Complete Guide to Website Migrations

Phase 1: Pre-Migration Planning (2 Weeks Before)

Document all pages that receive organic traffic, their rankings, and backlinks. This baseline helps you measure migration success.

Map every old URL to its corresponding new URL. This is critical for setting up correct 301 redirects. Use a spreadsheet to track these mappings.

Ensure the new site works perfectly on staging. All links must be correct, pages must load fast, and all functionality must work.

This is where most migrations fail. Here's how to do it right:

301 tells search engines the move is permanent and passes PageRank. Always use 301 for migrations.

Redirect directly from old URL to new URL. Never chain multiple redirects.

Use a catch-all redirect for unmapped URLs: oldsite.com/* → newsite.com/similar-structure

After setting redirects, verify them all with our bulk redirect checker to catch any errors.

Go Live During Off-Peak Hours: Launch at a time when traffic is low. For most sites, this is early morning or late evening.
Monitor in Real-Time: Check error logs immediately. Watch for crawl errors, 404s, and redirect chains.
Verify All Redirects Work: Spot-check 20-30 URLs manually, then bulk test the rest.
Update Core Signals: Update your sitemap, robots.txt, and internal links to the new URLs.

Check Google Search Console daily for crawl errors. Fix any 404s or broken redirects immediately.

Check that pages are still ranking. Rankings may fluctuate initially, which is normal.

After 30 days, monitor that rankings and traffic stabilize. Update or remove redirects that are no longer needed.

Avoid manual testing. Our tools help you: