The Ultimate Website Migration Checklist

What is a Website Migration? 

Website migration is when major changes are made to a website’s structure, design, platform, or even its web address. 

These changes are usually done to improve the site’s user experience, security, or performance on search engines like Google. For example, you might migrate a website to switch to a faster web host, adopt a new content management system, or move from HTTP to HTTPS for added security. 

While a well-planned migration can make a website more efficient and user-friendly, it’s important to prepare carefully—migrations can temporarily impact search rankings and traffic if not managed properly. With the right approach, a website migration can be a great way to take your site to the next level.

Types of Website Migrations

Before you get started, it’s important to identify the type of migration you’re undertaking as each one impacts your website’s SEO differently. 

Backend Migration

A backend migration involves moving a website from one content management system (CMS) to another, like switching from WordPress to Shopify. The goal of this is usually to improve performance, scalability or reliability – while ensuring minimal disruption to the front end user experience. You must carry over essential SEO elements, such as meta tags, redirects, and canonical tags, to ensure search engines accurately index the site on the new platform.

Domain Migration

A domain migration is when a website is moved from one domain to another (e.g., from www.oldsite.com to www.newsite.com). This tends to carry greater SEO risks, as it includes transferring data like files, databases, and DNS settings. Domain migrations are often done for rebranding or SEO optimisation purposes, but you must ensure to signal that the old URL has been permanently moved to the new domain to help preserve the site’s search visibility and ranking power. 

Subdomain to Root Migration

A subdomain to root migration is the process of moving a website or application from a subdomain (eg: “blog.example.com”) to the main domain (eg: “example.com”). This change often happens to simplify the website structure, improve SEO, or create a more unified user experience. During the migration, all content from the subdomain is moved to the root domain, and redirects are typically set up to guide visitors and search engines to the new location. Proper planning is important to avoid downtime and preserve SEO rankings.

Site Revamp with URL Structure Changes

A site revamp with URL structure changes involves updating or redesigning a website while also modifying its URL structure. This could mean changing how URLs are organised, updating the paths or naming conventions to improve user experience or SEO. It’s important to set up proper redirects from old URLs to new ones to avoid broken links and preserve search engine rankings.

The Planning Stage: Pre Migration SEO Checklist

Before you dive into the migration process, make sure you’ve got these key steps covered to avoid disruptions later down the line! Here is your pre-website migration checklist:

  1. Define Clear Migration Goals and Objectives
    • Identify the key objectives of your migration. Are you aiming to improve SEO, change your site design, or enhance user experience?
    • Set specific, measurable goals to track success (e.g., increasing organic traffic by 10%, improving site speed by 20%).
    • Determine if the migration will affect the entire site or just specific sections (e.g., a blog redesign or changing URL structure).
  1. Conduct a Thorough SEO Audit of Your Current Site
    • Use SEO tools to assess your current site’s performance. Track metrics like organic traffic, keyword rankings, page speed, and internal linking.
    • Record any areas that need improvement, as this audit will be your baseline for measuring the migration’s impact.
    • Some SEO tools you can use are Screaming Frog and SEMrush.
  1. Audit the Staging Site
    • Crawl for SEO Issues: Use tools to check for missing meta tags, broken links, or incorrect redirects.
    • Check User Experience (UX): Test site navigation, forms, and interactive elements to ensure they work as expected.
    • Robots.txt and Noindex Tags: Ensure search engines cannot index the staging site by properly setting up the robots.txt file and using noindex tags.
  1. Map Old URLs to New URLs with 301 Redirects
    • Create a detailed map of all existing URLs and match them to the new URLs on your migrated site.
    • Implement 301 redirects to permanently guide users and search engines to the new pages.
    • Test the redirects using tools like Screaming Frog to ensure there are no broken links or redirect chains that could harm SEO.
  1. Back Up All Website Data
    • Export key data from Google Analytics, Search Console, and your content management system (CMS), including historical traffic reports, rankings, and site content.
    • Save a copy of your current site’s XML sitemap, meta tags, and backlink list.
    • Having a secure backup ensures you can restore data if anything goes wrong during the migration.
  1. Lower DNS TTL (Time to Live)
    • Reduce the TTL 24-48 hours before the migration. TTL determines how long DNS information is cached by servers, so lowering it allows faster domain propagation when you switch domains or servers.

