Technical SEO
Website migration SEO checklist: how to move without losing rankings
A step-by-step SEO checklist for redesigns, platform migrations and domain changes: benchmarking, redirect mapping, staging QA, launch day and post-launch monitoring.
Key takeaways
- Most migration traffic losses come from missing redirects and changed or deleted content.
- Benchmark everything before you start: URLs, rankings, traffic and backlinks.
- Map every old URL to its best new match with a single 301 redirect.
- Test on staging, launch carefully, then monitor daily for the first few weeks.
A website migration is the riskiest thing most businesses do in SEO. I've seen redesigns wipe out half a site's traffic overnight, and I've helped recover sites months later. Almost every loss could have been avoided with a checklist like this one, whether you're redesigning, moving to Shopify or WordPress, merging sites or changing domain.
Types of migration
| Migration | Risk | Main danger |
|---|---|---|
| Design refresh, same URLs | Low | Lost content and internal links |
| New URL structure | Medium | Missing redirects |
| New platform (e.g. to Shopify) | High | URL changes, lost features, duplicates |
| New domain | High | Redirects and lost link equity |
| Merging several sites | Very high | All of the above |
- 1BenchmarkCrawl, rankings, traffic and backlinks recorded
- 2MapEvery old URL matched to one new URL
- 3StageNew site crawled and compared before launch
- 4LaunchRedirects, robots, sitemaps and tracking checked on the day
- 5MonitorDaily checks and fixes for the first weeks
Before: plan and benchmark
- Involve SEO before design starts. URL and content decisions are cheap early and expensive late.
- Crawl the current site. Export every URL, title, meta description, H1, canonical and status code.
- Export Search Console and analytics data. Top pages by clicks and conversions for the last 12 months.
- Export backlinks. Pages with external links need redirects even if they get little traffic.
- Record rankings for your most important keywords.
- Decide what's changing. List pages being merged, removed or rewritten, and why.
During: build the redirect map
- Map every old URL to one new URL. The closest equivalent, not the homepage.
- Use 301 redirects and avoid chains. Old URL to final URL in one step.
- Include images, PDFs and old campaign URLs that have links or traffic.
- Keep content that ranks. If a page ranks well, keep its main content and headings close to the original.
- Plan the new URL structure carefully. See my guide to URL structure and site architecture.
A redirect map template
Keep the redirect map in a spreadsheet everyone can see. These columns cover what I need on every project:
| Old URL | New URL | Type | Priority | Reason | Tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /shop/oud-nuit-100ml | /products/oud-nuit | 301 | High (traffic + links) | Platform change | ✓ |
| /category/mens | /collections/mens-perfume | 301 | High | Renamed category | ✓ |
| /blog/2019-gift-guide | /blogs/guides/gift-guide | 301 | Medium (links) | Merged into evergreen guide | ✓ |
| /old-promo | – | 410 | Low | Expired offer, no links | ✓ |
The URLs above are an illustrative example. "Priority" comes from your benchmark: anything with traffic, conversions or backlinks is high.
Staging: test before launch
- Block staging from search engines with password protection, not just robots.txt.
- Crawl staging and compare titles, H1s, canonicals and content with the old site.
- Test redirects against the full list of old URLs before launch.
- Check structured data, hreflang and internal links.
- Check speed and Core Web Vitals on key templates.
Launch day
- Remove staging password protection and any noindex tags.
- Confirm robots.txt allows crawling.
- Turn on redirects and test a sample immediately.
- Submit the new XML sitemap in Search Console. For domain moves, use the Change of Address tool.
- Check analytics and conversion tracking are firing.
After: monitor and fix
- Check Search Console daily for crawl errors and coverage changes for the first two weeks.
- Crawl the old URL list again to catch redirects that broke.
- Watch rankings and traffic against your benchmark. Some fluctuation is normal for a few weeks.
- Update important backlinks to point straight to new URLs where possible.
The migration problems I'm usually called in to fix
When a business asks me to look at a migration that went wrong, the cause is almost always one of these:
- Redirects only for the top pages. Hundreds of long-tail product and blog URLs left returning 404.
- Category text removed in the redesign. Clean new design, but the collection descriptions that ranked were dropped.
- Staging noindex left on. The new site launched with a sitewide noindex tag or a blocking robots.txt.
- Internal links pointing at old URLs. Every internal link going through a redirect, wasting crawl budget.
- Hreflang and canonicals still referencing the old domain after a domain move.
Each one is fixable. The faster it's spotted, the faster rankings return, which is why the monitoring phase matters as much as the planning.
Redirect from,Redirect to
/shop/oud-nuit-100ml,/products/oud-nuit
/category/mens,/collections/mens-perfume
/blog/2019-gift-guide,/blogs/guides/gift-guideWhat "normal" looks like after launch
A well-run migration usually sees a small dip for one to four weeks, then recovery. If traffic is still down significantly after six weeks, something is wrong: usually missing redirects, removed content, or blocked pages. That's fixable, even months later, by comparing old and new URLs and restoring what was lost.