The Complete Checklist for Successful SEO Website Migration

Website migration can get tricky.

Do it wrong, and you could lose rankings and traffic. Do it right, and your new site becomes better aligned with both users and search engines.

At Ninja Promo, we’ve successfully guided dozens of website migrations. One thing is clear: preparation and careful execution are everything.

This guide gives you a step-by-step SEO migration checklist based on our real experience helping clients move platforms and restructure their sites without losing traffic.

 

Types of Website Migrations

First things first: there are several website migration methods you might consider.

 

Migration type	What it means	When it typically happens
Domain migration	Moving from example.com to newexample.com	Rebranding, better domain acquisition, or site consolidation
Platform migration	Changing your entire website ecosystem (e.g., moving from a custom-built site to WordPress)	Need for better scalability, lower maintenance costs
CMS migration	Switching content management systems (e.g., WordPress to Drupal, Shopify to BigCommerce)	Specific functionality needs, scaling content production, and SEO
HTTPS migration	Switching from non-secure (HTTP) to secure (HTTPS) website protocol	Security improvements
URL structure redesign	Changing how URLs are formatted	Improving site hierarchy, enhancing clarity
Website redesign	New look and functionality	Updating design,f ocusing on user experience improvement, and adding new features
Hosting migration	Moving your website to a new server or hosting provider	When you need faster loading times, improved uptime, or specialized support for growing traffic

 

Each website migration type also carries different SEO risks and requires specific precautions. 

For example, domain change and platform migration typically present the highest risk to your organic traffic. While HTTPS migrations are generally more straightforward.

The 3-Stage SEO Migration Checklist

At Ninja Promo, we follow a systematic approach to complex SEO website migration.

We’ve broken it into three clear phases, each one building on the last to protect your rankings.

Part 1: Pre-Migration Planning

This phase defines your goals, identifies risks, and lays the groundwork for a successful migration.

Define the Purpose of the Migration

Start by clarifying why you’re migrating your website.

For instance, you might want to:

• Improve user experience with a more intuitive site structure
• Update outdated technology that limits your site’s performance
• Rebrand your business with a new domain name
• Consolidate multiple domains to strengthen your main site

And so on.

In other words, this step will define the migration type you’re going to need.

Conduct an SEO Audit of Your Existing Website

Next, document how your site currently performs in search and compile an inventory of all published content.

This way, you won’t miss anything important during migration.

Here’s what to focus on, depending on your migration objectives:

 

What to audit	Tools to use	How to audit
Complete list of website URLs with HTTP status codes	Screaming Frog	Run a site crawl and create a master list of all website URLs.
Top organic landing pages that bring the most traffic and conversions	Google Analytics, Search Console	Check which pages drive most of your search traffic and thereby need careful checking after migration.
Pages with backlinks	Semrush’s Backlink Analytics	Identify pages that have gained the most authority from other sites’ links.
Technical elements	Screaming Frog	Document your current robots.txt rules, sitemap structure, structured data, server logs to monitor for any errors that could affect your migration, and meta tags: title, descriptions, and canonical tags.
Content inventory	Google Analytics, HubSpot	Analyze all content assets like product pages, blog posts, etc., and add notes regarding their focus and content quality.

 

Your goal? Creating a guide that shows which:

• Pages drive value and need to be prioritized
• Pages with backlinks require special attention to maintain SEO authority
• Pages should be maintained as-is vs. requiring content optimization
• Low-value pages might be safely removed or consolidated
• Technical SEO elements should be reviewed and documented

Build a detailed spreadsheet to summarize your findings (or use this quick template). Here’s what it might look like:

Design Your Redirect Strategy

After that, review your site architecture and create a map of how your old URLs will redirect to new ones. 

This prevents traffic loss by helping search engines understand your new site structure.

Add a “Migration Status” column to your spreadsheet to specify the action for each URL based on your previous audit findings. For example:

• Redirect: Move visitors from the old URL to the equivalent new URL 
• Consolidate: Merge multiple similar/duplicate pages into one comprehensive resource
• Update: Improve content quality or technical elements
• Remove: Delete pages with minimal value and redirect to relevant alternatives

Plan the URL Structure

From here, analyze your current permalink structure — how your URLs are formatted — and plan updates to make them more concise, consistent, and SEO-friendly.

