Website Migration SEO Checklist

Website migration SEO checklist

The PDF splits a migration into three stages, with a short note on what to expect afterwards:

• Before launch: benchmark rankings and traffic, crawl the current site, flag your most valuable pages, build a one-to-one redirect map and set up tracking on the new site.
• Launch day: remove staging blocks, put 301 redirects live, submit the new sitemap, use Search Console's Change of Address tool if the domain is changing, and test that enquiries are tracked.
• After launch: watch the Pages report and 404 errors daily for two weeks, close redirect gaps, compare against your benchmark weekly and keep redirects in place for the long term.

Why migrations lose traffic

Search engines rank individual URLs. When a site moves, every old address needs to point to its new equivalent, or the history attached to it, including links from other websites, has nowhere to go. When traffic falls sharply and stays down after a relaunch, check for missing redirects and pages still blocked from search before anything else. Stripping out what made your top pages rank during a redesign can also hurt.

The mistakes we see most often

• Redirecting everything to the homepage: visitors and search engines expect the closest matching page, not a generic landing spot.
• No benchmark: without rankings, traffic and Search Console data exported before launch, you can't tell what changed or where.
• Staging blocks left live: a noindex tag, a robots.txt disallow rule or a password carried over to the live site.
• Tracking forgotten: analytics and conversion tracking not installed or not tested, so enquiries go unrecorded.
• Links elsewhere not updated: your Google Business Profile, ad final URLs and social profiles still pointing at old addresses.
• Redirects removed too soon: Google's guidance is to keep them for at least a year as a general rule.

What to do first

Start with the benchmark and the crawl, well before launch. Export organic traffic per page from GA4, clicks and queries per page from Search Console, and your current rankings. Then crawl the old site to get a complete list of URLs, and mark the pages that bring in the most traffic, enquiries and backlinks. Those pages are the core of your redirect map: each one should point to the single closest page on the new site. Choose a launch date outside your busiest season, so any dip lands when it matters least.

What to expect after launch

Some movement in rankings is normal after a migration. Google's site move guidance says that on a small or medium-sized site, most pages may need a few weeks before they show at their new addresses, with bigger sites needing longer. A temporary dip is not a reason to panic. Use the first fortnight to check the Pages report and 404 errors every day, and fix gaps in the redirect map as they appear. Contact websites that link to your most important old pages and ask them to point to the new addresses, so you rely less on redirects over time.

When to bring in a specialist

A simple like-for-like move on a small site is manageable with this checklist. Bring in help if you're changing domain and platform at the same time, merging several sites, changing your URL structure across hundreds of pages, or running international versions with hreflang. A second pair of eyes on the redirect map before launch day is also worthwhile, because that map decides where the history of every old URL ends up.