How to Set Up 301 Redirects From Your Old Domain to Your New One

You picked a better domain name. Good. Now you have one job left that a lot of people get wrong: making sure everyone who visits the old name lands on the new one. That's what a 301 redirect does.

A 301 redirect is a permanent forwarding rule. When someone types your old address, or clicks an old link, or finds your old page in Google, the 301 quietly sends them to the matching page on your new domain. They don't get an error. They don't get a dead page. They just land where they should.

Get this right and the move is smooth. Skip it and you lose two things at once: customers who typed the old name, and the ranking you spent years earning in Google. Here's how to set up a 301 redirect from your old domain to your new domain without breaking anything.

Why 301 and not something else

There are two kinds of redirects. A 301 says "this moved for good." A 302 says "this moved for now." You want the 301. It tells Google to pass your old page's credit over to the new one, and to update its records so the new address starts showing up in search instead of the old.

Use a 302 by mistake and Google keeps treating the old domain as the real one. That's a common, quiet way to lose the ranking you were trying to keep.

Redirect page to page, not just to the homepage

The biggest mistake is dumping everyone on the new homepage. Say someone finds oldname.com/plumbing-repair in Google. If you send them to newname.com, they land on the front door and have to hunt for what they came for. Many just leave.

Do it the right way: match each old page to the page that replaced it.

• Old homepage → new homepage
• Old services page → new services page
• Old blog post → the same post on the new domain

If the new site has the same structure, this is easy. If a page has no match, send it to the closest thing, then the homepage as a last resort. But try hard to match pages one to one. Google rewards it, and so do your customers.

The three ways to set it up

You don't need to write code by hand for most of this. Where you do the work depends on how your site is built.

1. Through your website platform

If you're on a builder like Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, or WordPress, redirects are usually a setting or a small plugin. Look for "redirects" or "URL redirects" in the admin area. You add the old path on the left, the new full address on the right, and pick 301. This is the friendliest option and covers most small businesses.

2. Through the registrar or DNS

Some registrars offer a simple "forwarding" toggle for the whole domain. That's fine for sending the entire old domain to the new one as a blanket rule, but it usually can't match page to page. Use it only if your old site was one page, or as a backstop.

3. Through the server

If you run your own hosting, you can add 301 rules in a server file (an .htaccess file on Apache, or a config block on Nginx). This is the most powerful method and lets you redirect everything at once with a couple of lines. If that sentence meant nothing to you, ask whoever built your site to do it. It's a ten-minute job for them.

Google's own guide on how site moves and redirects work is worth a skim before you start, and your registrar's help pages will show the exact steps for their setup.

Keep the old domain. Don't cancel it.

Here's the part people forget. A redirect only works if you still own the old domain. The redirect lives on the old domain and points away from it. Let the old registration lapse and every redirect dies the same day.

Plan to keep paying for the old domain for at least a year or two after the move, longer if you can. It's cheap, and it protects everything you just set up. Old business cards, old truck lettering, old directory listings, links on other people's sites, that one review site that never updates, they all keep working as long as the old name is alive and forwarding.

Test it before you tell anyone

Once the rules are in, check them yourself. Type a few old addresses into your browser, including deep pages, not just the homepage. Each one should jump to the right new page with no error and no warning. Try it on your phone too.

A free redirect checker tool will confirm you're returning a 301 and not a 302 or a broken chain. Fix any page that lands in the wrong spot.

What to do right after

Redirects are the engine of the move, but they're not the whole move. A few things need to happen alongside them so nothing slips:

• Tell Google directly. Walk through Search Console's Change of Address tool so the switch registers faster.
• Don't lose your email. Your inbox moves separately from your website. Here's how to move your business email without missing a message.
• Update your listings. Your Google Business Profile and other directories should point at the new name too.

If you haven't switched yet, run through the pre-move checklist first. It'll save you from redoing work.

Redirects sound technical, but the idea is simple: every old door still opens, and it opens onto your new place. Do that well and most customers never notice you moved at all.

Still deciding whether a better name is worth this effort? Browse names for your city or trade and see what's out there, or ask us about one specific domain you have in mind. It takes about a minute.