If your Framer export involves any URL changes — a new domain, a restructured route, or moving off a Framer-hosted subdomain — redirects are the single most important technical step for not losing the SEO value you've already built.
Why this matters more than it seems
Every backlink pointing at your old URLs, every bookmark a returning visitor has saved, every page Google has already indexed and ranked — all of that is tied to the specific URL, not just "your site" in the abstract. Change the URL without a redirect, and all of that history effectively resets: visitors hit a 404, and search engines eventually have to rediscover and re-rank the new URL from scratch, losing whatever ranking equity the old URL had accumulated.
What actually needs a redirect
- Every existing page, mapped old URL → new URL, ideally 1:1 (the same content should redirect to its direct new equivalent, not just a blanket redirect to your homepage — a "redirect everything to the homepage" approach loses almost all the SEO value a proper 1:1 mapping preserves).
- Any URL structure changes, even on the same domain — if your export changed
/blog/post-nameto a different pattern, that's still a URL change needing a redirect. - www vs non-www, or http vs https, if either changed as part of the move — these count as different URLs to search engines even though they look nearly identical to a human.
How to actually implement redirects, by hosting type
Vercel/Netlify: both support a redirects configuration file (vercel.json or netlify.toml/_redirects) where you list old-path → new-path mappings, applied at the edge before your app even runs.
Next.js specifically: next.config.js supports a redirects() function as an alternative or supplement to hosting-level redirects, useful if you want redirect logic to live alongside your application code.
Don't forget after setting them up
- Test a sample of old URLs directly — don't just assume the config is correct, actually visit a few and confirm they land on the right new page with a proper 301 (permanent) status, not a 302 (temporary), which search engines treat differently for ranking transfer purposes.
- Update your sitemap to reference only the new URLs.
- If the domain itself changed, submit a Change of Address in Google Search Console in addition to the redirects — the redirects alone help, but the explicit signal speeds up Google's re-association of the new domain with your existing rankings.