Site migration SEO guide

Grab a coffee because this guide is comprehensive. It’s comprehensive because it’s the only SEO site migration resource you’ll need for the entire process.

Here’s the thing: site migrations can be scary and risky for SEO. We can’t change that.

But you don’t need to fear them, you just need to know the correct steps to take and when.

We recommend starting by reading this guide thoroughly to understand the complete SEO site migration process and how pre-planning influences the site going live and beyond. Then, return to each section as you move through the process to fully utilize this ultimate SEO site migration checklist to successfully launch your new site.

Why SEO matters during a website migration

A website migration can significantly impact SEO because migrations commonly impact essential search engine optimization elements, such as:

• URL structure
• On-page content
• Internal linking
• Title tags
• Schema

And that’s just a start.

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Important note: even if a website migration is small, you must complete a detailed SEO site migration checklist. The SEO component of a website migration is complex, and it’s not uncommon for well-intentioned developers or team members to underestimate the impact on SEO.

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There is no way to sugarcoat it, site migrations carry risks for SEO. A website’s position in search engines can precipitously drop, taking clicks and impressions with it. Entire sites can end up deindexing, and reclaiming your hard work will not be quick or easy if you’re not prepared.

Here’s an example of a site migration’s impact on SEO.

Transferwise.com changed its domain and became wise.com.

Before the migration, transferwise.com was getting highs of 32,335,584/month in organic traffic.

After, traffic numbers dropped to 12,985,402/month.

It sounds scary, but with enough planning and documentation, SEO can come through the website migration process in a better position than before. Just look at the Transferwise to Wise example. Wise.com now has organic traffic numbers of 205,063,620, making it 500% more successful than transferwise.com. 

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Sometimes, SEO migration prep involves re-strategizing, knowing that a traffic loss is coming. 

7 Types of site migrations (and what makes SEO tricky)

There are many reasons to migrate a site, but we’ll do a full run through the seven most common types, including examples and common impacts on SEO so you avoid the mistakes. 

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Important note: The website migration process is incredibly variable, so examples may not fit every migration, and there will be more to consider. Think of this section as a broad overview of each migration and its impact on SEO. We’ll get more into the specific details in the checklist section that follows.

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1. Replatforming

Replatforming a site means moving from one content management system (CMS) to another. For example, you might need to migrate your site from Magento to Shopify, or WordPress to Webflow.

The impact of a replatforming site migration on SEO

Often, replatforming significantly impacts SEO as not every element of a website can migrate to the new one; the functionality just might not exist on the new platform. There will also likely be different HTML outputs and limitations within the CMS. Conversely, in some areas, your new CMS may have fewer limitations than the old.

SEO teams should check:

• The SEO functionality of the current plugins, apps, or extensions and what’s available on the new platform.
• That metadata, including title tags, is migrated.
• What’s possible regarding URL structure; likely, it’ll be necessary to change URLs and add 301 redirects.

2. Site redesign

A redesign can be an entire site redesign or even simply a few pages. Significant design amendments may impact on-page elements such as headings, content, keywords, internal links, FAQs, and more. 

The impact of a site redesign or site migration on SEO

If on-page elements are significantly changed, a page’s rankings can also change. The website’s SEO specialist must communicate with design and advise what’s important and why. With this knowledge, designers can create a page that meets its SEO’s needs. 

As an extra step, take screenshots or a backup of the current site so you can reverse it later. Platforms like WordPress have a revision history; make certain it’s toggled on. With revision history, any changes can be quickly reversed.

3. Domain change

A domain change is a significant site migration with potentially huge impacts on SEO. The Transferwise to Wise migration example above was a domain change migration. 

Often, this is an unavoidable change and SEO needs to communicate clearly across teams what may happen (traffic may drop).The plan, instead, is to reduce the impact as much as possible and strategize for the quickest recovery post-migration.

The impact of a domain change site migration on SEO

When a URL changes, it’s a new URL that needs to be crawled and indexed. The best option is to map content identically, then implement 301 redirects page-by-page.

4. New site structure

When you’re recategorizing sections of a site or even an entire site, a site’s structure is amended. You might recategorize service pages, adding sub-services, or apply blog categories to organize content.

Recategorization may impact URLs. For example, if you offer “SEO services,” but you want to add “Local SEO services” and “e-Commerce SEO services,” SEO services might become a “parent” to these new “child” pages. 