Look for the following issues: 

• Date-based blog structures (e.g., /blog/2023/05/post-title) – These URLs become outdated quickly and make content seem less relevant over time, even if it’s evergreen.
• Parameter-heavy URLs (e.g., /products?id=123&source=xyz) – Search engines sometimes struggle with parameters, and they’re not user-friendly. 
• Inconsistent naming conventions – Using different terms for similar content (e.g., /products vs /items) creates confusion for both users and search engines.
• Excessive folder depth (e.g., /category/subcategory/product-type/brand/product) – Very deep URL structures can dilute keyword relevance and complicate crawling.
• Unnecessarily long URLs (e.g., /best-affordable-seo-services-agency-new-york-city) – URLs with too many words often get truncated in search results and are harder to share or remember.

Then, design your new URL structure with SEO best practices in mind. 

For example, convert date-based blog URLs to topic-focused ones (/blog/2021/07/seo-tips → /blog/seo-tips), standardize terminology, and reduce unnecessary folder depth.

Set Up a Staging Website

Before making any changes to your live site, create a staging site setup: an exact duplicate of your production site. 

You can use it for pre-launch testing of new site structures, plugins, themes, content changes, and more.

Most hosting providers offer one-click staging creation through their dashboard. Here’s what it looks like if you’re using Hostinger:

For WordPress sites, you can also use staging plugins like WP Staging, Duplicator, or All-in-One WP Migration. 

Make sure to protect your staging site from being indexed by search engines. 

If you’re using WordPress, go to Settings > Reading and check “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.”

This method is quick but not foolproof: search engines may still index the site if they ignore this directive. For better reliability, add one or more of these methods:

• Enable HTTP authentication (username + password protection) through your hosting panel
• Add <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”> to every page
• Block crawlers in robots.txt by adding:
  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /

Backup and Document Current SEO Components

Finally, conduct a technical SEO audit and create complete backups of your website.

This protects you if something goes wrong during migration and helps you recreate important elements on your new site.

Document these SEO components:

• A full copy of the current website: Including all URLs, your CMS, database, and media files
• Robots.txt file: The text file that tells search engines which pages they can access
• XML sitemaps: Files that list all your important pages for search engines
• Structured data (Schema markup): Special code that helps search engines understand your content
• Custom redirects: Rules that send visitors from old URLs to new ones
• Meta descriptions and title tags: Elements that provide information about your pages to browsers and search engines

For WordPress sites, install a backup plugin like UpdraftPlus to implement this step. 

For other platforms, use your hosting provider’s site backup tool or manually export your database and download your files.

Before going live, run a full quality assurance review on your staging site to ensure all redirects, content, and technical elements work as expected and nothing critical was missed.

Part 2: Website Migration Execution

This phase is where you implement your SEO migration plan and start making actual changes to your website.

Implement 301 Redirects

Now it’s time to set up redirects based on your mapping document. This ensures visitors can find your content and enables proper link equity transfer.

301 redirects are permanent redirects that tell search engines a page has moved and preserve most of your SEO value. 

Source: Semrush

When setting them up, make sure each old URL is mapped directly to a specific, relevant new page. 

The exact setup process varies depending on your website platform:

• For WordPress sites, install a plugin like Redirection or 301 Redirects. Then, enter each old URL and its new destination through the plugin’s interface.
• For other websites: You might need to edit server configuration files. Most websites run on what’s called an Apache server, which uses a file called .htaccess for redirects.

A simple  .htaccess redirect looks like this:

Redirect 301 /old-page.html https://www.example.com/new-page/

If you have multiple pages with similar or identical content, you can also use “canonical tags” to tell search engines which page is the “main” version to index. 

This helps prevent SEO issues related to duplicate content after setting up redirects.

Source: Semrush

Migrate All Content

Once you’re done with redirect mapping, start transferring your content. 

