Launching a new website without losing SEO rankings

When launching a new website, it’s key that you follow a site migration checklist to avoid losing search engine rankings and traffic.

Launching a new website involves navigating the often tricky migration process of changing a website in specific ways that affect its search engine visibility.

There are many types of site migrations, like changing:

• Location
• Structure
• Design
• Technology stacks
• UX (user experience)

When launching a new website, the site migration process is one that you shouldn’t go into lightly.

The site migration process

The website migration process can go wrong without careful planning. Don’t underestimate the size of a site migration project.

You’ll need to consider the process from every angle and come up with a solid strategy.

When launching a new website, site migration risks a temporary loss of traffic as it’ll take time for Google to process the new site and update its index.

However, it’s an excellent opportunity to improve search engine optimisation (SEO) like streamlining the structure and fixing broken links.

Working with an SEO expert is crucial for a smooth site migration –  they can identify opportunities to improve your rankings and reduce loss of traffic. 

Website migration SEO checklist

When launching a new website, identify everyone who needs to be involved and make sure they’re all informed of the site migration plan at every step.

Read through our site migration checklist of best practices below to make sure you do it correctly.

Site crawl

Crawling your entire site helps with building an accurate new sitemap and working necessary link fixes into your migration plan.

You’ll need a complete list of URLs from your old website so nothing gets lost in the transition.

Then, use a site crawl tool like Screaming Frog to identify all the existing pages on your website. This should also identify broken links and redirect errors you’ll need to fix. Linking to orphan pages and removing links to 404 pages is also best practice.

If there are orphaned pages that aren’t linked to others, the site crawl might not pick them up. In this case, double-check your databases and Google Analytics for all page data, or use a page explorer like Ahrefs, which can also find these pages.

Take benchmarks

Current traffic, domain authority, and other key performance indicators (KPIs) will help you figure out the impact of site migration.

Use Google Search Console to set benchmarks based on your site’s current performance. This could include:

• Site speed
• Clicks and impressions
• Organic positions
• Keyword rankings

Having benchmarks from pre-migration is invaluable. Following the launch of your new website, monitor these benchmarks to highlight any concerning declines and address them quickly.

In this instance,  copying analytics data beforehand makes it easier to run comparisons with the analytics from the new site.

You should be aware, however, that it’s normal for keyword rankings to fluctuate and temporarily decline after website migration.

Create a new XML sitemap for improved site structure

Though it can be tempting, t be careful not to change too much about your new site structure or you’ll be starting from scratch in building SEO authority.

Keeping a similar site structure as your previous website also makes it easier to set up redirects.

When working on sitemaps, you need:

• A sitemap of expired URLs to access removed links and crawl redirects
• A sitemap of new URLs to access and crawl the new URL structure

These are often known as legacy site maps and dev site maps and both are required to test redirects properly.

If your website is especially large, it might be worth creating multiple XML sitemaps for different page categories.

Search engines use your XML sitemap to identify the new pages, so it must be accurate.

All URLs should be clean with a 200 (OK) response and optional tags should be correct. If they’re not, this will slow down indexing or even let search engines index the wrong URLs.

When it’s ready, submit your XML sitemap to Google and Bing so your new website gets indexed in good time.

Conduct an audit

When launching a new website, you should carry out a full technical audit of your old site.

Your new site needs to have faster loading speeds and none of the errors your old site might have had.In addition to checking technical aspects, you should perform a content audit before a full site migration.

The migration process is the perfect time to review all your content and make a note of:

• What you have
• What you need
• What you can delete
• What you can change

A website migration offers the opportunity to categorise content better and improve user journeys. Getting rid of old and irrelevant content and revamping existing content for new pages can improve search engine rankings.

Don’t go overboard, though.

Mass-deleting pages containing important keywords during site migrations could damage your rankings on search engines.

Delete duplicate content

A content audit is next up on your website migration checklist. You should identify any duplicate content on your site – this is important during the migration process to a new site.

Once identified,  now’s the time to either get rid of the content or completely rewrite it. For new websites, it’s key to optimise content when the chance presents itself. Duplicate content damages your traffic and search rankings if you don’t take care of it.

However, your high-ranking pages need to remain as similar as possible.

It’s possible that multiple versions of a URL could be published during a site migration, which would result in duplicate content. However, appropriate URL redirects and self-canonicalisation will avoid this and make sure only one version is accessible to search engines.

Update internal links

During the launch of your new website, you don’t want links pointing to pages on an old website because they no longer exist.

Pages with a 404 error are a surefire way to frustrate visitors and make them leave – impacting results on Google Analytics.

Relying on redirects for internal links will only increase the server load, slowing down performance and ruining your rankings. Instead, rewrite links with a search and replace operation to update text containing internal URLs. If any links are broken, either replace or remove them completely.

Then,  disavow bad links and build new ones, internally linking to any new pages.

Set up redirects

Redirects are critical for any type of site migration.

Link equity must pass to your new site and bots must understand the redirects to do a deep site crawl.As such, all URLs from your legacy site need redirecting to the new locations.

