Existing 301s during site migration - what to do?

[McTaggart]

Hi - I'm looking at an old website and there are lots of 301s internal to that site - what do I do with these when I move to a new site?

Should I list them and adjust them so they redirect to the new site now (instead of from one URL to another URL on the old site) - I'm thinking that if I don't the user will have to travel through one 301 then another to get to the new site, which doesn't seem like a great idea? Your thoughts would be welcome.

[VERBInteractive]

Hi Luke,

If these 301's are old, then any indexing robot has already compensated for them and updated their index with the right URL. What you have to worry about is backlinks from other sites, this should surface GWT (Google Webmaster Tools or Search Console these days).

What I would be more concerned about is 301 redirecting the current URL structure to the new one as that is what most likely is being indexed currently. If I were you I would make a backup the old redirects (just in case), and start clean with a new list of redirects. To create this new list of redirects I would crawl the current site, take that list of URL's determine if any of that old content is going to exist on a new URL when launching the new site, set up the new redirects. Once launched I would monitor the new site in GWT over the next few weeks/months to see what surfaces and redirect any 404's that surface

[McTaggart]

Many thanks for your advice - yes, it seems like the logical way forward, so I'm following your recommendations