Perform a content audit of the legacy site. â. Resolve duplicate content issues. â. Define the sitemap and URL structure of the new site. â. Create a 301 redirect ...
Website migration SEO checklist
IDEAS
FOR
A
CONNECTED
WORLD.
SURVIVING AND THRIVING DURING A W E B S I T E M I G R AT I O N When sites migrate, you risk losing a lot of accumulated search value and unless you’ve mastered every piece of the SEO puzzle, you could find yourself in a sticky traffic-losing, revenue-declining situation. A thorough website migration plan and comprehensive search engine optimisation strategy is the key to breaking through the noise and securing those sought-after top organic positions. So, whether you’re changing domain name, merging multiple domains, moving to a new TLD (top-level domain) or redesigning, it’s critical to ensure that there is minimal impact to your organic presence in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Now, unfortunately there’s no one size fits all recipe for site migration success – they all vary in requirements and complexity. However, there are countless steps that can be taken to ensure that the website not only maintains current ranking and traffic levels – but continues to improve post-launch. For the purpose of this site migration checklist, the scenario we have chosen to represent is particularly complex with lots of parallel changes including: •
A re-brand and design refresh
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Domain and URL changes
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Transitioning to a multi-language website
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Pages are being removed and added
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Existing copy is being updated
It’s important to note that although this site migration checklist should serve as a good starting point, it’s not an exhaustive list and so we’d recommend building upon and adapting this to fit your specific needs.
S I T E M I G R AT I O N C H E C K L I S T
Pre-migration ☐☐
Benchmark important data e.g. keyword rankings, organic traffic, conversions, search visibility, number of indexed pages and site speed
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Set up automated domain monitoring tools to receive email alerts when changes to the domain occur e.g. robots.txt and HTTP response changes
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Export all pages that have received external links
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Perform a technical audit of the legacy site
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Perform a content audit of the legacy site
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Resolve duplicate content issues
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Define the sitemap and URL structure of the new site
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Create a 301 redirect map, ensuring that the legacy pages are mapped to new pages with the same or highly relevant content
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Create canonical tag recommendations
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Conduct keyword research for the new site using RankBrain’s interpretation-model
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Create metamap for the new site
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Optimise new site copy with keywords and internal linking
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Run page speed tests on staging site and implement fixes
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Define schema markup requirements
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Generate hreflang elements
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Generate the robots.txt file for the new site
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Prepare XML sitemap(s) for the new site
During-migration ☐☐
Submit change of domain address to Google Search Console
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Submit XML sitemap to Google Search Console
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Submit robots.txt to Google Search Console
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Check the new site is set to index and dofollow
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Review tracking
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Check there are no soft 404s
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Annotate launch within reporting platform
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Promote launch
Post-migration ☐☐
Perform full technical audit of the website e.g. look for crawl errors, review XML sitemap for errors & check robots.txt
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Submit individual pages that aren’t yet indexed to Google Search Console
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Monitor reporting platform(s) closely
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Check Google Search Console daily
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Monitor keyword rankings daily
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Update Google My Business profiles with new domain/business details
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Update local citations across local listing websites
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Update social profiles
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Request for broken external links to be updated
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Build fresh authoritative links to the new domain
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Re-submit the disavow file created for the old domain to the new domain
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Test schema markup
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Test hreflang elements
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Assess site speed
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Eliminate internal redirect hops
If you’d like to find out how to perform these post-migration SEO checks, please view our step-by-step guide.
HELPFUL TOOLS
AccuRanker
Ahrefs
Authority Labs
URL Profiler
Moz
Whitespark
Searchmetrics
BrightLocal
Google Search Console
Kerboo
Keyword i.o
Screaming Frog
Google Analytics
Google’s PageSpeed Insights
DeepCrawl
SEMrush
Robotto
Majestic
Structured Data Testing Tool
IIS SEO Toolkit
Is a complex site migration on the horizon for you? We’re a full service digital agency with everything you could need under one roof. Give us a call today or drop us an email to find out how we could transform your digital presence and boost your business’ bottom-line.
