SEO migration checklist: move house without losing your mail
Changing your domain, platform or URL structure is like moving house: Google and every link on the web have your old address, and without a forwarding address the visitors stop arriving. This checklist follows Google's site move guide in the order we'd do the work, and ends with what to do if the move has already gone wrong.
Prepared by the Boltly team · about 13 minutes to read
InventoryOld address to new address
- /product.php?id=118301/hot-water/heat-pump-270l/
- http://example.com.au/contact301https://example.com.au/contact/
- /our-services.html301/services/
- /winter-sale-2019/410retired, not sent to the home page
One hopOld URL goes straight to its final address.
Like for likeEach page goes to its closest match.
Keep itRedirects stay for a year or more.
Change of Address request in Search Console?
- New domain or subdomainYes
- http to httpsNo
- www to non-wwwNo
- New paths, same domainNo
Example addresses for illustration only. Change of Address rules from Google's site move guide.
What an SEO migration is
An SEO migration is any change that moves pages to new URLs, done in a way that lets Google and your visitors find each page at its new address. Moving from http to https counts. So does a new domain name, merging two sites, or a new platform that writes its URLs differently. The core of the job is a URL map and permanent redirects that follow it.
A redesign that keeps every URL is lower risk but still needs a check: if the new design drops paragraphs, headings or whole pages, the words that earned those rankings go with them. A hosting change with no URL changes is lower risk again, and Google has a separate guide for it.
What goes wrong is rarely mysterious. Pages move without a redirect, redirects point at the wrong page, the staging site's block on search engines goes live with the new site, or someone sends hundreds of old pages to the home page. Every one is preventable with a list and an afternoon of testing.
http to https
Same domain, new protocol. Redirect every http URL to its https twin. No Change of Address request needed.
New domain
Every URL changes at once. Redirect page to page and submit a Change of Address in Search Console.
New platform
Moving to Shopify or WordPress usually changes URL patterns for products, categories and posts. Map every one.
Restructure
New folders or cleaner paths on the same domain. Redirect each old path; no Change of Address request.
Merge sites
Two sites become one. Redirect each page to its closest equivalent, never the whole old site to one page.
New hosting
Same URLs, new server. Lowest risk; check speed, robots.txt and server capacity once it's live.
Source: Google Search Central, "How to move a site", last updated 20 August 2026, read 4 October 2026.
Twenty checks, in the order you'll need them
Twenty jobs in four stages, each with a clear finish. Don't start a stage until the one before it is done.
Stage 1Before you build
- Record a baseline: Search Console clicks and impressions by page for the last 12 months, plus Analytics conversions, so seasonal swings don't fool you later.
- List every old URL. Use your sitemap, Search Console's top pages and Links report, your CMS export and a crawl. Include images and PDFs that get traffic.
- Decide what changes. Google recommends changing one thing at a time: domain first, then design, not both in one launch.
- Pick a quiet week: Google suggests a seasonal or weekday dip, so fewer customers meet teething problems.
- If you bought a used domain, check Search Console for old manual actions and leftover URL removals.
Stage 2On staging
- Build the URL map: each old URL beside its closest new match. Pages you're dropping should return 404 or 410, not a redirect to the home page.
- Carry over page titles, headings and body copy for pages that rank. Change wording only where you have a reason.
- Give every new URL a self-referencing canonical tag, and update hreflang if you have country or language versions.
- Point internal links straight at the new URLs rather than relying on redirects.
- Write the robots.txt the live site will use, and list every page carrying a staging noindex tag so you can remove them.
- Verify the new site in Search Console, including www and non-www, and carry over the verification file or tag.
Stage 3Launch day
- Switch on server-side permanent redirects (301 or 308) from every old URL to its mapped new URL.
- Remove the staging block: robots.txt disallow rules and noindex tags.
- Test the redirects: a sample by hand with Search Console's URL Inspection tool, then the full list with a crawler.
- For a domain change, submit a Change of Address from the old property, covering every verified variant of the old domain.
- Submit the new sitemap in Search Console, and keep the old one on hand to watch it drain.
Stage 4The weeks after
- Watch Search Console daily for a fortnight: Page indexing errors, "Not found" spikes and the two sitemaps.
- Update the links you control: Google Business Profile, social profiles, email signatures and ad campaigns.
- Ask the sites that send you the most visitors to update their links to the new URLs.
- Leave the redirects in place for at least a year. We'd keep them for good.
