Website Migration SEO Checklist: Protect Your Rankings

A new website is a chance to improve, but it also changes the things search engines rely on to understand your site: URLs, content, internal links and templates. Without a plan, rankings that took years to build can drop within weeks. This checklist covers the essentials.

Before you start

• Benchmark: record current organic traffic, top landing pages, rankings for priority searches and conversions.
• Crawl the old site: export every URL, its status, title and internal links so nothing is lost.
• Identify your valuable pages: pages with organic traffic, backlinks or conversions need the most care.

Plan the URLs and redirects

• Keep URLs the same where possible. Every changed URL is a risk.
• Map every old URL to its most relevant new equivalent, one to one where you can.
• Use permanent (301) redirects. Avoid redirecting everything to the homepage.
• Avoid chains: old URLs should redirect directly to their final destination.

Protect the content

Pages that rank do so partly because of their content. Removing copy, merging pages or hiding text behind tabs can all affect visibility. Carry over the substance of valuable pages and keep titles and headings that match search intent.

Check the staging site

• Block the staging site from indexing, and remember to remove that block at launch.
• Crawl staging to check titles, headings, canonical tags, structured data and internal links.
• Test page speed and mobile layouts on key templates.
• Confirm analytics and conversion tracking work on the new site.

On launch day

• Remove any noindex or password protection from the live site.
• Test redirects from your mapping file in bulk.
• Submit the new XML sitemap in Google Search Console.
• Check robots.txt does not block important pages.

In the weeks after

Monitor indexing and errors in Search Console, track rankings and traffic for your valuable pages against the benchmark, and fix broken links and missed redirects quickly. Some fluctuation is normal while search engines process the changes; sustained drops need investigation.

Get help before, not after

SEO input is cheapest at the planning stage. Our Website SEO and Technical SEO services include migration planning and launch support.