Complete Site Migration Checklist 2025: Everything You Need to Know

A site migration can be a complicated process that touches everything from technical SEO to user experience. Every change can impact your site’s performance, so handling each step with care is essential to prevent negative outcomes.

There’s quite a bit of prep work you need to do to migrate a website, and it is crucial for a smooth transition. Creating a website migration checklist will help make sure you don't miss any steps.

Our site migration checklist provides a broad overview of each phase needed to migrate a site, helping ensure you preserve your site's performance and visibility. Here are some of the key tasks you need to complete for a successful website migration, whether you’re switching hosts, domains, or CMS platforms.

Pre-migration checklist

Before touching your site, take a snapshot of its current state first. Proper documentation ensures that you don't lose anything during the migration.

1. Take content inventory

Start with a content inventory. Capture every URL, all your metadata, and images. You'll need these assets to create a redirect strategy. Every URL needs to map to its new page under the new URL structure, and a 301 redirect ensures your site maintains its domain authority and delivers a seamless user experience.

2. Establish technical benchmarks

You'll also want to establish technical benchmarks. Use analytical tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console to gauge the existing page speed, crawlability, indexing, and SEO rankings. These metrics will act as comparison points after the new site is live.

3. Back up your current site first

Finally, don't forget to back up your current site. If something goes wrong, you can go back to the original site for troubleshooting. You may also want to consider using a staging environment. This will provide a place to test your site before publishing and going live.

Mid-migration checklist

All technical details for your site need to be thoroughly checked to ensure there are no errors when the new site launches. Every structural element — from the sitemap to internal linking — should remain consistent. This will help users and search engines navigate the new site.

1. You can use your content inventory to check redirect links, ensuring that every old URL is mapped to the new site.
2. You'll also want to validate your server and DNS configurations.
3. Verifying the SSL certificate is another crucial step for maintaining standard security protocols.
4. While technical details make up most of the key details of a site migration, you'll also want to look at the site design. Your old site might have been responsive across devices, but a site migration may cause issues.
5. You'll want to test device optimization and loading speeds before launching your site to ensure everything works as intended.

Post-migration checklist

Once the new site is live, you'll want to take a thorough look around to make sure everything is working.

Running a site crawl helps evaluate results against your original data. It’s normal to find a few surprises: a missing redirect here, a broken link there, perhaps a couple of old pages that somehow skipped the move to the new site. Catching these early allows you to correct them before search engines or users notice.

Pay attention to backlinks. Some may still target outdated URLs. Reclaiming these backlinks will preserve referral traffic and domain authority.

You'll want to monitor performance, SEO rankings, and user behavior for several weeks after the migration. Then, compare them to the benchmarks that you recorded for your old site. Concerning metrics may raise red flags that something needs fixing or fine-tuning.

Common issues in website migrations

Website migration needs careful planning to minimize risks. A lot of things could go wrong if your site ends up broken. Here are a few common issues you may encounter while migrating sites:

• Traffic loss: You may see a drop in traffic, but you should generally recover within a short period. Anything longer than that may indicate incorrect configurations.
• Data loss: Incomplete backups can result in data loss. Back up and track all your content, including metadata.
• Indexing issues: Search engines may fail to crawl a new site if sitemaps or tags aren't updated.
• Loss of domain authority: Changing domains without proper redirects can reduce your SEO rankings.
• Poor user experience: Sites that are difficult to navigate may see poor user engagement and high bounce rates.
• Broken links: Old links leading to dead ends can confuse users and search engines.

What is website migration?

Website migration is the process of changing a website and can cover quite a few processes. Some examples include:

• Host to host: Switching web hosting providers.
• WordPress: Changing the hosting provider of a WordPress site.
• SSL certification: Moving from HTTP to HTTPS requires obtaining an SSL certificate.
• Domain: Replacing a domain name with a new one.
• CMS: Transferring from one content management system (CMS) to a different provider.

Other migrations may involve changing a website’s architecture or design. In most cases, it’s crucial to plan SEO migration to avoid losing search traffic.

Website migration can offer a range of benefits, including improved performance, enhanced user experience, and stronger security.

Web hosts with free migration

A website migration can be intimidating, so it's helpful to use a hosting service that offers free migration tools. Hosting providers like GoDaddy, Hostinger, and DreamHost, for example, offer free migration services to help you move your site to a different provider.

FAQs

Bottom line

Site migration is a multi-step process. Using a site migration checklist can prevent issues such as traffic loss, broken links, and a drop in SEO rankings, and help ensure a successful site migration.

The goal during the transition is to preserve your site's performance. This involves careful planning, thorough site crawling, redirects, and usability testing.

In addition, finding a web hosting provider that offers free migration tools can make the process a lot simpler. We recommend Hostinger because it’s user-friendly, offers the best value on shared hosting plans, and provides migration assistance for WordPress and other content management systems.