them before the switch.
Keep the content that ranks
Google ranks pages for what is on them. If a page about renting a car at the airport brought requests, the new site needs a page that answers the same question with the same or better text. Don't replace a detailed page with one line and a form.
The same goes for the blog. Old articles that still bring visits should move with their full text and, ideally, a similar address.
On the day of the switch
- Check that the new site opens on your domain with SSL, both with and without www.
- Submit the new sitemap in Search Console.
- Open ten old addresses from your table and make sure each one leads to the right new page.
- Send a test request and check that it arrives.
The first weeks after
Some movement in search positions is normal for two to four weeks. Watch Search Console: the page indexing report for errors and the clicks on your top pages. If a page you relied on drops out, check its redirect and its text first.
What Carentos takes care of
When you move to Carentos, we move your content for you: cars, prices, texts and blog articles. The new site comes with a sitemap, language versions marked for Google, canonical addresses, structured data for cars, reviews, FAQ and articles, and an SEO title and description for every page. Search Console is connected in the site settings.
The list above is still worth going through together before the switch: which pages matter, and where each old address should lead.