Redirections, 404s and the Launch Checklist

1Redirects and the rankings you already have

A redirect is an instruction the web server sends back instead of a page: "this address moved, go here instead." Browsers follow it without the visitor noticing. Google follows it too, and a 301 redirect tells Google the move is permanent, so the new URL takes over the old one's place in search results.

Three things depend on getting this right at launch:

• Traffic you have today. Every old service page, city page and blog post that ranks for anything keeps sending people to the old URL until Google re-crawls. A redirect turns those visits into visits to the new page instead of a dead end.
• Links from other sites. A directory listing, a client's vendor page or a Chamber of Commerce link points to the old URL and will not be updated. The redirect is the only way that link keeps working.
• Google's memory of the old page. Google treats a 301 as "the same page at a new address." Without it, the new page starts from nothing.

Rank Math's Redirections module handles all of this inside WordPress. It needs Advanced mode on the Rank Math Dashboard, which module 03 turned on.

2The redirect map from module 02

Module 02 produced a spreadsheet of every current URL with a decision against it: keep, merge, redirect or noindex. This module uses the rows marked redirect and merge. Each of those rows becomes one redirect. Before loading them, check the sheet against five rules.

Save the finished rows as a CSV file with two columns, source and destination, one redirect per line. That file is what Rank Math imports in the next section.

3Loading redirects into Rank Math

Rank Math offers three places to create a redirect: the Redirections screen, the 404 Monitor log, and the post editor. For the launch, the Redirections screen and its CSV import do the work. The 404 Monitor covers what you missed, in section 5.

One redirect by hand

Open Rank Math SEO > Redirections and click Add New. The form has four parts.

1. Source URLs. The old path, with the match type beside it. Use Exact for launch redirects, so /managed-it-support-richmond-va/ matches only that page. The other match types (Contains, Start With, End With, Regex) catch groups of URLs and are covered at the end of this section. Leave Ignore Case off; WordPress slugs are lowercase.
2. Destination URL. The full new address, with www and the trailing slash. This example uses /managed-it-services-richmond/; use whatever URL your page map from module 02 assigned to the managed IT services page.
3. Redirection Type. 301 for every launch redirect. 302 and 307 are temporary and tell Google to keep the old URL. 410 says the content is gone with no replacement, which is right for a page you deleted on purpose and want Google to forget. 451 is for legal takedowns and does not apply here.
4. Status. Activate. A deactivated redirect is stored but does nothing, which is useful for staging a redirect before launch day.

The whole map at once

Open Rank Math SEO > Redirections and use the Import option to load the CSV from section 2. The file needs at minimum the two columns source and destination. After the import, Rank Math reports how many redirects were Created, Merged, Updated and Deleted. Read that line. If the Created count does not match your row count, open the sheet and find the rows it skipped, which is usually a blank cell or a source that already existed.

Export goes the other way: the Redirections screen can write the whole list out as .htaccess or nginx rules. CSV export is a PRO feature. Keep the module 02 spreadsheet as the master copy either way.

Auto Post Redirect

Under Rank Math SEO > General Settings > Redirections, turn on Auto Post Redirect. From then on, when anyone changes a page's slug in the editor, Rank Math creates the redirect from the old slug to the new one without being asked. This is the setting that stops the next slug cleanup from creating a fresh crop of 404s. Two other settings on the same screen matter:

• Redirection Type sets the default for new redirects. Set it to 301.
• Fallback Behaviour decides what happens when a redirect's destination itself no longer exists: show the 404 page, go to the homepage, or go to a custom URL. Leave it on the 404 page so a broken destination shows up in the 404 Monitor instead of being hidden by the homepage.

Match types for groups of URLs

A few of the current URL groups are easier to redirect as a pattern than one row at a time. Start With matching /henrico-virginia-city-guide- catches all ten Henrico city-guide pages in one rule if module 02 decided they all go to the same place. Regex can do more, and Rank Math's documentation says to test regex rules carefully. Prefer Exact rows from the spreadsheet wherever the destinations differ, and use a pattern only when every matching URL goes to the same destination.

4The 404 Monitor

However carefully the spreadsheet was built, some old URL will be missed: a post from 2019 nobody remembered, a misspelled link on someone else's site, an image URL. The 404 Monitor logs every request that reaches WordPress and finds no page, so the misses show up as a list instead of as silent lost visitors.

Turn it on under Rank Math SEO > General Settings > 404 Monitor. Four settings:

The log itself lives at Rank Math SEO > 404 Monitor. Each row shows the URL, the hit count and the last time it was requested. Hover a row and click Redirect: Rank Math opens the Add New form with the source already filled in, and you type the destination. Sort the log by hits and work from the top. A URL requested once by a bot is noise. A URL requested every day is a link somewhere that people still follow.