Use your sitemaps to make sure every URL is appropriately redirected with a 301 (Moved Permanently) redirect. You should also make sure they don’t default to 302 (Found) redirects – search engines won’t update their results if this happens.

It’s important not to take shortcuts here.

Make sure links redirect to equivalent pages or a suitable parent page – including content pages like blog posts. Don’t just link to the homepage and hope for the best.

Of course, before you go live, you’ll have to test redirects for 404 errors. It’s worth creating a custom 404 page in case of future errors. 

If the content boosts your brand image and offers an alternative direction, visitors should stay on your site despite any changes after migration.

Add canonical tags

Canonical tags tell Google the main pages it should be indexing. 

Don’t risk your new website not being indexed because the canonical tag stayed on the old website. Add canonical tags to all the new pages manually, updating with full URLs if applicable.

If you find any faulty canonical tags on the old site, this is your opportunity to fix them for the new site.

Then, you should  verify the canonicalisation to confirm the tags don’t still show the old versions. Otherwise, multiple URLs for the same things could prevent pages from showing up in search results.

Update marketing channels

When auditing your website, it should include analysing your offsite assets.

Owned assets include things like Google Business pages and social media accounts. Any profiles or listings in online business directories need updating when launching your new website too.

Likewise,  if your business has a Facebook, X, or LinkedIn account, then you should update them with direct links to the new website.

It’s also essential to  make sure your marketing campaigns involve the new website and not the old one – this includes ads, emails, affiliate links, and PPC.

Third-party asses are important to track too, like external links You’ll need to ask site owners to update their links to your site. This can take too long for every link so prioritise the ones with the most authority.

Don’t move everything at once

Site crawls should reveal the top-performing pages, from visitor volume to money making. Focus on these first on your new website and work on improving the pages that don’t perform as well.

A good SEO migration checklist should involve working bit by bit until the final step is complete and you’re ready to launch.

Some websites might have such a large amount of content that migrating it all in time for the planned launch date might not be possible.

If this applies to your website,  temporarily using 302 redirects can help if you do go live before migrating all the content, but it’s best to complete the migration before going live. 

Just  don’t rush to get everything done at once so you can go live faster. And don’t launch as soon as possible just because the site is ready – because chances are, you’ll regret it. 

Migrate at a time that suits your business

Your strategy should also include the best time to complete a migration checklist.

For example, it’s always a bad idea to migrate a site around major holidays. Launching your new site during a peak period can result in bigger losses of traffic and revenue, so it’s best to complete a measured site migration when business is slower.

For example, if your business operates Monday to Friday, your new website should go live on a weekend.

Whenever you work on site migration, make sure the developers and SEO consultants are on hand to help with any problems.

Check for errors

Testing and retesting is essential to catch any mistakes and fix them quickly during site migration.

Crawl your staging site to see if any issues pop up. Once your new site goes live, crawl it again to double-check.

Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools should flag errors too.

Common problems that might show up include:

• Random 500 errors
• Soft 404s
• Misconfigured canonical tags
• XML sitemap issues
• Redirect loops
• Pagination problems

Keep control of your old domain

If you’re moving from an old domain to a new one, you don’t want someone else buying it.

Keep the domain and make sure everything links from the old pages to the new pages. If you lose redirects from the old domain, you’ll also lose the inbound links the old site earned.

You might think you can give up your old domain as soon as search engines stop indexing it. However, you can’t 100% guarantee that links to the old site will point to the new one.

There’s also the risk of brand damage if someone else takes over the old domain. Frauds could pose as your business or someone could post content you don’t approve of which will be associated with your name.

If the old domain is very different from the new one, there’s the option of selling it after enough time passes to reduce the risk of traffic loss.

Add your new site to Google Search Console

Your Google Analytics tools need to be ready to track the new site.

Update your goals and implement the tracking codes on the new site. Then, let Google know about your new website by updating your details on Google Search Console.

This involves verifying a property for the new site, adding XML sitemaps, and submitting a new address for any new domains – encouraging Google to crawl the new site for indexing and flag any errors. 

Bing Webmaster Tools is also useful for highlighting post-migration issues.

Only do all this once the new site is live, but prepare the development team to update the site markup as necessary.

You should know that there’s no going back once you set up Google Search Console, so make sure your site is in the best possible shape by testing beforehand.

Monitor new site traffic and rankings

It’s important to keep checking traffic every day for the first week or so after site migration – if you see initial drops in traffic, it could be because you missed something in the process. 

But, it shouldn’t take more than a month for Google to finish indexing all the pages on the new site. 

You’ll also know something’s wrong if you don’t have as many indexed pages as before.

Comparing post-migration data to the benchmarks from earlier will help to identify any problematic pages – inspect them carefully for link issues and fix errors right away.

Staying on top of site performance helps to track the success of your site migration and address problems before they do too much damage to your rankings.

Enjoy successful website migration

Site migration is often a long and rocky journey. But experiencing the hard-earned success of your strategy and collaborative efforts is worth it.

Growing your business as a result of website migration can be extremely rewarding.You just have to gather a well-prepared team and take the leap.

If you’re still unsure, speak to an SEO professional today to discuss website migration. At Paramount Digital, our expert team can support your site migration and the launching of your brand-new website.