Website Migration SEO Checklist

Which kind of migration are you doing?

Identify the type first, because it decides which of Google's two move guides applies and how much risk you carry. If you are still deciding what to keep, read how to redesign a website without losing SEO. This page is the technical sequence that follows those decisions.

Google advises planning the move in smaller sections where you can, and changing only one thing at a time.

Six weeks out: inventory and URL map

1. List every old URL. Combine your sitemap, analytics or server logs, Search Console's Links report and the CMS. Google lists all of these as places to find the URLs that matter.
2. List the pages other sites link to. These are the ones you most need to redirect correctly.
3. Decide what happens to each URL. Keep it, redirect it to a replacement or retire it with a 404 or 410.
4. Build the map. An illustrative extract looks like this.

5. List the places that refer to old URLs. Canonical tags, hreflang annotations, internal links, the sitemap, email footers and printed material all need updating.

Two weeks out: build and test the new site

1. Hide the test site. Use noindex or a login. You must remove it on launch day, so put that on the checklist now.
2. Set up certificates for HTTPS and check robots.txt and noindex rules on the new site.
3. Verify both properties in Search Console, including every variant of the old and new domains (http, https, www and non-www).
4. Test redirect rules on a sample from each section of the map, and confirm they are server-side.
5. Check content parity. Titles, descriptions, headings, structured data and image alt text should match what ranks today unless you changed them on purpose.
6. Check mobile. Content and metadata should match desktop, because Google indexes the mobile version.

Redirect rules that prevent most damage

Launch day, in order

1. Take a last backup and a final export of the old URL list.
2. Switch on the redirects.
3. Remove any test-site noindex and any robots.txt block.
4. Confirm canonical tags and robots meta rules point to the new URLs.
5. For a domain move, submit a Change of Address in Search Console for each verified variant of the old domain.
6. Submit the new sitemap and remove the old one.
7. Update internal links on the new site, and ask important external sites to update theirs.
8. Test the redirects by hand and a few key pages with URL Inspection.
9. Test forms, phone links and analytics on a real phone.

Choose a quiet period for launch if you can, as Google suggests.

The first week and the first eight

Google also says its crawl rate can dip after a hosting move and then rise over several days. A sustained fall for pages that kept their content points to a fault, so investigate rather than wait. That reading is our rule of thumb, not a Google rule.

Failures that show up again and again

How long it takes

The technical steps are quick compared with the waiting. Google says it can take a few weeks or more for small and medium sites, and longer for large ones. Our timeline guide puts that in context.

Next step

Start the URL inventory today, even if the launch is months away. It is the longest task, and starting early takes the pressure off launch week. If you want help with the whole move, see our web design work and SEO service, or contact us with the size of your site.