A URL structure might go from www.example.com/seo to www.example.com/seo-services/local-seo.

The impact of a new site structure migration on SEO

A new site structure often necessitates changes to the URLs. It’s vital to add in 301 redirects for every modified URL.

Other impacts from this new site structure migration include internal linking changes, especially if the website uses breadcrumbs. Where URLs have changed, update the internal links to the current URL.

5. Website consolidation

A website consolidation migration happens when a business has been operating with multiple websites and wants to bring them together. Or, one business has purchased another and wants to combine multiple websites into one.

The impact of a website consolidation site migration on SEO

In many cases, a website consolidation site migration will include a domain change for at least one of the affected websites. 

In many cases, there will be complications combining multiple content strategies. Assuming the consolidated websites cover the same topics, they likely have the same pages. SEO is at risk of having duplicate content. Audit the content on all sites and see which pages you”ll need from each site.

6. Site location 

A website with a country-specific top-level domain (TLD) like .co.uk (United Kingdom) or .de (Germany) signals to search engines that the site is targeting users in a specific region.

A UK business using, for example, www.example.co.uk may decide to move to www.example.com when the scope of its intended reach broadens. Moving from one TLD to another requires a complete website migration.

The impact of a site location migration on SEO

The main differentiator (outside the URL change) of a TLD migration is the influence TLDs have on local rankings. Consider hreflang tags, which help Google understand the new structure. Hreflang tags are a line of code that signal that a page is written for a specific audience in a specific locale. For example, here’s what a page targeting English-speaking audiences in the US looks like: hreflang="en-us".

7. HTTP to HTTPS migration

HTTPS is a protocol that loads web pages. Unlike HTTP, it encrypts data, protecting both a website and its visitors.

HTTPS has long been recognized as a ranking factor.

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Always protect all your websites with HTTPS, even if they don’t handle sensitive communications. In addition to providing critical security and data integrity for both your websites and your users’ personal information, HTTPS is required for many new browser features, especially those required for progressive web apps.

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If your site currently uses HTTP, then switch to HTTPS during your migration.

The impact of an HTTP to HTTPS site migration on SEO

Although HTTP to HTTPS is better for SEO overall, it will necessitate changing the entire URL structure of the website. Redirects must be put into place and extra SEO precautions taken regarding mixed content. Mixed content occurs when a secure page uses HTTPS and references (links to) insecure resources, such as images still using HTTP.

Site audit tools like Semrush can help you handle mixed content. Screaming Frog will also tell you where pages have mixed content issues.

Pre-site migration SEO checklist

No matter which type of site migration you’re managing, this SEO site migration checklist is a must-review. Keep in mind that a large percentage of migration SEO work happens during the pre-site migration phase, so checking in along the way is a must-do. 

1. Audit the site and benchmark current site performance

A strong benchmark about where a site is currently and how it functions for SEO and marketing is exactly what future-you will need.

Building an effective audit and performance benchmarks isn’t just about preparing for things to go wrong.

Gathering data in this phase has two other important purposes:

1. It encourages holistic thinking about every aspect of the site. It’ll reveal items to resolve with the new site to better brief designers and developers. This gives the site’s SEO the best chance of thriving after the migration.

2. It helps to prove the value of SEO. After the migration, you can point to the before and after and show the outcome of your SEO work.

Remember TransferWise to Wise? The first website was an amazing benchmark to refer back to after the SEO team increased traffic by 500% on the new domain.

Google Sheets is an excellent tool for recording all the data. Create a sheet like the screenshot below, one tab per dataset, and record everything in one workbook.

Here’s a list of items you can record by category: technical and schema, on-page SEO and backlinks, marketing and tracking. 

Technical and schema

• Run a site audit in your preferred SEO tool and record technical errors, warnings, and notices. Your new site should have close to zero errors. Pass existing issues to developers so they know what to avoid.
• Record all schemas used. You can review the schema page-by-page using Schema Validator or crawl the schema using Screaming Frog and export it as a Google Sheet.
• Review your robots.txt. This holds information about directives to Google, including the pages you want indexed and those you don’t. Visit your robots.txt by visiting www.YourWebsite.com/robots.txt. If you don’t have one, you must add it to the new site.
• Review how canonical tags are used. This is especially important on products, categories, and parameter URLs. You’ll want to analyze whether the new setup works similarly or if you need to change things. Crawling tools will identify canonicals and you can export these to Google Sheets.
• Benchmark core web vitals. Use Page Speed Insights to benchmark how the site performs currently. The goal is always to improve site performance. Comprehensive SEO tools can identify page speed issues within a site audit. Use the reports as an opportunity to speak to developers and find out if they’re capable of building a fast site.

