The Ultimate Website Migration Checklist: How to Move Your Site Without Losing SEO Traffic

Introduction : The Fear of the Plunge

• Hook: Website migration is often seen as necessary but terrifying. Even a small error can lead to a drastic 80% drop in organic traffic that takes months to recover.
• Thesis: Migration is 90% planning. We provide a definitive, four-phase checklist to ensure your site move is not a disaster, but a strategic upgrade that preserves and improves your SEO equity.

Phase 1: Pre-Migration Planning & Audit (The Foundation)

• The Baseline Crawl: Use a tool (e.g., Screaming Frog) to crawl your current site and export all URLs, status codes, and key SEO metadata (Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, H1s, etc.). This is your master inventory.
• Identify High-Value Assets: Filter your master inventory based on Google Analytics/Search Console data to flag your Top 100 traffic-driving pages and Top 50 pages with external backlinks. These are non-negotiable URLs that must be handled with utmost care.
• Technical Health Check: Address all current technical SEO errors (broken internal links, redirect chains, crawl errors) on the old site before moving. Don't migrate garbage.
• Content Pruning: Flag low-value, duplicate, or thin content that should be removed or consolidated (301-redirecting them to a better page) instead of migrated. This cleans up your site before the move, often improving overall SEO recovery time.

Phase 2: Development & The All-Important Map (The Build)

• New Architecture Planning: Finalize the new site structure. Ensure the new Information Architecture (IA) is logical and keyword-friendly.
• The 1:1 Redirect Map (The Project Core): This is the most critical step. Create a spreadsheet mapping every old URL to its corresponding new URL.
  • Rule 1: 1-to-1 Mapping. Use 301 redirects (permanent) for maximum link equity transfer.
  • Rule 2: Don't Redirect to the Homepage. Only redirect a specific page to the homepage if there is no other logical new location.
  • Rule 3: Handle Non-HTML Assets. Don't forget to map high-ranking image URLs and PDFs.
• Staging Environment: All content migration and development must occur on a staging site that is blocked from search engine crawling (e.g., via .htaccess or robots.txt rules).
• Implement On-Page SEO: Ensure all high-value pages retain or improve their original title tags, meta descriptions, and Structured Data (Schema).

Phase 3: Launch Day & Post-Migration Validation (Go-Live)

• The Night Before: Implement the content freeze. Take a final backup of the old site and the new staging site.
• The Launch Sequence (The Switch):

1. Remove Indexing Blocks from the staging site (remove passwords, update robots.txt).
2. Implement the 301 Redirect Map on the server level.
3. Test Critical URLs: Immediately test a sample of old URLs to ensure they resolve to the correct new page with a 301 status code.
4. Submit New Sitemap: Submit the new XML Sitemap to Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster Tools.
5. Analytics Check: Verify that Google Analytics and other tracking codes are firing correctly.

• Post-Launch Crawl: Run a full site crawl on the new live domain to look for:
  • Any internal links pointing to old URLs.
  • Any accidental 404 or 500 server errors.
  • Any unintended redirect chains (e.g., Old URL $\rightarrow$ Temporary URL $\rightarrow$ New URL).

Phase 4: Monitoring & Recovery (Ongoing Vigilance)

• GSC Monitoring: Monitor the Crawl Stats and Coverage Reports in GSC daily for the first two weeks. Fix any new errors immediately.
• Traffic Baseline: Compare organic traffic, rankings, and conversions to the pre-migration baseline captured in Phase 1. Expect a temporary dip (1–4 weeks, depending on site size) as Google re-indexes.
• Internal Link Repair: Focus on fixing internal links that still point to old URLs. While the 301 works, updating the link is better for crawl budget and link equity.
• Conclusion: A successful migration is achieved not through speed, but through meticulous planning and immediate post-launch correction.