If you’re using WordPress, tools like All-in-One WP Migration can handle this in bulk. 

For other platforms, export your database and files, then reimport them into the new system manually or with migration scripts.

To make sure nothing critical slips through:

• Use your URL inventory as a migration checklist
• Check that all text, images, and videos render correctly
• Ensure that metadata, headings, and structured content stay intact
• Fix embedded links or media (e.g., YouTube, PDFs, forms) that may have broken
• Check hreflang tags if your site is available in multiple languages
• Analyze server logs to make sure redirects are functioning properly and that no crawl errors or indexation problems are affecting SEO performance.
• Check that canonical tags are correctly set to avoid duplicate content issues and make sure search engines are indexing the right pages.

“One of the most commonly overlooked yet critical risks during site migration is failing to analyze server logs. Without proper log file analysis, it’s impossible to determine whether Googlebot is crawling the right pages, if redirects are functioning correctly, or if crawl budget is being misallocated. This insight is especially important in the weeks following the migration, as quick detection and resolution of indexing or crawl issues can impact rankings and traffic retention. Log file analysis also helps with crawl budget optimization: making sure Googlebot spends its limited crawl resources on your most important pages rather than wasteful redirects, outdated URLs, or low-value content. Another common issue is the improper handling of canonical tags. These tags are often left pointing to outdated URLs or omitted entirely, which can create duplicate content signals and send conflicting indexing instructions to search engines.”

— Vadzim Z, Head of SEO at Ninja Promo

All this helps catch hidden site migration issues before they impact performance recovery. It also supports consistent layout and flow, key for both UX and SEO.

Update Internal Linking

Next, update all internal links to point to your new URLs after migration. This transfers link equity between pages and helps search engines discover your new content.

Here’s how to do it:

• Run a crawl of your new site using Screaming Frog or a similar tool 
• For WordPress sites, use a plugin like Better Search Replace to bulk update URLs
• For other website platforms like Shopify or Wix, use their built-in search tools to find and replace old URLs

Check navigation menus, footer links, and sidebar widgets for hardcoded old URLs.

Be especially thorough when checking links within your page content — like text links in blog posts — as they’re easy to miss during the website migration process.

Configure Google Analytics (GA4) and Search Console 

Next, make sure your tracking tools are properly updated and connected to the new site.

You can keep your existing GA4 property to maintain historical data. 

Select your existing property, navigate to Admin, open the data stream for your website, and copy the Measurement ID.

Next, add the Measurement ID to your migrated website. 

If you’re using WordPress, the easiest way is to install the Site Kit by Google plugin and connect your GA4 property there.

To set up Google Search Console, add your new website as a property and follow the instructions to verify ownership.

In your old site’s property, go to Settings > Change of Address, select your new site, and confirm the move.

Update robots.txt and XML Sitemap

Next, update your robots.txt file and XML sitemap to guide search engines through your new site after website migration.

First, generate a new XML sitemap that includes all your new URLs. 

Most CMS platforms have built-in tools or plugins for this, while you can also use the XML-Sitemaps.com generator.

Then, update your robots.txt file to point to this new sitemap:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /admin/

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Finally, submit your new sitemap in Google Search Console to help search engines discover your new pages faster.

You can then monitor the “Sitemaps” report in Google Search Console to see the last read date, status, and number of discovered URLs.

Mistakes in your robots.txt or sitemap setup can lead to serious indexing issues. So, always double-check both after launch to avoid unintentional traffic loss.

“One of our clients added Disallow: / to the robots.txt in its staging version. However, after migrating the site, they did not replace the robots.txt with the correct version. As a result, over the course of a week, the site lost 50% of its indexed pages. After contacting us, we immediately identified the issue, promptly fixed the robots.txt file, and submitted the XML sitemap for reindexing.”

