---
title: "SEO migration checklist — move a website without losing rankings"
description: "Inventory, 301 redirect mapping, metadata preservation, launch-day verification and post-launch monitoring for an SEO-safe website migration."
canonical: https://sitejump.dev/knowledge/seo-migration-checklist
lang: en
lastmod: 2026-08-14
---
# SEO migration checklist

Everything to check before, during and after moving a website to a new platform, so the rankings you already earned survive the move. Each check is shown as: by hand vs. what Sitejump does for you.

## 1. Before you move: freeze what you already have

| Check | By hand | Sitejump |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Full URL inventory incl. paginated and language variants | Crawler licence, run and export | Crawled and listed in the free audit |
| Title, meta description, canonical, robots per URL | Export and clean up by hand | Captured page by page |
| Images, PDFs and linked downloads | Second crawl pass | Asset list extracted with the pages |
| Language / region versions | Read hreflang URL by URL | Locales detected and listed |
| Structured data already published | Spot-check in rich results test | Existing schema recorded per page |
| Ranking baseline (top pages, queries, clicks) | Export from Search Console | Stays yours — your Search Console |

## 2. Map every old URL to a new one

| Check | By hand | Sitejump |
| --- | --- | --- |
| One 301 destination per old URL | Spreadsheet built row by row | Redirect map generated for every captured page |
| Merged and split pages | Manual judgement per page | Proposed mapping you can edit |
| Retired pages: nearest parent or 410 | Easy to forget | Flagged as unmapped |
| Trailing-slash and case rules | Find-and-replace | Normalised across the map |
| Redirect config your host reads | Hand-written per platform | CSV plus ready-to-drop config |

## 3. Carry the on-page signals across

| Check | By hand | Sitejump |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Titles and meta descriptions reused | Copy-paste per page | Handed to the rebuild as real values |
| One H1 and same heading hierarchy | Rebuild by eye | Heading structure captured per page |
| Image alt text and filenames | Re-upload and retype | Images and alt text extracted together |
| Structured data on the new URLs | Rewrite JSON-LD by hand | Old schema supplied to the rebuild |
| Canonicals and hreflang return tags | Template work | Specified in the rebuild brief |
| robots.txt, sitemap.xml, no staging noindex | Manual review | Checked by the launch verifier |

## 4. Launch day checks

| Check | By hand | Sitejump |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Single-hop 301s on top URLs | Click through a sample | Verifier tests old URLs against the live domain |
| No redirect chains or loops | Manual tracing | Reported by the verifier |
| New pages 200, not blocked or noindexed | Per-page inspection | Checked against the live site |
| One canonical host (HTTPS, www) | Host and DNS config | Flagged if wrong; fix is in your host |
| Sitemap submitted | Submit and confirm | Your Search Console |
| Analytics and tags firing | Test in the new project | Your analytics setup |

## 5. The first weeks after launch

| Check | By hand | Sitejump |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Coverage errors and new 404s | Watch Search Console weekly | Your Search Console; re-run the verifier any time |
| Clicks and impressions vs. baseline | Manual comparison | Your Search Console data |
| Missing metadata, unmapped URLs, thin schema | Another full crawl and audit | SEO & GEO report with improvements |
| Redirects kept permanently | Remember not to delete them | Redirect config lives in your project |
| Periodic re-crawl for broken links | Repeat crawl each month | Re-run a free audit whenever you want |

## Next step

Step one is a crawl of your live site. Run the free audit at https://sitejump.dev/ — it returns the URL inventory, metadata and SEO report before you pay anything.