Clear the log once the launch settles, so the list only shows what is still broken.

5The pre-launch checklist

Run every row of this table on the staging site before the new site goes live, and again on the live site within the first hour. Each row names where to look and what "done" looks like. A row that fails is a reason to hold the launch, because each of these is faster to fix before Google sees the new site than after.

6Launch day

1. Back up the old site and export its Yoast data one more time. If the launch has to be reversed, this is what comes back.
2. Put the new site live by whatever method the host uses: DNS change, or swapping the staging site into place. Wait until the live domain shows the new site in a fresh private browser window.
3. Uncheck search engine visibility in Settings > Reading, then reload /robots.txt and confirm no Disallow: /. Do this before anything else; every minute the box is checked is a minute Google can crawl a site that says "do not index me".
4. Run rows 2 to 12 of the checklist on the live site.
5. Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console > Sitemaps: enter sitemap_index.xml and Submit. Do the same in Bing Webmaster Tools. If the property already had a sitemap submitted from the old site, resubmitting the same address is enough.
6. Inspect the three most important URLs in Search Console's URL Inspection: the homepage, the managed IT services page and the cybersecurity page. Use Request Indexing on each. Google's documentation says this asks for a crawl and does not guarantee timing.
7. Clear the 404 log so that it starts counting from launch.
8. Turn Debug Redirections off if it is still on, and confirm caching (Cloudflare and any WordPress cache plugin) has been purged, so visitors are not served the old site from a cache.

7The first two weeks

Google re-crawls the site on its own schedule. What you can do is watch four places and act on what they show. Each check takes a few minutes; do them daily for the first week and every few days for the second.

The Index Status tab

Rank Math SEO > Analytics > Index Status pulls each URL's state from Google's URL Inspection API: indexed, crawled but not indexed, or not found. In the free plan the data refreshes every 3 days. In the first two weeks you want to see the new service pages move to indexed and the redirected old URLs disappear from the list. An old URL that still shows as indexed means Google has not re-crawled it yet; an old URL showing a 404 means the redirect for it is missing, so open the 404 log.

The Search Console Pages report

In Google Search Console, Pages (under Indexing) lists why URLs are not indexed. The reasons that matter after a launch:

• Page with redirect. Expected for every old URL in the map. This is Google confirming the redirect.
• Not found (404). A URL you missed. Add the redirect from the 404 Monitor.
• Excluded by noindex tag. Expected for author archives, search results and the pages module 02 marked noindex. A service page in this list means a noindex setting is wrong.
• Duplicate, Google chose different canonical. Two live pages still compete for the same search. Module 02's merge decisions should have removed these; if one appears, one of the pair still exists.
• Discovered, currently not indexed. Google knows the URL and has not crawled it yet. Wait, unless it is still there after the second week.

Clicks and impressions

Rank Math's Analytics dashboard shows impressions, clicks, CTR and average position from Search Console. Note the figures for the week before launch, then compare weekly. A drop in impressions on a page that was redirected is normal for a few days while Google moves the old URL's history to the new one. A drop that lasts past the second week on a page that ranked before is the signal to check that page's redirect, its noindex state and its title.

Resubmitting the sitemap

Any change to which pages are in the sitemap, such as removing a page or turning a taxonomy sitemap off, means resubmitting sitemap_index.xml in Search Console. Rank Math also pings search engines when the sitemap changes if Ping Search Engines is on, per module 06, but the manual resubmit shows you the status.

8Do this now

1. Open the module 02 spreadsheet, filter to the rows marked redirect or merge, and check every destination against the five rules in section 2. Fix trailing slashes and hosts. Save the two columns as redirects.csv.
2. On the staging site, go to Rank Math SEO > General Settings > Redirections. Set Redirection Type to 301, turn on Auto Post Redirect, leave Fallback Behaviour on the 404 page, and turn Debug Redirections on for testing.
3. Go to General Settings > 404 Monitor. Mode Simple, Ignore Query Parameters on. Save.
4. Go to Rank Math SEO > Redirections, import redirects.csv, and compare the Created count with the row count in the sheet. Resolve any difference before moving on.
5. Open ten old URLs from the sheet on staging. Each should show the debug page naming the right rule, then land on the destination in one hop. Fix any that chain.
6. Run the twelve-row checklist in section 5 on staging and write the result of each row in a column of the spreadsheet, so there is a record of what passed.
7. Turn Debug Redirections off.
8. Book the launch, and work section 6 on the day. Put the four checks from section 7 in your calendar for the following two weeks.

