How to migrate your website without losing SEO: a checklist

Before you start

• Export at least 12 months of pages and queries from Google Search Console.
• Export your backlinks (Search Console's Links report, or an SEO tool).
• Crawl the current site to list every URL, title, meta description and status code.
• Benchmark traffic, rankings for key terms, and conversions.

Build the redirect map

1. List every old URL with traffic, backlinks or internal importance.
2. Map each one to the most relevant new URL (one-to-one where possible).
3. Use 301 (permanent) redirects. Avoid chains: old → new directly.
4. Don't redirect everything to the homepage; search engines treat that like a missing page.
5. Pages with no value can return 410 (gone).

Test on staging

• Block staging from search engines, and remember to unblock at launch.
• Check titles, meta descriptions, headings and canonical tags on key pages.
• Test every redirect in the map automatically.
• Check structured data, the XML sitemap and robots.txt.
• Check page speed on mobile.

Launch day

• Deploy redirects at the same moment as the new site.
• Submit the new XML sitemap in Search Console.
• Crawl the live site for broken links and redirect errors.

After launch

• Check Search Console daily for two weeks, then weekly: coverage errors, 404s, and traffic by page.
• Fix new 404s with redirects as they appear.
• Keep redirects in place permanently.

Migrations are part of our implementation and execution work.