The Execution Stage: Website Migration SEO Checklist

This is where everything comes together. Proper execution of your site migration plan ensures a seamless transition, preserving and enhancing your SEO efforts. Here’s a breakdown of the key steps:

  1. Implement 301 Redirects
    • 1:1 Redirect Mapping: Make sure each old URL has a corresponding new one. Set up server-side 301 redirects to transfer SEO authority (rankings, backlinks) to the new site.
    • Pre-Launch Testing: Use tools like Screaming Frog to check that all redirects work properly.
  1. Update Internal Links
    • Review Hard-Coded Links: Manually update any hard-coded internal links in menus, footers, and content to match the new URLs.
    • Internal Link Health Check: Run a crawler tool to make sure there are no redirect chains, and that no internal links are still pointing to the old site. This prevents broken links and keeps your SEO strong. 
  1. Crawl the Staging Site
    • Identify Issues Early: Crawl the staging site to catch common SEO errors like: broken links, missing metadata, or incorrect canonical tags.
    • Verify Mobile Friendliness: Ensure the site is fully optimised for mobile using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
    • Check Structured Data: Ensure schema markup is applied correctly to help search engines understand your content.
    • Robots.txt & Canonical Tags: Double-check your robots.txt file and canonical tags to avoid duplicate content, crawling issues or indexing issues.
  1. Map and Port Over SEO Elements
    • Meta Titles and Descriptions: Make sure each page keeps its optimised meta titles and descriptions.
    • Heading Tags (H1, H2, H3): Maintain the existing header tags to preserve page structure for SEO and user experience.
  1. Update XML Sitemap & Robots.txt
    • XML Sitemap: Create and submit a new XML sitemap with updated URLs to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
    • Robots.txt: Ensure the robots.txt file allows search engines to crawl the new site structure and includes the sitemap URL.
  1. Timing and Testing
    • Migrate During Off-Peak Hours: Choose a time with low traffic to minimise disruptions.
    • User Flow Testing: After migration, test user flows on both desktop and mobile to ensure functionality across key journeys.
    • Monitor for Issues: Keep a close eye on performance metrics (bounce rates, session durations) post-migration and address any issues promptly.
  1. Review Backlinks and Update URLs
    • Ensure you have an overview of your backlink profile. Make sure you know which external sites are linking to your pages. 
    • Redirect any broken links to relevant new pages to keep your SEO value intact.
  1. Update Canonical Links
    • Prevent duplicate content issues by ensuring that canonical tags are properly set on all pages. This tells search engines which version to prioritise.

The Monitoring Stage: Post Migration SEO Checklist

Your website migration plan doesn’t end after the migration itself! Post-migration monitoring should be top-of-mind to make sure your site maintains optimal SEO performance, user experience, and functionality. Here is an in-depth checklist of areas to monitor during the post-migration phase. 

1. Verify Your New Site in Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools

Once your migration is live, the first step is to ensure that search engines can effectively crawl and index your new domain or URLs.

  • Add and Verify the New Domain: If you’ve migrated to a new domain, ensure the new domain is added and verified in both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. This allows search engines to begin crawling and indexing the new URLs, ensuring continued visibility.
  • Submit Updated XML Sitemap: Submit the updated sitemap to both Google and Bing so that search engines know which URLs to crawl first. This helps ensure a smooth transition of your pages into their index.

Why this matters: The XML sitemap is essentially a roadmap for search engines to follow. By submitting the updated version, you’re guiding search engines through your site structure and helping them understand the new URL hierarchy.

2. Monitor for Crawl Errors and Indexing Issues

During migration, pages may become lost or incorrectly indexed, impacting both user experience and SEO rankings. Regularly monitor the crawl status of your site.

  • Check for Crawl Errors: Use Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to monitor crawl status and identify any issues. Common errors include 404 (not found) and 403 (forbidden) errors, which can prevent your pages from being indexed correctly.
  • Fix Redirect Chains and Broken Redirects: Ensure that all redirects are functioning correctly. If your redirects are set up improperly or have redirect chains (URLs redirecting through multiple steps), this could harm your SEO due to slower page load times and potential loss of link equity.

Why this matters: Broken links and misconfigured redirects can lead to search engines not indexing your pages, which can affect search rankings and visibility. Maintaining proper redirects ensures users and search engines can find your content seamlessly.

3. Verify Analytics Tags

Analytics tools such as Google Analytics rely on specific HTML tags to track and report user behaviour on your site. Post-migration, it’s essential to verify that these tags are properly implemented on all pages.

  • Check Analytics Tags: Use tools like Google Tag Manager to confirm that analytics tags are firing on every page of the new site. 

Why this matters: Without properly set up tags, you may miss valuable insights into user engagement, conversions, or traffic patterns that could highlight issues requiring attention.

4. Test and Monitor User Flows

The user experience (UX) should be smooth and consistent across all platforms. Testing user flows after migration ensures that the site is functional and easy to navigate, providing a positive experience for visitors.

