Site migrations without losing traffic: a step-by-step plan

A site migration (a new domain, platform, URL structure or design) is where SEO wins and losses are biggest and fastest. Most traffic losses after a migration come from avoidable mistakes, not from the move itself.

Before: plan and benchmark

1. List every URL that matters: from a crawl, your XML sitemaps, analytics landing pages and the pages with links pointing to them. Search Console's Performance report shows which pages earn clicks.
2. Benchmark: record clicks, rankings for key queries, indexed pages and Core Web Vitals, so you can compare after launch.
3. Map old URLs to new ones, one to one where possible. Each old page should redirect to the most relevant new page, not to the home page.
4. Test the new site on staging: crawl it, check titles, canonicals, internal links, structured data and that important content is still there. Protect staging with a password rather than relying on noindex.

Redirects

• Use permanent (301) redirects from each old URL to its new equivalent.
• Avoid chains (A to B to C) and loops; redirect straight to the final URL.
• Keep redirects in place for a long time, ideally permanently; Google recommends keeping them for at least a year.
• Update internal links to point straight at the new URLs instead of relying on redirects.

Launch day

• Remove staging blocks: no leftover Disallow: / in robots.txt, no site-wide noindex.
• Test redirects from your old URL list in bulk with a crawler such as Screaming Frog.
• Submit the new XML sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Moving domain? Verify both domains in Search Console and use the Change of Address tool from the old property.
• Check analytics tracking on the new templates.

The weeks after

• Watch the Page indexing report for errors and for old URLs still being crawled.
• Compare clicks and key rankings with your benchmark. Some fluctuation for a few weeks is normal on large moves.
• Look for 404s in Search Console and server logs, and add redirects for any that matter.
• Fix problems quickly: the longer a mistake stays live, the more it costs.

Things that make migrations riskier

• Changing domain, platform, URLs, design and content all at once. If you can, change one thing at a time.
• Removing or merging lots of content in the same release.
• Launching just before your busiest season.

For the general launch checks, see A technical SEO checklist for new sites. Planning one now? Share your checklist in the Technical SEO community.