Rebuilding a criminal defense firm's website is one of the riskiest jobs in law firm marketing, and the risk is almost entirely in the URLs. A firm that ranks for "DUI lawyer" in its city got there over years, through pages that other sites link to and that Google has learned to trust. Change those URLs without a plan and the new site can lose much of that standing in a few weeks.

This is a practical guide for developers and technical marketers handling that kind of rebuild. Most of it applies to any site migration. The parts specific to defense firms come from how their sites tend to be built: lots of charge pages, city pages, blog posts from several past agencies, and URL patterns nobody remembers choosing.

Inventory every URL before touching anything

You cannot redirect pages you do not know exist. Build a full list of the old site's URLs from several sources, because any single one will miss something:

  • A full crawl with a desktop crawler or a hosted crawl tool
  • The XML sitemaps, including old ones that may still be live
  • Search Console's Pages report and the Performance report's pages tab
  • Analytics landing page reports covering at least the last year
  • Backlink data showing which old URLs have external links

Defense firm sites often hide surprises. A blog from 2017 at /news/ that a previous agency abandoned. Duplicate charge pages under /practice-areas/ and /criminal-defense/. City pages created in bulk and then orphaned. Put them all in one sheet.

Decide what happens to each URL

Every old URL gets one of three outcomes. It keeps the same URL on the new site, it redirects permanently to the closest matching new page, or it is retired with a 404 or 410 because nothing on the new site replaces it.

Match on meaning, not on convenience. An old page about felony DUI should redirect to the new felony DUI page, not to the general DUI page or the homepage. Google treats mass redirects to the homepage much like 404s, so those old pages pass little value. If no close match exists, consider whether the new site should have that page before you retire it.

Thin, duplicate city pages are the exception. If the old site had forty near-identical pages and the new site has eight strong ones, redirect each old page to the nearest real replacement and accept that some will simply be retired.

Write the redirect map as data

Keep the map in a spreadsheet the firm can review, then generate the server rules from it. For an Nginx setup, a map block keeps hundreds of redirects readable:

map $request_uri $new_uri { /practice-areas/dui-defense/ /charges/dui/; /practice-areas/felony-dui/ /charges/dui/felony/; /criminal-defense/drug-possession/ /charges/drug-possession/; /oakland-dui-lawyer/ /locations/oakland/dui/; } server { if ($new_uri) { return 301 $new_uri; } }

Most hosts and platforms have an equivalent: a redirects file, a plugin or a dashboard table. Whichever you use, avoid chains. If an old URL already redirected somewhere in a previous rebuild, point it straight to the final destination.

Carry over what made the old pages rank

A redirect passes signals to the new URL, but the new page still has to earn its place. Before launch, compare the old and new versions of the top pages:

  • Is the main content as complete as before, or did the redesign cut half the text?
  • Are the title and main heading still targeting the same charge and city?
  • Do internal links still point to the page from the menu and related pages?
  • Did structured data, such as the organization and attorney markup, make it across?

Content cuts during redesigns are a common reason rankings drop after a migration, even with perfect redirects. If you have to shorten a page, keep the parts that answer the searcher's questions.

Launch, then watch closely

On launch day, crawl the old URL list against the new site and confirm every URL returns the intended 301 and lands on a page returning 200. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console. If the domain is changing, use Search Console's Change of Address tool as well.

For the next several weeks, watch the Pages report for new 404s and the Performance report for drops on key charge pages. Some fluctuation is normal for a few weeks. Steep, lasting drops on specific pages usually trace back to a missing redirect or missing content, and an indexing review like this guide to finding and fixing indexing problems on a defense firm website helps track them down.

Keep the redirects in place for the long term. Google has said redirects should stay for at least a year, and for a law firm with old external links there is little reason to ever remove them.

Questions about redirects in law firm site rebuilds

Should I use 301 or 302 redirects?

Use 301 for permanent moves, which covers almost every redirect in a rebuild. A 302 signals a temporary move and is meant for short-term situations.

Is it fine to redirect old blog posts to the blog index?

Only if no better match exists. Redirecting individual posts to a listing page tends to be treated much like a 404. Map each post to its closest new equivalent or keep the post.

How long before rankings settle after a migration?

It varies. Small sites often settle within a few weeks. Larger sites with many redirects can take longer. Persistent drops on particular pages usually point to a fixable problem.

More technical guides for law firm sites are collected in our technical SEO library for law firms.

SBD Marketing works only with criminal defense law firms, one firm per city. We build websites for defense practices, handle SEO for the charges they defend, work on visibility in AI search tools and run SEO audits, including migration reviews.