9Check yourself

1. The old page /backup-disaster-recovery-old/ already redirects to /backup-disaster-recovery/, and module 02 says /backup-disaster-recovery/ is being replaced by a new page. What should the redirect map contain?

   Answer

   Two rows, both pointing straight at the new page: one for /backup-disaster-recovery-old/ and one for /backup-disaster-recovery/. Leaving the first row pointing at the second creates a chain of two hops.

2. Why is 301 the right type for every launch redirect, and when would you choose 410?

   Answer

   301 tells Google the move is permanent, so the new URL replaces the old one in search results. 410 is for a page you deleted on purpose with no replacement, such as a tourism page module 02 decided to drop, and tells Google to remove it rather than look for a new address.

3. The site goes live and the homepage does not appear in Google after two weeks. Which checklist row do you look at first, and why?

   Answer

   Row 1, Search engine visibility in Settings > Reading. Staging sites usually have the box checked, and if it came across with the launch every page carries a noindex instruction. Confirm at /robots.txt and in a page's source, then uncheck it and request indexing on the homepage.

4. A week after launch the 404 log shows /microsoft-365/?utm_source=newsletter with many hits. What does that tell you, and what do you do?

   Answer

   An email newsletter still links to the old Microsoft 365 page and people are clicking it. Add a redirect from /microsoft-365/ to the new Microsoft 365 page from the log's Redirect button, and turn on Ignore Query Parameters if it is off so the entry stops splitting by parameter.

5. What does "Page with redirect" in the Search Console Pages report mean after a launch, and is it a problem?

   Answer

   Google crawled an old URL and followed its redirect. It is the expected state for every row in the redirect map and confirms the redirect works. A problem would be the same old URL showing as Not found (404) instead.

6. Why does Auto Post Redirect matter after launch when the redirect map is already loaded?

   Answer

   The map covers URLs that exist today. Auto Post Redirect covers the next slug change anyone makes in the editor, creating the redirect automatically so a later cleanup or rename does not produce new 404s that nobody planned for.

10Glossary

Redirect

A server response that sends a browser or crawler from one URL to another instead of showing a page.

301

A permanent redirect. Tells Google the page has moved for good and the new URL should take its place.

302 and 307

Temporary redirects. Google keeps the old URL in its index. Not for launch redirects.

410

"Gone." Tells Google the page was removed on purpose and has no replacement.

Redirect chain

An old URL that redirects to another old URL before reaching the final page. Each hop is a delay and a place to break.

Match type

How Rank Math compares a request with a redirect's source: Exact, Contains, Start With, End With or Regex.

Auto Post Redirect

A Rank Math setting that creates a redirect automatically when a page or post slug is changed.

Fallback Behaviour

What Rank Math does when a redirect's destination no longer exists: the 404 page, the homepage, or a custom URL.

404 Monitor

Rank Math's log of requests that reached WordPress and found no page. Each row can be turned into a redirect.

Debug Redirections

A setting that shows administrators a 5-second page naming the redirect rule before it fires. For testing only.

Canonical host

The one version of the domain that counts. For Hermetic today that is www.hermeticnetworks.com.

Index Status

A tab in Rank Math Analytics showing each URL's state in Google, taken from the URL Inspection API.

Pages report

The Search Console report that lists indexed URLs and the reasons other URLs are not indexed.

Request Indexing

A button in Search Console's URL Inspection that asks Google to crawl a URL. Google does not promise when.

11Sources

• Rank Math, Setting up Redirections: Advanced mode requirement, redirect types, match types, Ignore Case, the three places to create a redirect, CSV import columns and result counts, .htaccess and nginx export, CSV export as PRO, Debug Redirections.
• Rank Math, How to Import Redirects: the CSV import.
• Rank Math, General Settings: Auto Post Redirect, Redirection Type default, Fallback Behaviour, 404 Monitor Mode, Log Limit, Exclude Paths, Ignore Query Parameters.
• Rank Math, 404 Monitor: Simple and Advanced modes and when to use each.
• Rank Math, Analytics: the Index Status tab, the URL Inspection API, the 3-day refresh in the free plan.
• Rank Math, Instant Indexing: IndexNow submission and the history status codes.
• Rank Math, Configure Sitemaps: the sitemap index URL, Ping Search Engines, submitting to Search Console.
• Google Search Central, Redirects and Google Search: 301 as a permanent move and how Google treats redirects.
• Google Search Console Help, Page indexing report and URL Inspection Tool: the not-indexed reasons and Request Indexing.
• Site facts from a crawl of www.hermeticnetworks.com on 2026-09-29.

Documentation read 2026-09-29. Rank Math changes often; where this page and the documentation disagree, the documentation is current.