A Redirect Map That Survives Replatforming

Building the URL inventory and 301 map before development starts, and validating it in staging rather than after launch.

Most replatforming SEO losses trace back to the same root cause: the redirect map was built after the new site was already live, from memory rather than from a full crawl of the old one. A complete URL inventory — every indexed page, not just the obvious top-level ones — has to exist before a single template gets built on the new platform.

Validation happens in staging, against the real map, before cutover — checking for redirect chains, loops, and any old URL pattern the map missed. The goal is a cutover where nothing indexed returns a 404, and ranking recovery is a monitored curve rather than a surprise.