Technical SEO

SEO Migration Checklist for a Website Redesign

A redesign can improve the site while accidentally discarding useful URL history. A migration checklist protects continuity before, during and after launch.

Inventory the current URLs

Export or list the important URLs before changing the structure. Mark which pages should remain, which should merge, which should be replaced and which can disappear without a replacement.

DDPW principle: The redirect map should be decided before the old URLs vanish.

Map old URLs to the closest useful replacement

Redirect an old page to the most relevant new destination, not automatically to the homepage. A direct one-step redirect is cleaner than a chain of several redirects.

Update internal links

Navigation, service cards, articles and footer links should point directly to new URLs. Redirects are a safety net, not a permanent substitute for maintaining the site itself.

Check canonical and sitemap output

Confirm that canonical URLs identify the new preferred pages and that the XML sitemap includes the public URLs you actually want discovered.

Verify after launch

Test important old URLs, crawl for unexpected 404s, review the live sitemap and confirm that key pages remain indexable. Migration quality is proven after launch, not before it.

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