Getting the redirects right
Use permanent server-side redirects, one hop each, to the closest matching page.
Permanent, server side, and direct
Google recommends server-side permanent redirects, such as 301 or 308, from each old URL to its new one. It says 301s and other permanent redirects don't lose PageRank. On Apache hosting that usually means rules in the .htaccess file.
Keep each redirect to one hop. Googlebot follows up to ten redirects in a chain, but Google advises going straight to the final address, or three hops at most if a chain can't be avoided. Chains build up when a site has moved before, so check old redirects as well as new ones.
Where the redirect should go
- Page still existsRedirect to the same page at its new URL.
- Pages mergedRedirect each old page to the combined page.
- Product discontinuedRedirect to the closest replacement if one exists, otherwise return 404 or 410.
- Anything to the home pageGoogle says many old URLs sent to one irrelevant page can be treated as soft 404s.
How long redirects should stay
Google's site move guide says to keep redirects as long as possible, generally at least a year, so it can recrawl the old URLs and reassign the links other sites point at them. For visitors, it suggests keeping them indefinitely, and we agree. Old URLs live on in bookmarks, printed flyers, directory listings and posts from years ago, and a redirect costs nothing to keep.
The Change of Address tool
Search Console's Change of Address tool is only for moving from one domain or subdomain to another, such as example.com.au to example.au. Google says you don't need it for http to https, www changes or new paths on the same domain. When you do use it, submit it for every verified variant of the old domain, including the www version, even ones you don't use.
Source: Google Search Central, "How to move a site" (updated 20 August 2026) and "Redirects and Google Search" (updated 14 April 2026), both read 4 October 2026.
The mistakes Google sees most often
These six come from the troubleshooting list at the end of Google's site move guide, each with the check that catches it.
The staging block goes live
A robots.txt disallow or noindex tag used during development stays on after launch, and pages quietly drop out. Check: open the live robots.txt and inspect three key pages with URL Inspection on launch day.
Redirects to pages that don't exist
Google says it often sees redirects pointing at wrong or missing URLs on the new site. Check: crawl the full list of old URLs and confirm each one ends on a page that returns 200.
A spike in crawl errors
A rise in "Not found" or server errors in the Page indexing report usually means a group of URLs was missed.
Server can't keep up
Google crawls a moved site harder than usual for a while. Warn your host before a large move.
Old URLs in the sitemap
The new sitemap should list new URLs only. Leaving old addresses in it sends Google mixed signals and wastes crawling.
Everything changed at once
New domain, new platform and new design on the same day makes it impossible to tell what caused a drop. Google suggests one change at a time.
How long it takes, and what to watch
Google gives no fixed timetable. Its guide says a small or medium site can take a few weeks for most pages to move in its index, and larger sites take longer. Rankings may wobble while Google recrawls, and Google calls that normal.
For a move to be complete, Googlebot has to visit every URL on both the old and new site at least once. How quickly that happens depends on how many URLs you have and how fast your server responds. Submitting the new sitemap helps it find them sooner.
Domain changes are the slow case. A Search Engine Journal analysis of 892 domain migrations, published in January 2025, estimated an average of around 523 days for a new domain to match the old one's traffic. It relied on third-party traffic estimates, so read it as a reason for caution, not a forecast.
If traffic is still well below the baseline after a couple of months, look for causes: missed redirects, pages that lost their content in the redesign, or a crawl block. Our guide to SEO reports explains how to compare periods fairly.
The watch listSearch Console, first month
- SitemapsIndexed pages from the old sitemap fall towards zero while the new sitemap rises. Redirect warnings on the old one are expected.
- Page indexingOld site's indexed count drops, new site's climbs. Look for unexpected errors.
- PerformanceNew URLs start earning impressions and clicks as they're indexed.
- Server logsGooglebot crawling the new URLs, and no unexpected error codes.
- AnalyticsReal-time and daily visits shift from old pages to new ones.
Google's minimum for keeping site-move redirects in place.
Google Search Central, "How to move a site", 20 Aug 2026The most redirects in a chain Googlebot will follow. Google advises one, or three at most.
Google Search Central, "How to move a site", 20 Aug 2026Average time for a new domain to match old traffic across 892 domain moves (third-party estimates, indicative).
Search Engine Journal, January 2025
Choosing when to move, and when to get help
Pick a lull in your own traffic, as Google suggests, and check Google's Search Status Dashboard before you set a date.
