A step-by-step framework you can implement this week — 47 migration SEO tasks, in order.

Website migrations are high-risk SEO events. You're moving your entire digital property — domain, URLs, site structure, possibly your CMS platform. A single missed redirect or misconfigured robots.txt can orphan hundreds of pages from Google's index.

In our experience working with migrating firms, the difference between a protected migration and a botched one is rarely luck. It's a structured checklist executed with rigor.

A proper migration checklist covers three phases:

• Pre-launch (8 – 12 weeks before): Audit, redirect mapping, technical setup, and stakeholder alignment.
• Launch day: Cutover execution, monitoring triggers, and immediate issue response.
• Post-launch (4 – 12 weeks after): Crawl monitoring, ranking recovery tracking, and late-breaking fixes.

Without this structure, you'll spend post-launch weeks in crisis mode, fixing mistakes that could have been prevented. With it, you'll move confidently and recover rankings predictably.

Weeks 1 – 2: Audit and Planning

1. Document your current site architecture, URL structure, and key page relationships in a spreadsheet.
2. Export all indexable URLs from Search Console (or crawl your live site with Screaming Frog).
3. Record the current ranking position, monthly traffic, and backlink profile for your top 50 traffic-driving pages.
4. Identify any pages generating revenue, leads, or strategic traffic — these are your migration priority list.
5. Audit your current robots.txt, XML sitemaps, and internal link structure.
6. Document all third-party tools that reference your domain (Google Analytics, Search Console, Zendesk, CMS integrations, email signup forms).

Weeks 3 – 6: Redirect Mapping and New Structure

7. Design your new URL structure. Decide: same domain? New domain? Subdomain? Changed path hierarchy?
8. Create a complete redirect map (old URL → new URL) for every indexable page. Export as a spreadsheet.
9. Test the redirect map with a developer — ensure 301 redirects, not 302s. Confirm HTTP status codes return 200 on destination pages.
10. Map old page IDs (if applicable) to new page IDs in your CMS — critical for internal link preservation.
11. Plan and document any URL parameter changes (pagination, filtering, tracking params). Communicate these to analytics and ad teams.
12. Audit your internal link anchor text and categorize by type (brand, navigation, contextual, footer). This helps prioritize re-linking post-launch.

Weeks 7 – 10: Technical Preparation

13. Set up the new domain in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
14. Create and validate a new XML sitemap for the new domain, containing every indexable URL.
15. Configure Google Analytics 4 on the new domain with view filters and goals matching your current setup.
16. Audit structured data (schema.org markup) on top pages — plan migration or updates for new platform if switching CMSs.
17. Test SSL/TLS certificates, CDN configuration, and load times on the new site. Performance regressions signal crawl problems to Google.
18. Set up crawl monitoring tools (Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Moz) for weekly crawls of both old and new sites.

Weeks 11 – 12: Stakeholder Alignment and Final Checks

19. Brief content, product, and marketing teams on URL changes, redirects, and expected short-term ranking dips. Set expectations: many firms report a 10 – 30% traffic dip in weeks 1 – 4 post-launch, recovering within 8 – 12 weeks.
20. Finalize your launch checklist with developers and confirm all 301 redirects are configured in production (not staging).

Launch day is your one chance to execute flawlessly. Have a dedicated person (ideally with both SEO and technical knowledge) watching in real-time.

1. Flip the DNS cutover at your scheduled go-live time. Monitor Google's DNS propagation tool to confirm both old and new domains resolve correctly within 30 minutes.
2. Within 2 hours of go-live, test 20 – 30 random old URLs in your browser to confirm 301 redirects fire correctly and destination pages load without error.
3. Submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools (not as a resubmission; add it to the sitemap index).
4. Check Search Console Coverage on the old domain — you should see indexing paused on old URLs as they redirect.
5. Verify that your .htaccess rules (Apache) or web.config rules (IIS) are correctly deployed. Wrong syntax here breaks redirects at scale.
6. Check your robots.txt on both old and new domains. New domain should be open to crawling; old domain may disallow new crawls (robots.txt on old domain isn't required, but clarifies intent to Google).
7. Document any errors or unexpected behavior in a shared log. Do not batch fixes — deploy each one individually and monitor its effect before deploying the next.
8. Set up monitoring alerts for 404 errors, 5xx errors, and redirect chain detection (Screaming Frog crawl or uptime monitoring tool) to trigger notifications within 5 minutes of problems.

