Search and AI Visibility Updated
How do you protect SEO during a website migration?
The short answer
List every current URL, redirect each one to its closest new page, keep titles and content that already rank, and test everything before launch. After launch, watch Search Console daily for errors.
Key points
- Crawl and save every current URL before you start.
- Map old URLs to new URLs with permanent redirects.
- Keep page content, titles, and structured data that work.
- Test redirects and links on a staging site.
- Submit the new sitemap and watch for errors after launch.
Official references
Before launch
- 01Crawl the current site and export all URLs.
- 02Pull top pages from Search Console and Analytics.
- 03Build a redirect map for every old URL.
- 04Copy titles, descriptions, and schema to the new pages.
- 05Block the staging site from search engines.
After launch
- 01Remove any block that stops search engines from crawling.
- 02Test a sample of old URLs to confirm redirects work.
- 03Submit the new sitemap.
- 04Check Search Console for errors daily for the first weeks.
- 05Fix broken links and redirect chains.
From our team
How Proven ROI helps
Proven ROI plans and runs website migrations with full redirect maps, launch checklists, and post launch monitoring.
Talk to a real personCommon follow up questions
- Will traffic drop after a migration?
- Traffic may fluctuate while search engines process the move. Investigate redirects, indexing, lost content, tracking changes and demand before attributing a decline to one cause.