On-page SEO and backlinks

• Document organic traffic using Google Search Console. Take an export of the site’s organic status now. At minimum, include queries, page, clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position. If your site is only interested in ranking in one country, add a filtered view to that country only.
• Add screenshots of your site’s organic status to the Google Sheets document. You’ll be grateful for the visual reminder. Plus, you can refer to this as a benchmark in the future, even if traffic excels, and you can use it as documented proof that migration was a good idea for SEO.
• List the top pages in a Google Sheet. Include the clicks and impressions they’re receiving now and the queries that the top page ranks for.
• List your most important keywords in your Google Sheet and how many clicks the keywords get. At minimum, record the data for the last sixteen months and the last month, so you have a longitudinal and more recent view of keyword performance. If you’re ultra-conscientious, record a few periods, including twelve months and/or six months. It only takes a minute to export the data. 

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Pro tip: If you track keywords in a tool, now is a good time to tag them. Your most important keywords are generally money-generating (also called transactional keywords). Tag keywords with “transactional,” “important,” or “site migration” so you can refer back to your position tracking tool after the migration and review the performance of these particular keywords.

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Marketing and tracking

• Take a snapshot of key metrics such as your site’s authority score, organic traffic numbers, keywords ranking, number of backlinks, and linking domains. While these larger numbers don’t help with analysis, if there’s a significant change, this will alert you.
• Make a record of all tracking setups in marketing tools like Google Analytics. Any event worthy of tracking on the current site will likely also be key to track on the new one as well. It will also give you insight into how things have changed.
• Make a record of all marketing technologies connected to your site. The Chrome extension, Wappalyzer, is a great tool for this. It looks at the code of your website and finds references to any tools being utilized on the site. For example, if you’re using HotJar, Wappalyzer will find code associated with this tool so you can record what’s on your site. It’s often surprising what’s running in the background of a site, and you might be able to remove some software that could be slowing your site down.
• Record all tags currently used on your site. You’re probably using Google Analytics, for example. You don’t want to forget your tag and have to restart from scratch. Use Google’s Tag Assistant to identify tags (see the screenshot below). 

2. Crawl and map all existing URLs

A full crawl of your website can be useful after the site migration. Some popular crawling tools are Sitebulb and Screaming Frog. Neither tool is free, however, and requires a subscription. Both come at a cost, though Screaming Frog will crawl 500 URLs for free. Sitebulb has the benefit of cloud crawling, which lets you crawl online so you don’t use your PC’s power or take up storage space with files stored on your PC.

Crawling tools follow links on a website, in order to mimic the Google bots that will be crawling the website in order to index pages. These tools can offer up vast amounts of data about the website, including URLs, content, title tags, metadata, schema, and so much more.

Both tools work similarly, so here’s an example of how to crawl your site using Screaming Frog. Download the tool from their website. Open it on your PC and type in your URL at the top of the window. Click “Start,” and wait for the crawl to complete.

Then, click “Export,” > Select “Google Sheets (*.gsheet)” from the “Type” dropdown > Click “Save.”

This crawl will be a reference point for all of your URLs. You may refer to it after the site is live to check that developers migrated URLs successfully, and it forms the basis of your 301 redirect plan.

3. Create a 301 redirect plan (map old URLs to new)

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that informs search engines that a page has moved from one URL to another. A 301 redirect also directs users to the correct page.

During site migrations, URLs often change permanently. A 301 redirect is needed to be sure that users end up where they expected.

Having a 301 redirect plan ensures that redirects are made in an SEO-friendly manner. 

When done well, 301 redirects will:

• Communicate to search engine crawlers that a page has moved from one URL to another, encouraging search engines to index the new URL instead of the old one.
• Preserve SEO value, bringing the authority from the current page to the new one.
• Maintain user experience so no one experiences a 404. For example, if another site linked to your current URL and you changed the URL during the migration and didn’t redirect, the user wouldn’t be able to find your content; they’d reach a 404 page. The 301 ensures the old URL redirects the user to the new page.

