Website Rebuild SEO Migration Checklist

The short answer

Build the Redirect Map

Do not leave it for launch week. Inventory the current site, decide which URLs stay, merge or retire, then use that list as an acceptance test for the rebuilt site.

Define the Rebuild Scope

If the public URLs stay the same, this is primarily a rebuild or infrastructure change. If the domain, protocol or URL paths change, Google treats it as a site move with URL changes. The second case needs explicit old-to-new mapping and redirects.

Avoid combining every possible change at once. A new domain, new CMS, new architecture, rewritten copy and new analytics setup create too many variables to diagnose cleanly.

Build One URL Inventory

No single export is complete. Combine URLs from:

• the current CMS and database;
• XML sitemaps;
• a full rendered crawl;
• Search Console landing pages;
• analytics landing pages;
• pages receiving external links;
• server logs where available.

Then record the current evidence and the migration decision.

Google advises against redirecting many unrelated old URLs to one irrelevant destination such as the homepage. A redirect should lead to the closest useful replacement.

Staging acceptance checks

Staging should be access-controlled and protected from indexing, but the release process must explicitly remove temporary controls. A copied noindex directive is one of the easiest ways to launch an invisible site.

A launch runbook with owners

1. T−7
   Freeze the mapping

   Approve redirects, canonicals, sitemap URLs and the list of high-value acceptance checks.

2. T−1
   Capture the final baseline

   Crawl production, export Search Console pages and preserve analytics annotations.

3. Live
   Release the controls together

   Deploy redirects, remove temporary noindex rules, publish the new sitemap and verify priority journeys.

4. +1
   Crawl production again

   Compare the old inventory against status, destination, canonical and index directive.

5. +7
   Review early signals

   Check crawl errors, sitemap processing, indexed destinations and page-level search movement.

What to measure after launch

Traffic alone is too blunt. Watch the migration at URL and template level.

Isolate Migration Effects

Annotate the exact launch time. If major content, navigation or offer changes also ship, record them separately. This does not eliminate uncertainty, but it stops every post-launch movement being blamed on “the migration.”

Launch rule

Test Every Valuable URL

The inventory is both the plan and the acceptance suite. Launch only when priority mappings, production controls, ownership and rollback decisions are explicit.

See migration-aware website delivery

Primary sources

1. Google Search Central: site moves and migrationsdevelopers.google.com
2. Google Search Central: redirects and Google Searchdevelopers.google.com
3. Google Search Central: controlling indexing with noindexdevelopers.google.com