Website migration SEO checklist: protecting rankings before, during and after launch

When a redesign costs traffic, the new look is rarely to blame. Traffic disappears because page addresses changed without redirects, a staging block went live with the site, or the page that brought in your best enquiries was cut to three lines to suit a cleaner layout. A website migration SEO checklist exists to stop that.

You need one whenever a launch changes something search engines rely on: page addresses, the platform, the domain, or the content of pages that already rank.

This checklist covers the search side. If only the host changes and every URL stays the same, moving to a new host covers DNS, email and cutover; design decisions belong in the website redesign process.

The website migration SEO checklist at a glance

1. Before launch: benchmark clicks and enquiries by page, inventory every URL, decide what to keep, merge or retire, and build a tested 301 redirect map.
2. During the build and on launch day: carry across the copy and titles that already rank, keep staging out of Google safely, and check every old URL on the live site.
3. After launch: monitor page by page for at least two months, and tell normal settling from a real problem.

How risky is your migration?

The risk grows with how much search engines have to relearn.

Don’t stack changes you can separate. A new domain, platform, structure and content on one day is four migrations at once, and if traffic falls you won’t know which caused it.

Before launch: benchmark, inventory and map

This stage does the most to protect rankings. Start it before design, because URL decisions shape the sitemap.

Benchmark what you have

Export and save a baseline to judge the migration against:

• Search Console Performance data for pages and queries, over the full 16 months the report holds, for year-on-year comparisons later.
• GA4 landing pages with key events such as form submissions. If these aren’t tracked, fix GA4 conversion tracking first, or you can’t tell fewer enquiries from broken counting.
• Search Console’s Links report: other sites link to specific URLs, and those must keep working.

Then mark your priority pages: the ones that earn clicks, enquiries or links.

Inventory every URL

Your menu shows a fraction of what Google knows about. Combine into one list:

• A full crawl with a desktop crawler such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider (the free version crawls up to 500 URLs).
• Your XML sitemaps.
• Your Search Console, GA4 and Links exports, which catch pages missing from the menu but still visited or linked to.

On WordPress, include the URLs nobody designs: category and tag archives, author pages and PDFs. On a multilingual site, every language version needs its own row.

Decide what to keep, merge or retire

The safest URL change is none. Renaming /services/aircon-installation/ to /solutions/hvac/ for tidiness gives Google one more thing to relearn and rarely pays back. Merging is different: combining pages that compete for the same query is often where an SEO migration gains ground, and keyword research and search intent helps you spot them.

Don’t send every retired page to the home page: Google warns that redirecting many old URLs to one irrelevant page may be treated as a soft 404.

Build the 301 redirect map

URL mapping ends in a spreadsheet: one row per old URL, with the decision, the final new URL, a priority and test results from staging and live. The rules that prevent most problems:

• Permanent and server-side. Use 301 (or 308, also permanent). A 302 says the old page may come back. Use meta refresh or JavaScript redirects only if the server can’t redirect.
• One hop. Old URL straight to final URL. Update redirects from earlier redesigns too, so they don’t form chains.
• Like for like. Each language redirects to the same language; a PDF to its replacement or the page that now holds its content.
• Patterns, tested. A rule sending /blog/2021/04/post-name/ to /insights/post-name/ saves hundreds of rows, but test it against real URLs from the inventory.
• Every variant. HTTP or HTTPS, with or without “www” or a trailing slash: each reaches the preferred address in one hop.

Google’s site-move guidance says to keep redirects as long as possible, generally at least a year. Better still, keep them for good: old links and bookmarks never fully disappear.

During the build: protect what already ranks

Keep the copy and titles that already rank

A page ranks for what it says. If a priority page loses its title, heading and most of its copy, its rankings can follow, however good the redirect. The SEO-friendly website guide explains why relevance carries so much weight.

For each priority page, note the title, H1, copy and the queries it ranks for, and check the new version covers the same ground. Improve it freely; just don’t remove the answers people searched for. Then check what new templates drop quietly:

• Structured data (see schema markup for business websites).
• Alt text on images that bring search traffic.
• Internal links, especially from navigation: a page dropped from the menu looks less important.
• hreflang on multilingual sites, rewritten to the new URLs and still reciprocal (the multilingual SEO guide explains how).

Internal links, canonical tags and the XML sitemap should use final URLs. Redirects are for the outside world, not your own links.

Keep staging out of Google, safely

How you hide the new site matters, because a forgotten block can go live with it.