— Vadzim Z, Head of SEO at Ninja Promo

Verify Technical SEO Elements and Check Site Speed

Next, check that technical SEO elements were transferred correctly and site performance wasn’t affected during the site migration process

• Meta tags: Confirm that each page has a unique, optimized title tag and meta description.
• Structured data: Use Google’s Rich Results Test to validate your schema markup.
• Indexing controls: Use Chrome DevTools to make sure no pages are accidentally blocked with no-index or disallowed in meta tags.
• Tracking visibility: Check that your key scripts (analytics, pixels, etc.) are loading correctly.

We also recommend working on page speed optimization and verifying your new site’s Core Web Vitals. 

These metrics measure loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability, all of which directly impact SEO rankings.

Use the PageSpeed Insights tool to check your Core Web Vitals.

Enter the URLs of the pages you want to test, and compare the results with your pre-migration benchmarks to catch any new performance issues.

Part 3: Post-Migration Check & Ongoing Optimization

The final phase of your SEO website migration involves performance monitoring and issue resolution to protect your rankings.

Test All Redirects and URLs

Perform regular redirect testing to protect your SEO post-migration performance.

Focus first on your high-traffic pages and those with valuable backlinks, as these have the biggest impact on organic visibility.

Immediately after completing the migration, we recommend crawling the site using the Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool. This will allow you to analyze the presence of 404 errors, the status of all pages, and redirects.

— Vadzim Z, Head of SEO at Ninja Promo

As you test your redirects, check server response codes like 301 (permanent redirect), 404 (not found), or 500 (server error) to ensure every old URL points to a valid destination and returns the right status.

Look for these common problems:

 

Problem	How to fix it
Broken redirect (404 errors)	Implement a proper 301 redirect to the equivalent new page.
Redirect chains where visitors hop through multiple URLs before reaching their destination	Create direct redirects from the original URL to the final destination.
Redirect loops where URLs redirect in a circular pattern	Break the loop by identifying where it starts and properly redirecting that URL to a final destination page.
Wrong redirect type (temporary 302 codes instead of 301)	Change temporary 302 redirects to permanent 301 redirects.
Canonical tags pointing to outdated URLs	Set canonical tags on new pages, making sure they point to the correct URL.
Mass redirects to the homepage	Instead of redirecting everything to the homepage, find the most relevant alternative page for the redirect.
Incorrect or incomplete URL mapping	Ensure redirects are properly mapped to relevant pages, considering both internal linking and topical relevance.

 

“One of the most common migration mistakes is incorrect or incomplete URL mapping, especially when relevance and internal linking structure are overlooked. Even if an old page no longer exists on the new site, it’s still important to set up a 301 redirect to the most relevant available page. For example, redirecting multiple URLs to a so-called “high-priority” page in an attempt to boost its authority — while ignoring topical relevance — can backfire. 

Using mass redirects to the homepage is another common mistake. Even if a page doesn’t exist on the new site, it’s better to find the most relevant alternative rather than redirecting everything to the homepage.”

— Vadzim Zubelik, Head of SEO at Ninja Promo

Monitor and Fix Crawl Errors

You should also regularly check for crawlability issues: problems that prevent Google from finding or accessing your pages.

To check for crawl errors in Google Search Console, go to Indexing and open the Pages report. 

Here, look for unexpected increases in “Not indexed” pages.

You can also explore specific error categories to see affected URLs.

Finally, use the URL Inspection tool to diagnose problems with specific pages and check their indexing status.

If you’re spotted any crawling problems, implement these solutions:

 

Common post-migration errors	Solution
Server errors (5xx)	Contact your hosting provider to fix server timeout or resource issues
404 errors	Create new 301 redirects for these pages that point to relevant content on your new site
Blocked by robots.txt	Edit your robots.txt file to remove unintended blocking directives
Duplicate content	Update canonical tags to point to the correct new URLs, not old ones
Noindex tags	Check your page’s HTML for accidental “noindex” meta tags and remove them

 

Reclaim Lost Backlinks

Your backlinks can break when URLs change without proper redirects, pages are removed entirely, or technical errors prevent search engines from following redirect paths.

To identify these broken backlinks, head to Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool (or similar), add your domain, and filter for lost links. 

