Replacing your construction website: what happens to the old pages?

Ask the supplier to prepare an inventory of the current site. Add the pages and documents your team uses in conversations with prospective clients, even if they attract little recorded traffic.

A contractor’s office manager may regularly send a particular fit-out project to commercial clients. An architectural practice might use a residential project page to explain its approach to a difficult site. A product supplier may have a technical download that customers reach from an older brochure. These uses can matter even when an analytics report is incomplete or the page is absent from the main navigation.

For each item, ask a simple question: would someone still need this information after the replacement site launches?

Then check the material itself. Does the project describe your actual contribution? Are the photographs still approved for this use? Is the named contact current? Does a download contain an old offer, superseded information or a service you no longer provide? Mark uncertainties for the person who can resolve them. Do not let an unchecked document become the default simply because it was on the previous site.

Give each item a clear treatment:

• Keep it. The page still answers a useful question and can retain its address while its presentation changes.
• Revise it. The purpose remains useful, but the facts, copy or images need attention.
• Combine it. Several pages can be brought together when the new page genuinely covers their useful content.
• Retire it. The content no longer has an appropriate public purpose and there is no relevant replacement.

Keeping an address and rewriting its content are separate decisions. A new visual design does not, by itself, require every page to receive a new URL. Ask what a proposed address change achieves before adding it to the plan.

Low traffic alone is a weak reason to discard a page. Equally, a page that once attracted visits may no longer describe work you want. Record the business reason beside the measurement. If you are deciding which services and projects the new site should emphasise, our construction website planning guide can help establish that direction.

Keep the agreed decisions in a document that the business reviewer and website team can both understand. A useful record includes:

• The exact current page or file address.
• Its purpose and any known use outside the website.
• The decision: keep, revise, combine or retire.
• The proposed destination, or a clear note that there is no replacement.
• Any missing copy, image permission or factual approval.
• The person responsible for that decision.
• The launch check and its outcome.

This gives you something concrete to review when a proposal says that migration is included. Ask whether the quote covers preparing the inventory, agreeing the destinations, implementing the changes and checking them. If your team must supply part of the map, put that responsibility and its deadline into the project plan.

Consider a hypothetical fit-out contractor replacing a dated website. This is an illustrative planning exercise, not a Crafters client result.

Its first item is a service page at /commercial-fit-out. The service is current, but the copy needs clearer scope and better project links. The decision is to keep the address and revise the page. There is no move to explain to someone using an existing link.

The second item is a project page at /projects/office-2019. Its photographs and description remain approved, and the team still includes it in capability emails. The new project library uses /work/office-refurbishment. The agreed plan keeps the useful story and sends the old address to that specific replacement. Before approving the row, the director checks that the new description still identifies the contractor’s own package rather than claiming the whole building project.

The third item is an old recruitment advert for a role that has closed. The business has no equivalent vacancy to offer. It should be reviewed for retirement, rather than quietly sending applicants to a generic services page. If the business still needs recruitment information, decide what that information should say and whether it genuinely answers the visitor’s question.

The point of the exercise is to expose different decisions. A single instruction to “move everything” would not describe the work these three items need.

When a page moves permanently, a redirect sends someone using its old address to the replacement. Google recommends permanent server-side redirects where possible; 301 and 308 are the relevant permanent status codes. Your supplier should choose and implement the method supported by the website platform. Google’s redirect guidance explains the distinction from temporary moves.

Ask to see the destination, not just confirmation that a redirect exists. Someone following a link to an office refurbishment needs the corresponding project or a genuinely relevant combined page. Google warns against redirecting unrelated old URLs to a single destination such as the homepage. Its site-move guidance covers this point.

Where content has been intentionally removed without a replacement, ask the supplier to return the appropriate missing-page response. A useful error page can offer navigation while still reporting that the requested content is unavailable. Google explains that a page returning 404 or 410 is not indexed; an error message served with a successful response can be treated as a soft 404. See Google’s HTTP status guidance.

Give the website team examples of links your business cannot instantly change: a capability PDF already sent to a prospect, a QR code on a site board or a project address in a directory profile. Identify who controls each item and whether it can be updated.

A downloadable brochure deserves its own decision. Replacing its file without checking the contents can carry old contact details or claims into the new site. Moving the file without preserving its route can leave an otherwise useful printed link pointing nowhere. Agree which version should remain available and how the office team will recognise the approved one.

Also ask which current services need to remain active during the change. Domain registration, website hosting, email and form delivery may be supplied separately or bundled together. Have the responsible suppliers explain those dependencies before cancelling an existing package. Keep access arrangements in the project’s secure account process, rather than placing passwords in the page map.

Agree the acceptance checks before launch. Ask for a report covering the mapped addresses, together with a practical review of important visitor routes. Start from an old link and follow it through to the intended content. Check that the page is complete, its images and downloads open, and the next step still makes sense on a phone.

For the enquiry route, arrange one clearly labelled test with the receiving team and confirm that it arrives. Keep that test separate from genuine enquiries. A successful page load and a delivered message establish different things.

Record exceptions with an owner and a next action. An intentional retirement should be identifiable as such; a useful project that disappeared by mistake needs a correction. Include the final mapping and outstanding items in the website handover record.

Agree who will check search reports, unexpected missing pages and enquiry delivery after launch. Keep a dated record of the pages changed so that the review has a clear starting point.

Google notes that search visibility can fluctuate while a move is processed. Its guidance also recommends retaining redirects for as long as possible, generally at least a year. Agree who maintains them and which hosting arrangements they depend on. A move being technically complete does not promise unchanged rankings or more enquiries. Google’s site-move guidance.

When approaching an agency, bring your current website, a few links your team regularly shares and a list of anything that must keep working. Crafters’ website design service includes agreeing the pages, migration and enquiry scope for the project. Send us your website brief so those requirements can be considered before the build is quoted.