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Further reading: An SEO’s guide to redirects

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4. Talk to developers about executing the 301 redirect plan

The development team will likely execute SEO’s 301 redirect plan during the site migration. Check in with developers and make sure everyone agrees on the best execution method.

Redirects are handled in many ways, but here are two ways to illustrate common challenges:

1. Bulk URL redirection which allows developers to make redirects fast. It’s great in cases where URL changes follow rules. For example, your domain name has changed, but everything after the domain name remains the same.
2. Redirecting page-by-page is time-consuming for SEO teams in the preparation phase, but it is more likely to be the best option if URLs are changing across the site without rules.

Don’t be tempted to take the fast route if it’s not undoubtedly suitable.

If you need a page-by-page redirect, take the time to do it properly. 

For example, it can be tempting to redirect all service pages to a URL like www.example.com/services/ or the homepage. If you do this, it will be harder for your users to reach the page they need. 

It could also complicate and slow down the site’s indexation, as crawlers won’t have a direct link from the old content to the new. 

Here’s an example of how to 301 redirect pages during a site migration for the best SEO results.

If a service page’s URL structure changes, for example, www.example.com/seo-services/ to www.example.com/services/seo, it’s essential to set up a direct 301 redirect from the old URL to the new.

5. Identify high-value pages

The high-value pages on a website will undoubtedly be transactional (pages that make revenue directly). However, there may also be articles, case studies, landing pages, and more that bring value to the site for marketing and SEO purposes.

Build a database of the most important pages on the website so that you can specifically check in on them when the site goes live. Plus, this will allow you to flag these essential pages to the migration team so that extra caution is taken with them.

What constitutes a high-value page?

Let’s start with pages with high clicks. Here’s how you find them.

Use Google Search Console and go to “Performance” > “Search Results” > Filter date to “12 months” > Click “Pages” tab > Filter by highest clicks by clicking “Clicks.”

You can export the page with the highest clicks by pressing “Export.” Add this to your Google Sheet.

Next, find pages that bring revenue or have high engagement rates. These are high-value pages.

To find this information in GA4, go to “Reports” > “Engagement” > “Pages and screens.”

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Pro tip: You might find it easier to view this report with “Page path and screen class” selected in the drop-down. It’ll show the URL instead of the page title. 

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You can edit the report using the pencil in the top right to include columns for engagement metrics like:

• Revenue
• Views
• Average engagement rates
• Bounce rates
• Key events (your most important events)
• And so much more!
• Pages with high-quality backlinks

Filter the table by the highest engagement metrics and record the pages as high-value pages. 

6. Identify backlink assets

Backlink assets are important because they encourage organic backlinks. Backlink assets generally include long-form guides, infographics, calculators, images, and more.

You’ll want a complete list of the backlinks pointing to your current site and the pages they’re pointing to. High numbers of high-quality backlinks are indicative of important assets.

Semrush has a Backlink Audit tool. Let’s deep dive into how to work with this tool: Here’s how you do it:

Navigate to the “Backlink Audit” section in the left-hand menu.

Click “Create project” > enter your domain > click “Create project.”

Walk through the campaign set up, providing:

• Campaign scope: includes which URLs to include
• Brand settings: includes all versions of your brand name. Include misspellings 
• Domain categories: includes for your industry, or topics associated with your site
• Target countries: includes any country you want to get traffic or backlinks from

Once complete, click “Start Backlink Audit.”

When you’ve set up your backlink audit, go to “Audit,” then click “CSV” to export the data. Put this data into your Google Sheet. Use it to analyze top pages (those with high numbers of relevant and authoritative links).

Copy and paste the data into your Google Sheet.

All columns contain information that’s worth keeping in your SEO website migration prep, but the key columns are:

• Domain authority score
• Page authority score
• Source domain
• Target URL

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Pro tip: When the migration is complete, refer to the backlink audit and ask website administrators of sites linking to you if they will update the link to your new URL. 

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7. Don’t neglect images

Images are often neglected in the site migration process.

However, images contain a lot of value for SEO. Like pages, images are indexed and have their own URL.

You can check clicks from images in Google Search Console (GSC). 

Visit GSC > Go to “Search Results” > Click the “Search type” dropdown > in the pop-up that opens, click the “Image” option > Click “Apply.”

