Website migrations — new domain, new platform, or redesign — are among the riskiest SEO events. Done wrong, they wipe out years of rankings. Done right, rankings transfer smoothly.
Common Migration Types
- Domain change (example.com to newsite.com).
- HTTP to HTTPS.
- Platform/CMS change or full redesign.
- URL structure changes.
The Safe Migration Checklist
- Map every old URL to its new equivalent.
- Implement 301 redirects for every changed URL.
- Keep content, titles and metadata consistent where possible.
- Update internal links and the XML sitemap.
- Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and monitor closely.
After Migration
Watch crawl errors, indexing and rankings for several weeks. A temporary dip is normal; a permanent drop means something broke — usually redirects.
SEOBOTX audits catch broken redirects and crawl errors so migrations stay safe.