Days 1 – 7: Immediate Stabilization

1. Daily crawl of both old and new domains to identify broken redirects, orphaned pages, or crawl errors.
2. Monitor your top 50 traffic pages in Search Console — track impressions and click-through rate (CTR) daily. Expect 10 – 30% CTR drops in week 1; alert if drops exceed 50%.
3. Check Google Search Console for new crawl errors on the new domain (4xx, 5xx, robots.txt blocks). Fix and retest within 24 hours.
4. Audit internal links on high-authority pages — re-link to new URLs where redirects were used (don't rely solely on 301 redirects for passing authority).
5. Set up a Search Console property for each old domain subdirectory or path (if applicable) to track redirect monitoring separately.

Weeks 2 – 4: Index Recovery

6. Request indexation of your top 100 pages in Search Console (use the URL Inspection tool, not bulk sitemaps). Google prioritizes recent requests.
7. Monitor Search Console Index Coverage — your new domain should show 90%+ of old pages indexed within 2 weeks.
8. Create internal links from high-authority pages to new pages that historically had low visibility — accelerate their crawl and index budget.
9. Identify any redirect chains (old URL → intermediate URL → final URL). Fix by pointing old URLs directly to final URLs.
10. Audit your 404 log (in server logs or Google Search Console) for pages that returned 404s instead of redirecting. Create 301 redirects for these orphans.

Weeks 5 – 12: Ranking Recovery Monitoring

11. Track your top 50 ranking keywords weekly (via Search Console, rank tracking tool, or manual spot-checks) to monitor recovery trajectory. Recovery typically follows a J-curve: initial dip (week 1 – 2), bottom (week 3 – 4), then steady climb to 90%+ of original rankings by week 8 – 12.
12. Identify pages that lost significant rankings post-migration — audit their redirects, internal links, and content quality. Slow recovery often signals a missed redirect or broken internal link.
13. Continue daily crawl audits for weeks 2 – 4; shift to weekly by week 5 if no new errors emerge.
14. In Search Console, remove the old domain from your account or mark it as deprecated (use the Change of Address feature for additional signaling to Google).
15. Audit and update any XML sitemaps, robots.txt, and structured data to remove references to old URLs.
16. Brief stakeholders on week-by-week ranking recovery. Document the pre-migration baseline and post-migration trajectory to validate SEO's impact on the business.
17. Pause paid search campaigns on old domain URLs if you're running ads. Redirect ad traffic to new domain equivalents to avoid bidding against yourself.
18. Update all external documentation (wiki, runbooks, internal dashboards) to reference new URLs and domain names.

The 47-step checklist above covers a standard single-domain migration. But many real-world migrations have wrinkles.

Local SEO Migrations — If you manage Google Business Profiles (GBPs) or local service pages, add these tasks: (1) Prepare new GBP URLs matching your new domain structure. (2) Verify your GBP before launch — Google won't let you change the URL on an unverified profile. (3) Update your NAP (name, address, phone) citations on local directories, review sites, and schema markup if your address or business structure changed. (4) Monitor local pack rankings for 30 days post-launch; local signals sometimes lag national index recovery.

International (hreflang) Migrations — If you use hreflang tags for language or regional targeting, ensure: (1) Your new domain structure supports the same language/region path structure (e.g., /en/, /fr/, /de/). (2) All hreflang tags point to new URLs before launch. (3) Test hreflang tags in Search Console to confirm Google recognizes them. (4) Monitor Search Console coverage per language/region — some regions may lag in indexing old URLs.

Multi-Domain Consolidations — If you're merging multiple domains into one, treat each old domain as a separate migration stream: create separate redirect maps, set up separate Search Console properties for monitoring, and track ranking recovery per old domain. Consolidations take 2 – 3x longer to recover because you're spreading Google's crawl budget across multiple redirect chains.

The checklist above is comprehensive but dense. For a working document you can share with your development and marketing teams, we've created a downloadable spreadsheet that breaks all 47 steps into pre-launch, launch, and post-launch phases, with owner assignment, status tracking, and deadline columns.

The spreadsheet is organized for shared ownership — developers can mark technical tasks complete, content teams can track internal linking, and SEO can monitor rankings. It also includes a quick-reference decision tree for common edge cases (local migrations, hreflang, parameter changes).

Download here: [Insert download link or form CTA]

Many firms report using this checklist as a shared project tracker in Asana, Monday.com, or Notion. Customizing it to your specific migration timeline (some firms migrate in 2 weeks, others over 3 months) is always necessary — but the 47 core tasks remain constant.