The report shows data about images only.

Click “Pages” to see the URL of images and filter by “Clicks” to see the most clicked images. These are likely worth migrating (or redirecting) to preserve SEO.

8. Make a backup of your current site

Backing up your current site before a migration is essential. If anything goes wrong during the process, you’ll have a safe copy to restore (or refer to) if needed. The site backup is usually handled by developers who will backup the site through your hosting provider.

9. Prepare a staging site

A staging site is a copy of your existing site generally set up by a developer. The staging site provides a safe place for developers to work on the migration without impacting the live site so business can continue as normal.

You must deindex your staging site

How? By adding a “noindex,nofollow” directive in the code. The image below displays this code so you can see what it looks like.

10. Prepare updated XML sitemap & robots.txt

In preparation for the migration, your SEO team should prepare the updated sitemap and robots.txt. 

Your new sitemap should:

• Include all new URLs
• Exclude any URLs that are not mapping to the new site
• Be ready before migration day to promptly submit to Google Search Console after the site is live

The robots.txt should:

• Reference the location of the new XML sitemap (e.g., Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml)
• Allow crawling of important areas of the site (e.g., /services/, /blog/)
• Disallow areas you don’t want indexed (e.g., /wp-admin/, parameter URLs, if applicable, etc.)
  

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Further reading: What’s included in your robots.txt depends on your website setup. For more guidance, read this article on robots.txt and SEO.

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11. Think about what you want on the new site

The pre-site migration SEO checklist is time-consuming and gathering and analyzing data is not always exciting.

But here’s the good news: it will be worth it.

Keep a document open so you can take notes as you go. You’re about to uncover hidden gems about your site that don’t usually come to your attention.

Add every insight that could improve overall SEO performance to the designer and developer briefs. 

Now is the time to ask for everything you’ve ever wanted to give your site the best chance of rocketing to the top of Google. 

12. Involve the SEO team in the design and build stages

Involving SEO teams in the design and development stage allows SEO to influence the new site for the better.

Throughout the planning phase, SEO teams will find recommendations that give the site the best chance of thriving post-migration.

Recommendations might include:

• Page elements such as videos and FAQs to meet search intent
• Schema requests to influence SERP features
• Core Web Vitals (CWV) insights measure real-world user experience on your site, focusing on page loading, speed, and visual elements 
• Optimized heading structures
• Requests for plugins, apps, or extensions

13. Set expectations with stakeholders and forecast migration impact on SEO

Stakeholders must understand the potential impact a site migration may have. The scale of the impact will depend largely on the type of migration and the planning (which depends on your managers giving you the time required to do it properly).

Set expectations transparently so stakeholders understand the impact. 

The truth is, you don’t know exactly how a site migration will impact SEO. 

No one does.

So many consequences of a site migration are out of your control.

That said, at the very least, you can offer assurances that you’ve done everything possible to protect SEO and prepare to scale after the migration.

Depending on your experience with migrations, you may be able to make some data-driven hypotheses about how the site will perform. 

Share your pre-migration research and findings with stakeholders and support your insights with the data you’ve gathered.

14. Review on the staging site before it goes live

As the saying goes, a stitch in time saves nine. This is your opportunity to break the site before it goes live.

Once the development is complete, test everything on the staging site.

Know this: everything on the completed staging site goes onto the live site. The staging site needs to be perfect before it goes live.

To highlight a few items that need to be working:

• Website tags, such as analytics, are in place and firing
• Marketing tracking, like key events set up, and working 
• Checkouts are functioning completely, including email flows such as confirmation emails being sent
• All CTAs are working
• Form submissions are working (check the emails here, too!)
• Headings and keywords are in the right place
• Internal links are updated, or ready to be updated, on the live site

The site should be tested rigorously by many people and as many sets of eyes as possible.

Bugherd is a great tool that makes feedback easy. If you spot something broken on the staging site, you can add a “bug” and explain to developers what you’re seeing so that they can fix it.

During migration (launch day) SEO checklist

On launch day, you check your SEO and promptly feedback issues to developers. Here’s a checklist of actions. 

1. Launch the new site during low-traffic hours

Put the site live during low-traffic hours and/or low sales periods so you don’t interfere with sales.

While the launch is happening, and for the next 24-48 hours, you want at least one competent developer available in case the site goes down, or has a significant issue. 

If you don’t usually have developer resources available on the weekend, it’s best to avoid Fridays in case something goes wrong, or have someone available for the first weekend post-migration.

2. Remove noindex/nofollow tags if applied during staging

Your developers will likely organize the setup and correct execution of a staging site, but there are two critical things you should know about site migrations and staging sites.

1. A staging site should never be indexed. Indexation is solved using the “noindex,nofollow” code we covered earlier.
2. It’s not uncommon for the noindex code to be transferred to your new site once the migration has occurred. Remember, everything on that staging site is going on the live site.

Transferring the “noindex,nofollow” directive to the live site is serious.

The “no index,nofollow” directive stops a site from ranking in Google, as it is intended to do for the staging site.

If you deindex the site you want live, the site will be knocked out of the index altogether and will not rank at all.

Ensure developers remove the “noindex,nofollow” directive as soon as the site goes live.

3. Confirm correct status codes

We’ve covered 301 and 302 redirects in this article, but haven’t elaborated on what these officially are. 301 and 302 are known as status codes.

Every time you take an action on a browser, the server generates a code in response. There are over 60 status codes categorized into five groups:

• 1XX – Informational
• 2XX – Success
• 3XX – Redirection
• 4XX – Client error
• 5XX – Server error

For this article, we’ll cover common status codes that come up during a website migration, including the ones you should see (and where), and the status codes that signal issues.

Commonly used status codes:

• 200: Your page is live successfully. This status should appear on all live, indexable pages.
• 301: Your page has moved permanently. This status should appear on pages that have changed for good.

Status codes to check:

• 302: Moved temporarily. Generally, you want 301 and not 302 as part of a website migration. A 302 is always a trigger to check it’s used correctly. If it is a temporary change, 302 is fine.
• 404: Not found. Although this could be due to various issues, it indicates that a redirect is not correctly executed or that a link contains a misspelled URL. 
• 503: This occurs when the server can not handle a request. This issue usually needs to be flagged to the developer or server administrator. 

You can crawl the site using a crawler (Screaming Frog or Sitebulb) and see the status code of every page on your website.

4. Make sure 301 redirects are live and tested

Thanks to careful planning, you’ve got a list of 301 redirects and your most important pages documented. 

Check the important pages manually and see that 301 redirects are live and working.

Website migrations use 301 redirects and not 302. Any URL that is moving without any plans to change should be a 301 redirect because a 301 is a permanent redirect.

A 302 is a temporary redirect; it is suitable only if the redirect is temporary. Temporary redirects are generally used if you’re testing a page or have a time-limited promotion.

5. Verify no broken links or missing pages

It wouldn’t be uncommon for links to break during a site migration. Your site audit tool can check for broken links and provide a list of what’s broken and where it is so that you can find it easily.

Using Semrush as an example, click “Site Audit” > click “Issues.”

The two issues relating to links include: 

• Internal links are broken
• External links are broken 

The goal with broken links is always zero.

If you click the error, you’ll see an actionable list so you can resolve the issues.

As below, you can see:

• Page URL: the page with the broken link
• Broken link URL: the URL that’s broken 

All you need to do is:

1. Pay a visit to the page with the broken link
2. Find the link
3. Remove or replace it

6. Check that your tags are carried over

Go back to Tag Assistant (detailed in the pre-site migration SEO checklist) and check that all tags you wanted to move from the old site to the new one are in the code.

7. Submit updated XML sitemap to Google Search Console

If you’ve followed the advice outlined in this article, you’ve already prepped your new, accurate sitemap. 

It’s time to submit it to Google Search Console to encourage indexing of your new site.

Go to Search Console > Click “Sitemaps” > Paste your sitemap into the “Add a New Sitemap” section > Press “Submit.” 

You’ll get a pop-up confirming successful submission.

Your sitemap should appear in the “Submitted Sitemaps” section.

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Important note: Sitemap URLs vary. Common sitemap URLs include sitemap.xml or sitemap_index.xml, but yours could be different. If you have multiple sitemaps, submit all of them.