Google released core updates in March and May 2026 and spam updates in March, June, August and September 2026. If a ranking update lands the same week as your migration, you can't tell which one moved your traffic. Moving a week or two after an update finishes rolling out makes the before and after easier to read.
For an Australian retailer, the quiet weeks are rarely late November or December, so a store planning a platform move in spring is usually better off waiting until the new year. A tradie whose phone rings hardest in winter might move in late summer.
Do it yourself if
- The site has fewer than a hundred pages, you can export every URL, and someone on your team can run a crawler and read Search Console.
- You're moving to https or tidying a few paths on the same domain.
Bring in help if
- You're changing domain and platform, or merging sites.
- The store has thousands of product and filter URLs.
- Search brings in most of your enquiries and a bad month would hurt.
Our SEO migration service builds the URL map, tests redirects on staging and watches Search Console after launch. If the platform is part of the move, the Shopify SEO and WordPress SEO pages cover platform quirks, and the technical SEO guide covers crawling and canonicals.
Update dates from Google's Search Status Dashboard ranking history, as recorded 4 October 2026.
The new site is live and the enquiries have stopped
Work this short list in order. Most people find a migration guide after the damage, usually when a web designer launched a new site and nobody mentioned SEO.
First hour: rule out the switch that turns everything off
Open yoursite/robots.txt and look for a "Disallow: /" line. Run URL Inspection on the home page and two service pages and read whether indexing is allowed. In WordPress, check that "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" under Settings, Reading is unticked. It's the quickest fix and the most common reason everything drops at once.
Nobody kept a list of the old addresses
You can rebuild most of it. In Search Console's Performance report, set the date range to the months before launch and export the Pages tab; those are the URLs that earned clicks. Add the top linked pages from the Links report and landing pages from Analytics. If the old site is gone, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine often holds copies of its pages. Test every old URL, and redirect the ones that now return "not found" to their closest new page.
The designer rewrote or dropped the pages that ranked
Compare each top old page with its replacement: the title, the main heading and the sections that answered what people searched for. If a service page lost its prices, its process or its suburb detail in the name of a cleaner design, put that content back.
The move changed platforms and every product address changed
Hosted platforms set their own patterns, so a store moving to Shopify ends up with /products/ and /collections/ addresses whatever it had before. Map old product and category URLs to the new ones in bulk from the two exports, then add them through the platform's redirect tool. Prioritise the products and categories that had clicks in Search Console.
Then measure from the baseline. If traffic is still well short after a couple of months and none of these explains it, our SEO migration service can dig further.
Site migrations, answered
What is an SEO migration?
It's moving pages to new URLs, such as a new domain, platform or https, while redirecting each old address to its new one so Google and visitors can follow. The URL map and permanent redirects do most of the work; testing and monitoring catch what slips through.
How long does a site migration take to settle in Google?
Google says a small or medium site can take a few weeks for most pages to move in its index, longer for larger sites. Domain changes are slower: a Search Engine Journal study of 892 domain moves (January 2025) estimated about 523 days on average to match old traffic.
Do 301 redirects hurt SEO?
No. Google's site move guide states that 301 and other permanent redirects don't cause a loss of PageRank. What hurts is redirecting to the wrong page, building long chains, or sending many old pages to the home page.
When do I use the Change of Address tool in Search Console?
Only when moving from one domain or subdomain to another, such as example.com.au to example.au. Submit it from the old property for every verified variant of the old domain.
Can I change my domain without losing SEO?
You can keep most of what you've built if every page is redirected to its match, internal links are updated and the Change of Address is submitted, but nobody can promise zero loss. Expect a period of fluctuation and plan the move for a quiet stretch of your year.
Should I redirect deleted pages to the home page?
No. Google warns that redirecting many old URLs to one irrelevant page, like the home page, can be treated as a soft 404. Send each page to its closest equivalent, or let it return a 404 or 410 if nothing similar exists.
How do I do 301 redirects in WordPress or Shopify?
Shopify has a built-in URL redirects list in the admin, and you can import redirects in bulk from a spreadsheet. WordPress only redirects posts whose slug you've edited, so for a migration most sites use a redirect plugin or add rules to the server configuration. Either way, test a sample after launch.
Google's autocomplete suggested "seo migration checklist", "how long does site migration take", "do 301 redirects hurt seo", "change of address search console" and "change domain without losing seo" when we searched from Australia on 4 October 2026.
Planning a move?
Send us your current site and the date you have in mind. Our free audit will flag the URLs most at risk.