Traffic lost in a migration usually comes from a few causes: old URLs that do not redirect, redirects that go to the wrong page, a new site that blocks crawling, and content that quietly disappeared in the redesign. This checklist covers a change of domain, platform, URL structure or design. Download it as a spreadsheet.
Before: record the starting point
- Crawl the old site and save the full list of URLs — every indexable page, with title and H1
- Export the pages with search traffic from Search Console — last 12 months, by page
- Export pages with backlinks — from a backlink tool, if you have one
- Record rankings and traffic for key pages — your baseline
- Save the old robots.txt, sitemap and structured data — for comparison
Before: plan
- Every old URL with traffic or links has a new destination — in a redirect map
- Redirects go to the most relevant new page, not the homepage — page to page
- Content on key pages survives the redesign — compare text, headings and internal links
- Titles, descriptions and H1s are carried over or improved on purpose — not reset to defaults
- Structured data, hreflang and canonicals are rebuilt on the new templates — check on staging
- The staging site is blocked from indexing — password or noindex, removed at launch
Launch
- Redirects are live and return 301 in one hop — test the full redirect map, not a sample
- The new site is indexable — no leftover noindex, robots.txt allows crawling
- Canonicals and internal links use the new URLs — no links to old URLs or staging
- The new sitemap lists only new, indexable URLs — submitted in Search Console
- For a domain change, the old domain is verified and Change of Address is submitted — Search Console settings
- Analytics and tag manager work on the new site — real-time reports
- The old site's server keeps serving redirects — do not shut it down
After: the first weeks
- Crawl the new site: no broken links, chains or stray noindex — full crawl
- Search Console: watch Pages, 404s and Crawl stats daily for two weeks — new reasons appearing
- Compare traffic per key page with the baseline — investigate pages that dropped
- Old URLs in Search Console show “Page with redirect” — expected
- Update external links you control — social profiles, directories, partners
- Keep redirects in place for at least a year — longer for pages with links