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8. Check your robots.txt

Pay a visit to your robots.txt. You can find your file at www.example.com/robots.txt, check that it’s correct, and:

• References the location of the new XML sitemap
• Allows crawling of important areas of the site
• Disallows areas you don’t want indexed (e.g., /wp-admin/, parameter URLs, if applicable)

9. Test your checkout and forms (at a minimum)

You don’t want your new site to interrupt sales. Once the site is live, you must check your checkout and any action linked to conversion or a key event. Your key events are assigned in GA4 and include important actions taken on your website, for example, filling out a form, downloading a white paper, or clicking the call CTA on a mobile.

Walk through the entire process of finding a product, adding it to the basket, and purchasing. 

Make the purchase and complete the entire checkout process, including emails regarding orders.

Post-migration (first 30–90 days) SEO checklist

The first 30–90 days after a site migration are critical for SEO. Monitor the site frequently and compare findings with the benchmark and audit data recorded in your pre-site migration audit Google Sheets document. 

1. Monitor your rankings and traffic

Visit Google Search Console (GSC) to monitor your ranking and traffic. After migration, visit GSC more regularly than usual.

Don’t just look at the sitewide data because it’s easy to miss changes. 

Try filtering data by:

• Country to see country-specific data. For example, if you’re only doing business in the USA, you don’t need to worry about what’s happening to rankings elsewhere. Filter by country to cut out data that’s not relevant.
• Query to see how your most important keywords are ranking. Remember the benchmarks? It was recommended to take note of these. You can compare query rankings pre- and post-migration.
• Pages to see specific pages or subfolders. For example, if your SEO pages are important. You can filter by URLs containing “SEO,” for example. 

2. Monitor and fix errors

Even the best sites have issues; resolving issues is a never-ending task because things break over time. 

Keep an eye on your site audit and crawl the site so you can resolve issues at the earliest convenience. 

3. Resubmit pages or sitemap updates as needed

You can resubmit pages and sitemaps if you’ve noticed that pages are not indexed.

You can resubmit the sitemap as many times as you think you need, but if you need to submit one page or a small number, you can do that individually.

To submit one page for indexing, go to Google Search Console > paste the URL into the search bar at the top > press Enter on the keyboard.

You’ll see the screen below.

Click “Request Indexing.”

Testing whether the live URL can be indexed will take a moment. Once complete, you should get a message confirming indexing requested.

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Further reading: If you’re having problems with your pages indexing, read 16 reasons why your page isn’t ranking on Google

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4. Resolve redirect chains

A redirect chain occurs when a page’s URL has changed multiple times and links haven’t been updated. 

For example:

• An article links to URL A, which has been redirected (returns a status code 301) 
• URL A then redirects to URL B (also a 301) 
• URL B finally redirects to the new and current page, which returns a status code 200.

Linking to anything but the current URL has two downsides:

1. Slow load time for users. The more links in the chain, the slower the experience.
2. Wasted crawl budget because search engine crawlers spend time crawling URLs that don’t have content on them. You want crawlers on the live, active, current page (the status 200) as fast as possible.

It’s best practice to resolve all the redirect chains. It’s not urgent, but it is good to do. It’s a nice job for a quiet Friday afternoon—maybe a bit dull, definitely repetitive, but in a good, productive way.

5. Consider backlink outreach

Like your internal links, ideally your backlinks (those linking to your site from other websites) will link to the current URL.

With the backlink audit (completed in the pre-migration phase) in hand, reach out to the web administrators of websites linking to your site and ask if they’ll update the link to your new URL if your URL has changed.

Don’t shy away from this task because you’re afraid of causing more work for other people. The website administrator at the other site also benefits from the update because they’ll be linking to current and updated URLs; it’s highly likely they might appreciate the gesture. The worst that could happen is that they’ll ignore you, but at least you tried.

If you have a huge site, there’s likely a very long list of backlinks in your audit.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to do them all.

Prioritize:

• Easy changes, such as websites owned by people you know
• Links that bring a high number of traffic
• Highly authoritative domains
• Highly relevant websites by topic

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Further reading: Types of backlinks

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6. Schedule a post-launch SEO audit after 30 days

After your site has been live for 30 days, conduct an SEO audit, either inhouse or with a reputable agency.

The scale of your post-migration audit will depend on how much you want to analyze.

Remember, you have the pre-migration SEO checklist provided above. The best practice would be to start from the top and redo the whole thing, cross-referencing all reports, and checking that everything is performing as it was (or better) than when you did the pre-site migration benchmark.

The problem with this? 

