WEBSITE MIGRATION SEO CHECKLIST

Download Stella Rising's SEO Migration
& Website Launch Checklist

Is your brand thinking about website migration or launching a new website? Download our website migration checklist today to make sure you don't miss a step and cost your brand big.

You'll Learn:

  • What you need to do before even starting the site design or migration
  • What SEO migration steps to take once you have your new site in place
  • What to do with your old URLs (including for other marketing channels)
  • How to leverage keywords in your content 

Not sure you're ready to take it on yourself? Connect with us for more cutting-edge insights on how we can turn your brand into a superstar.

Stella Rising is the leading media and marketing agency for rising star brands.

 

Checklist Preview:

The following outlines the services and deliverables that should be addressed over the course of 3 months:
PHASE 1
Use ScreamingFrog or other crawler to create a full scan of current site(s), identify URLs to 301 redirect, and record page-load times
Full export of all backlinked pages - Use Google Search Console or other backlink index tool
Ensure your team has access to Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Use Google Keyword Planner to conduct keyword research to identify terms used for architecture planning and optimizations
Content architecture review, keyword mapping, and content gap analysis
Create recommendations for URL naming and structure for all pages on new site
PHASE 2
301 redirect mapping - a 1-1 list of every URL on your old website, pointing to where it lives on the new site
XML sitemap, HTML sitemap and Robots.txt generation or optimization
Recommendations of Title Tag & Meta templates by page type
Schema markup generation and implementation
Review or generate Open Graph tags and review implementation of sharing buttons
Optimization of 404 page
Canonical tag recommendations
Ensure browser compatibility, accessibility, conforming to HTML standards, mobile, etc.
Check for broken links and minimize use of redirects in new site
Provide paid, social, and other teams with the URL redirect mapping
PHASE 3
Optimization of Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, and Header Tags for new site
Ensure new site crawl-ability, compare page-load times to old site, and ensure there are no unaccounted for issues
Implementation of all tracking pixels (including GA and GSC) & Brightedge integration
Final check of Robots.txt, xml sitemap, and GSC settings (parameter filtering, etc.)
Implement and test redirects
LAUNCH DAY
Notify Google Search Console of site migration and fetch new site
Notify paid and social teams of updated URLS
Use Test Robots.txt to trigger new cache of Robots.txt. Google will use a cached version.
Submit both NEW and OLD XML sitemap to Google Search Console
Closely monitor traffic, rankings, and indexation of new site and make any necessary adjustments

Website Migration Checklist