  • Test on Desktop and Mobile: Make sure key features, like navigation menus, contact forms, and checkout processes, work seamlessly on both desktop and mobile devices.

Why this matters: A smooth user experience is essential for keeping visitors on your site. If these functions are broken or hard to use, it could lead to higher bounce rates and lower conversions.

5. Monitor Traffic, Rankings, and User Behavior

It’s essential to track how the migration affects traffic, rankings, and user engagement.

  • Monitor Organic Traffic: Use tools like Google Analytics, Semrush, or Ahrefs to track changes in organic traffic. A sudden drop could signal indexing issues or broken redirects.
    • Why this matters: Organic traffic is a primary indicator of your site’s SEO health. Significant changes in traffic can highlight issues that need to be addressed to prevent long-term SEO damage.
  • Track Keyword Rankings: Use SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to track how your target keywords are performing. If rankings drop, investigate whether redirects or indexing issues are the cause.
    • Why this matters: Keyword rankings directly influence organic traffic. Understanding how keyword positions shift post-migration can guide further optimizations to ensure the migration doesn’t harm visibility.
  • Analyse User Engagement: Look at metrics like bounce rate, session duration, and page views to see how users interact with your site. A sudden drop in engagement may point to broken links, poor mobile optimization, or content issues.

Why this matters: Engaged users are more likely to convert, share, or revisit your site. Analysing these metrics post-migration allows you to ensure that the site continues to meet user expectations, maintaining or improving the overall user experience.

6. Update and Test Your Robots.txt File

The robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which parts of your site they are allowed to access. An incorrectly configured robots.txt file could block important pages from being crawled, affecting your visibility.

  • Review Robots.txt Configuration: Review the file to ensure it doesn’t unintentionally block pages you want indexed, while excluding areas like admin pages or staging environments that should remain private.

Why this matters: An incorrectly configured robots.txt file could prevent search engines from crawling essential pages, harming your visibility.

7. Conduct Post-Migration SEO Audits

An SEO audit will help identify any lingering issues that could affect your site’s rankings and performance.

  • Check Meta Titles and Descriptions: Make sure all metadata (title tags, descriptions, and headers) were correctly transferred. Missing or incorrect metadata can affect your click-through rate and rankings.
  • Verify Structured Data: Ensure that structured data (like schema markup) is intact. This helps search engines understand your content better and display rich snippets in search results.
  • Review Internal Links: Check that internal links are updated and lead to the right pages. Broken or outdated internal links can confuse users and search engines, negatively impacting SEO.
  • Check Page Speed: Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to check your site’s load times. A slow site can harm both user experience and SEO rankings.

Why this matters: Ensuring that metadata, structured data, internal links, and page speed are correct post-migration is crucial for maintaining SEO performance and providing a positive user experience. These factors directly impact search engine rankings, crawlability, and user engagement.

8. Compare and Report on Benchmark Metrics

Compare post-migration metrics with your pre-migration benchmarks to assess the impact of the changes.

  • Track Pre- and Post-Migration Metrics: Review key metrics such as organic traffic, rankings, bounce rates, and user engagement to determine whether the migration has resulted in improvements or issues.

Extra Tips For A Successful SEO-Friendly Site Migration

A successful website migration is a complex process that requires your attention and care. Here are some extra tips to help minimise disruptions to your SEO and user experience while you migrate. 

  1. Use a Phased Migration for Large Sites
    For large websites or those with multiple properties, implement the migration in phases. This allows you to test smaller sections before the full migration, catching potential issues early.
  1. Forecast Potential Traffic Dips
    A temporary drop in traffic is typical post-migration. Be proactive by setting expectations with stakeholders and having strategies in place to monitor and address any issues promptly. (Read more on how to identify reasons for drops in ranking).
  1. Harness Staging Environments
    Always test the migration in a staging environment before going live. This helps identify and resolve issues, ensuring minimal impact on SEO and user experience when the site is launched.
  1. Communicate with Users and Search Engines
    If rebranding or changing domains, consider using a temporary banner or pop-up to inform users. This reduces confusion and signals to search engines the context of the change, helping to preserve your site authority.
  1. Test Everything Thoroughly
    Conduct comprehensive testing before and after migration. Ensure redirects, internal links, and user flows function properly. Continue to monitor site performance post-launch to catch any lingering issues.

Conclusion

Website migration is a complex process that requires careful preparation and ongoing attention. By approaching it with a clear strategy, monitoring your site closely, and addressing any issues promptly, you can ensure a smooth transition. 

With the right planning and execution, you can minimise disruptions to your site’s performance, protect your SEO efforts, and ultimately achieve long-term success.