Website migration SEO checklist: how to keep your rankings through a move

Migration SEO checklist overview

An SEO migration is any change that makes search engines re-learn where your pages live and what they say. The 12 checklist items below help search engines locate and understand your pages after a move. Their order is loose, but no item is optional. Google's site move guide says to keep redirects at least 1 year, and the Change of Address tool forwards signals for 180 days after submission.

Pre-migration ranking benchmarks

You need a record of how the old site performs, page by page, before anything changes. Without it, you can't tell a normal post-launch dip from real damage, and you can't see which pages need help first. Export at least 3 months of data so seasonal swings don't fool you later.

• Organic clicks and impressions per URL from Google Search Console
• Rankings for your top commercial keywords
• Backlinks per URL, from a backlink tool
• Conversions per landing page from your analytics
• Count of indexed pages
• Brand mentions in AI assistants, if you track them

The URLs with backlinks and revenue get the most careful redirect work. Mark them now.

URL mapping for redirects

A redirect map is a spreadsheet that pairs every old URL with its closest new equivalent. Combine a full crawl with Search Console's page report to start the old list. Add your backlink export so the list draws on all three sources at once. A crawl alone misses orphan pages that still earn links.

Map each URL to the page that answers the same intent. A discontinued product goes to its category page. Google treats mass homepage redirects as soft 404 errors and drops the ranking signals they carry. When an old page has no equivalent and no backlinks or traffic, a 410 status is the honest answer. Before you sign off, check that every row with backlinks has a destination that returns a 200 status.

Redirect implementation audit

The SEO audit confirms that the redirects in the map work on the server exactly as written. Use permanent server-side redirects (301 or 308). JavaScript and meta refresh redirects pass signals less reliably. Chains are the most common fault, because old redirects from past redesigns stack on top of the new ones. John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google, said, "We follow up to five redirect steps in a redirect chain if it's a server-side redirect." Aim for one hop.

Test it on staging. Paste every old URL into a crawler in list mode and confirm each returns one 301 to the mapped page with a 200 at the end. Then repeat the test on the live site within an hour of launch.

Technical checks before launch

Launch only when the new site sends search engines the same signals the old one did. Most technical SEO failures here are small settings that a developer left in place from staging.

Is staging blocked and the live site open to crawlers?

Staging sites carry a "Disallow: /" line in robots.txt or a site-wide noindex tag. That's correct on staging. On the live site it removes you from Google within days. So check robots.txt and the page head template on launch morning, and again after the cache clears. Also check that staging itself can't be indexed, or Google may find two copies of your site.

Did on-page signals carry over?

Compare titles and meta descriptions between the old and new versions of your top 100 URLs. Check their H1s and canonical tags as well. Canonicals must point to the new URLs. Structured data drops out when templates change, so run your key templates through Google's Rich Results Test. Then update internal links to point straight at the new URLs. Every internal link that hits a redirect slows the crawl.

Post-launch monitoring plan

Monitoring runs on a schedule because different problems surface at different times.

1. Launch day. Submit the new XML sitemap and run a full crawl. File the Change of Address request if the domain changed.
2. Days 1 to 14. Check Search Console daily for 404 errors and crawl anomalies. Fix broken redirects the same day.
3. Weeks 3 to 8. Compare clicks per URL against your benchmark and look at the pages with the biggest gaps first.
4. Months 3 to 12. Review monthly. Keep redirects live and keep paying for the old domain. Google's help page recommends holding it at least a year so nobody else can buy it.

CMS migration SEO considerations

A CMS migration changes the code that produces your pages, and that can change URLs without anyone deciding it. Shopify, for example, forces product pages into a /products/ path, so a store moving there almost always needs a full redirect map. Other defaults for trailing slashes and uppercase letters differ between platforms. Pagination parameters differ too.

Plugins hide work you'll have to redo. On WordPress, plugins such as Yoast store titles and canonicals in their own fields, and that data doesn't move by itself. Check whether the new CMS renders content in JavaScript as well. If key text only appears after scripts run, crawlers index thinner pages than before.

Migrating without losing SEO

You keep your rankings when you preserve each URL's content and links, then redirect it one-to-one to its new address. Who does that work is the real choice. Here are three options compared on the same terms.

A small site with an experienced in-house SEO can run this checklist alone for the price of a crawler. Once the site earns most of its revenue from organic search, outside review costs less than one lost quarter. And if you also care about how AI assistants describe your brand after the move, choose an option that tracks that too.

Measuring recovery after migration

Recovery takes weeks for a clean same-domain move and months or longer for a domain change. Local SEO Guide reports full recovery in about 30 to 60 days for domain moves it ran without technical faults. Broader data is less kind. A Search Engine Journal study of 892 domain migrations found an average of 523 days for traffic to return, and 17% never recovered within 1,000 days. The fastest took 19 days.

Measure against your benchmark, URL by URL. A flat total can hide lost commercial pages behind gains on the blog. Track the number of indexed new URLs and the share of old URLs still getting impressions. Complete this set of three numbers with clicks to your top revenue pages. If those revenue pages haven't recovered after 8 weeks, start with the redirect map.

What to do next

Start with item 1 this week, even if launch is months away. A benchmark can't be recreated after the old site goes offline, and every later decision depends on it. Before you hire anyone, check where your site sits in the comparison table. A clean website migration SEO plan also needs an answer to what happens after day 180, when Google's signal forwarding ends. Snoika audits websites and tracks brand visibility in Google and AI assistants, with the same team running the platform and the services under human review. If you'd like a second opinion on your migration plan, talk to an expert.