Time. There’s rarely enough of it.

If you’ve monitored your site closely for the last 30 days, you’ve probably gotten an idea of how things are going, so you can shape your audit around those insights, focusing on what you know needs auditing and skipping the sections that you have verified  are fine.

At minimum, consider auditing:

• Organic traffic numbers
• Keywords ranking
• Number of backlinks and linking domains 
• Marketing and tracking in GA4
• Top pages 
• The most important keywords

Common SEO migration mistakes to avoid

It’s important to also highlight common SEO migration mistakes because they are common for a reason: they’re easy to make and easy to miss. 

Incorrect indexation of your site or the staging site

Your new site should be live and indexed. The easiest way to check if your site is indexed is to go to Google and perform a search for:

site:yourwebsite.com

This search will only bring up your site on the search engine results pages. Pages displayed are indexed.

Do the same with your staging site URL. You do not want your staging site in search engines. If it’s there, report it to developers immediately.

Losing key content or metadata during the migration

Losing your title tags or metadata is surprisingly easy to do.

You can check metadata in a range of ways:

• Use a Chrome extension like Detailed SEO Extension to check metadata page-by-page
• Rely on your site audit to tell you when there’s an issue, such as title tags missing, or meta descriptions that are too long
• Crawl the site and export the data to a Google Sheet for easy analysis.

Ignoring internal links results in 404s or 301s

In the event that your site migration alters your URLs, you should go live with internal links in line with the new URL structure.

Remember the point about testing on the staging site and the staging site being perfect before you go live? This is one of those issues that is resolved with a thorough review of the staging site.

If you leave the old URLs remaining, it’ll result in a status 404, meaning the page doesn’t exist, or a 301, meaning a page has been redirected to a new one.

If this happens, you’ll have the task of putting it right and updating every URL to the current live page (a status 200). Developers can change inlinks in the database, but it’s not easy. If you’re using WordPress plugins or tools that can help bulk update URLs. LinkWhisper can bulk update URLs across a site. Matrixify and Redirection are also commonly used. 

Without a tool, you’ll need to crawl all the URLs, identify those with a status code 404, and correct the URL. A 404 would be terrible and needs fixing immediately, especially if it’s sitewide.

If every (or many) links on your site is a redirect (a status 301), it’s not ideal, but it poses less of a threat than if a page doesn’t exist at all (a 404). Work to put the 301s right as soon as possible.

FAQs about SEO migrations

Do I need redirects for every page?

You will need 301 redirects for every page with a new URL.

What’s the difference between 301 and 302 redirects in migrations?

Website migrations generally require a 301 redirect, which is a permanent redirect. By comparison, a 302 redirect is a temporary redirect.

Since a migration is permanent (you’re not planning on changing the URL again), you generally use 301.

The only (rare) exception where you’d use a 302 redirect would be if you also have URLs that will change in the future, meaning they’re currently on a temporary URL. You might have a temporary redirect in place if you have a page that’s being tested, or maybe a sale page that runs for a short time.

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Can a migration hurt rankings even with best practices?

A migration can hurt rankings even with best practices, but your focus should be on pre-migration preparation and post-migration strategy. Migrations happen.

If you’ve followed site migration and SEO best practices, you can forecast how the migration will impact rankings and therefore have a plan for what to do once the migration is complete.

Rankings may fluctuate as Google recrawls and reindexes pages. It takes time to process a migration. That’s a sunk cost.

How long does it take to recover SEO rankings after a migration?

How long it takes rankings to recover after an SEO migration can vary wildly. There are so many factors that influence recovery time, including the type of migration completed, which is significant.

Smaller migrations, such as smaller content changes or a few URL changes, may not take any time to recover; one to three months might be sufficient.

Larger sites with domain changes may need as much as a year. Remember the Wise example above? Wise took about eight months to recover traffic to its previous numbers. But then it surpassed those numbers!

Final thoughts: SEO success starts with a strategic migration plan

SEO teams are not solely responsible for the success of a site migration. It’s a team effort and requires input and work from design and development, managers, and other marketing teams.

What’s key is that all teams communicate. And that’s important throughout the entire process.

Wondering what’s next after you’ve completed your website migration? If traffic has dropped, read How to analyze and fix traffic drops: A 7-step framework. Or, if you’re ready to develop your strategy, read SEO priorities: Your guide to search success.