• Password protection is the most reliable. Search engines can’t read what’s behind it, and nobody forgets a login box.
• A noindex tag works, but someone must remove it. In WordPress, ticking “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” under Settings → Reading adds one.
• robots.txt Disallow: / is the weakest. It stops crawling, not indexing, so linked staging URLs can still appear in results. Left on the live site, it blocks Google from crawling anything, redirects included.

Put the block’s removal in the launch plan with a named person. Leftovers are a common reason a relaunched website isn’t showing on Google.

Launch day: the checks, in order

1. Remove the staging block. Confirm robots.txt allows crawling and no indexable page carries a noindex tag or X-Robots-Tag header.
2. Test the redirect map live. Crawl every old URL in your crawler’s list mode: each should 301 once to the intended page, which returns 200.
3. Crawl the new site for broken links, links to old URLs or the staging domain, and unexpected canonicals.
4. Submit sitemaps in Search Console: the new one, listing only final URLs that return 200, and, as Google suggests, a temporary one of old URLs to watch indexing shift across.
5. Inspect priority pages with the URL Inspection tool, and request indexing for the most important few.
6. Check tracking. Submit each form and tap each phone link, and watch the key events arrive in GA4’s Realtime report.
7. Keep a way back: a full backup of the old site and its hosting and DNS settings.

Launch when people are around to fix things, not late on a Friday or just before your busiest season. The website launch checklist covers the non-SEO checks.

After launch: traffic drop after a redesign, or normal settling?

While Google recrawls old URLs and follows redirects, its site-move guidance says to expect temporary ranking fluctuation, and that a medium-sized site can take a few weeks or more to move over in results, larger sites longer. A shallow dip is expected. A steep or widening fall is not.

What to watch

• Page indexing report. Old URLs should move into “Page with redirect” and new ones into indexed. Watch for rises in “Not found (404)” and “Soft 404”, and for new pages kept out by a noindex tag or robots.txt.
• Performance by page. Compare each priority page’s clicks, old URL before and new URL after, since a healthy total can hide a large loss on one page. Compare year on year for seasonality.
• Enquiries by landing page in GA4, against your benchmark.

Check daily for the first week, weekly for two months, then compare against the benchmark at around three months.

Normal settling or a real problem

When the drop is real, the pattern points to the cause:

• Everything fell at once: a block. Check robots.txt, noindex tags and server errors.
• Particular pages fell: compare old and new versions for missing content, changed titles, wrong redirects or lost internal links.
• A whole section fell: suspect a pattern redirect, a template’s canonical, or content that only appears after JavaScript runs.

The technical SEO checklist walks through each check with free tools.

Extra checks for domain and platform changes

Domain change SEO

• Verify the new domain in Search Console before launch, and keep the old property to watch it empty out.
• Once redirects are live, use Search Console’s Change of Address tool. It is for moves to a new domain or subdomain, not for switching to HTTPS or moving pages within one domain.
• Keep the old domain registered and redirecting indefinitely. If it lapses, old links break and someone else can buy it.
• Update the links you control, from your Google Business Profile to email signatures.

Platform migration SEO

Platforms impose their own URL patterns. Shopify, for example, puts products under /products/ and pages under /pages/, so moving to or from it means mapping every URL.

• Redirects must live on the new platform, so check it supports bulk and pattern redirects before you commit.
• If pages rely on JavaScript, use the URL Inspection live test to confirm Google sees the text and links.
• Check what it generates automatically, such as tag pages and filtered URLs, which can add thin or duplicate pages.

Questions to put to whoever runs the migration

Get these answered in writing before work starts:

• Will we see the URL inventory and redirect map before launch, and keep a copy?
• Which data decides what we keep, merge or retire?
• How will our best-performing pages’ copy and titles be protected?
• How is staging hidden, and who confirms the block is gone at launch?
• Where will redirects live, and can we edit them after handover?
• What will you check on launch day and for how long afterwards?
• What happens if something goes badly wrong?

Experienced people answer these quickly. “We’ll sort the SEO out at the end” is the answer to worry about.

Plan the migration before the design

A migration that keeps its rankings is decided early, in the benchmark and the redirect map, long before anyone debates colours. Still deciding whether to rebuild at all? Start with the signs your website needs a redesign.

If a redesign is already on the cards, our approach to a website redesign without losing SEO starts with an audit of what already works, redirects every old URL and launches without taking your site offline. Not sure how much visibility you have to protect? A free website audit includes your Google visibility.