You can also open the “Lost and Vital” report to focus on lost backlinks that had the most value.

Analyze each link to see details about why it was lost or broken (e.g., page deleted, redirected, etc.).

Then, add fixed depending on the root cause:

 

Recovery action	When to use	Process
Restore original page	When the content was accidentally removed	Recreate the page at its original URL to instantly reactivate all backlinks
Set up 301 redirects	When content moved to a new URL	Implement redirects from old URLs to their new equivalents to preserve link equity
Contact webmasters	For high-value backlinks	Send a friendly email requesting that they update their link to point directly to your new URL

 

Reaching out to webmasters is worth the effort because direct links pass more SEO value than redirected links. 

Even though 301 redirects transfer most link equity, some value is lost through redirects, especially in longer chains.

You can use this email template for your outreach:

Subject: Quick update needed: Your link to [Your Brand] is outdated

Hi [Name],

I’m [Your Name] from [Your Company]. 

I noticed your article/page [Title] links to our old URL [old URL].

We recently completed a website migration, and while we have redirects in place, we’d appreciate if you could update the link to our new URL:

[new URL]

This ensures your readers have the best experience and access to our most current content.

Thanks for your help!

[Your Name]

Track SEO Performance Over Time

Finally, set up a tracking system to check whether you’ve achieved your website migration goals.

Return to your initial objectives and measure success against specific metrics:

• Keyword rankings: Have you preserved your positions in SERPs, or are you seeing ranking drops? Monitor with tools like Semrush’s Position Tracking. You can also use various AI SEO tools to find keyword gaps and add quick fixes.
• Organic traffic analysis: Has your traffic recovered, or are you seeing signs of organic visibility decline? Use GA4’s Acquisition reports for traffic monitoring. 
• Crawl frequency: Is Google visiting your site regularly? Continue index monitoring by checking Google Search Console.
• Conversions from organic traffic: Are visitors completing desired actions at the same or better rate? Identify potential conversion loss via GA4’s key events.
• Mobile optimization results: Is your site performing well on mobile devices? Compare mobile vs. desktop metrics in GA4.
• Backlink retention rate: Have you preserved valuable backlinks? Check using Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool.

“We track traffic patterns and ranking fluctuations to assess how effectively link equity is distributed across the site and to ensure proper indexing after launch. Drops in traffic or rankings on key pages often indicate issues with redirects, internal linking, or search engine accessibility — all of which are critical factors in successful ranking recovery after a site relaunch. Most issues arise from excessive redirect chains or inadvertent blocking of important pages, while search engines may also struggle to interpret structural changes and maintain accurate page hierarchy. Rapid detection and resolution are critical, as minor technical faults can lead to significant traffic and ranking declines.”

— Vadzim Z, Head of SEO at Ninja Promo

To simplify this process, set custom GA4 alerts via Custom Insights to get notified about significant changes in your new website’s performance.

Then, create a monthly performance scorecard in Google Looker Studio to compare current metrics against both pre-migration benchmarks and your target goals.

Ready for SEO Migration? Let the Experts Handle Everything

With the right expertise, you will maintain (and improve) your current SEO performance even after complex website migrations. 

At Ninja Promo, we’ve developed a practical approach to migrations that consistently delivers results. 

We focus on the technical details that matter most while identifying strategic improvements to implement during the transition.

Our migration process is built on proven SEO principles: from redirect mapping and canonicalization to crawl control and indexation monitoring.

“Over the past year, our team has successfully completed more than ten website migrations while maintaining strong SEO performance. In nine out of ten cases, organic traffic not only remained stable but actually continued growing within the first three months after launching the updated site. The average growth reached nineteen percent over six months through our comprehensive approach to technical auditing, proper redirect configuration, and optimization of all critical parameters. A poorly handled migration is a sharp reminder of the importance of SEO, as small technical missteps can lead to major traffic losses if left unaddressed.”

— Vadzim Z, Head of SEO at Ninja Promo

Want to achieve the same results? Book a free call to learn how our SEO subscription works and how to migrate your website without losing your hard-earned SEO progress.