8 Things to Consider During a Website Migration
Key takeaways
- Website migrations involve overhauling your site’s backend and frontend, including URLs, design, and user experience.
- Before migrating, define clear goals and metrics (e.g., reducing bounce rate, increasing time on site) to measure success.
- Update content and keyword strategies to prevent duplicate content issues and boost search rankings post-migration.
Do you think your website could use more than a new layout, but an entire makeover? Instead of changing your website’s design, an entire website migration will change almost everything about your site, from its URLs to its design layouts and user experience (UX).
Website migrations are a great way to reintroduce your brand to users, but these can be overwhelming and may involve some risks. A website migration is like a game of Jenga with high stakes: You must carefully balance every page and URL redirect without negatively impacting your site on search engines.
In this article, you’ll learn more about website migrations and why you should consider them. We’ll also share an easy step-by-step guide for a seamless migration experience.
What is a website migration?
A website migration is like a digital version of a physical relocation – you’re packing up all of your assets and moving them to (hopefully) a better place. This allows you to make the necessary changes to speed up your site and improve the UX.
During a website migration, you can change your content management system (CMS) from Joomla to WordPress, from HTTP to HTTPS, or entirely rebuild your site from the ground up. Ultimately, a website migration aims to enhance your website’s functionality, user experience, and its ranking in search engines.
Why should you consider migrating your website?
Businesses migrate their websites for a variety of reasons, such as:
- Rebranding or changing their company name
- Switching to a new CMS
- Restructuring the site layout
- Adopting new technologies not supported by the current setup
- Creating a mobile-first experience
- Optimizing for better SEO performance
As businesses evolve, the website that once worked perfectly may no longer meet current needs. A website migration helps you stay aligned with your goals, modernize your online presence, and keep visitors engaged.
The complete website migration checklist
A website migration requires careful planning. Businesses must follow a site migration plan to sustain their SEO rankings and minimize unnecessary errors. Below is our website migration checklist to ensure a seamless website migration.
1. Set goals and metrics before you start
What’s the reason for your site migration? Migrating a significant task. Therefore, ensure to understand your motivations while keeping your eyes on the prize.
Talk to your team and explain why you need a migration. Explain what the website should look like after the migration and set appropriate benchmarks to measure the new site’s performance based on your goals.
For example, you can set goals like “reduce bounce rate on landing pages by 25%” or “Increase time on site by one minute.” These goals will clarify your plan and help you determine whether the migration was a success or not.
2. Consider technical migration
A buggy and slow website doesn’t mean much. Before redesigning your website, talk to your web developers and consider the technical aspects of your website. For example, if you want to create a new name for your business, you’ll require a domain change. You should also think about routing old traffic to the new site.
Here are the technical elements you may need to consider during the migration:
- Migrating to a new CMS and configuring plugins
- Building website architecture and navigation
- Configuring a new domain
- Updating redirect maps for old URLs to new URLs
- Setting up analytics
3. Plan for design and user experience
After you’ve got all the technical parts sorted out, it’s time to turn to your web designers and UX team to revamp your website’s overall look and feel. This is the skin that covers the architecture built by your development team.
What’s good for users is also good for search engines, so ensure to optimize for UX to boost more engagement and better rankings in search engines. In this stage, you must:
- Map the user journey
- Choose design elements like logos, fonts, graphics, and images
- Include clear call to actions on every web page
4. Improve your content and SEO
Now that your site’s structure and design are locked in, it’s time to bring it to life with SEO-optimized content. But be careful—copying and pasting from your old website can trigger duplicate content issues with search engines.
Start by evaluating the quality of your current content. If your brand, audience, or offerings have evolved, your old copy might not fit your new direction.
At this stage, you’ll want to:
- Develop a fresh keyword strategy tailored to the new site
- Integrate target keywords into meta tags, alt text, and headers
- Fine-tune your schema markup
- Add updated internal links for better navigation and SEO
- Build high-quality backlinks from reputable sources
5. Monitor your site’s performance post-migration
Migrating your site is a big milestone—but it’s not the finish line. Even the smoothest transitions can leave behind a few hiccups. That’s why a solid post-migration checklist is essential to ensure everything runs right on your new site.
Here’s what to focus on:
- Navigate the site like a visitor would and flag any confusing or clunky spots
- Review all content—especially key pages like your homepage—for typos or formatting issues
- Set up 301 redirects for any links that slipped through the cracks during the move
Additional tips during a migration
There are important things to consider during the migration process, including:
Maintaining URL structure
Keeping the same URL structure during a website migration is essential, as search engines and users are already familiar with your existing links. And if these links no longer exist, you risk losing rankings, backlinks, and traffic. It’s necessary to restructure your URLs only if they provide clear benefits like improving user navigation.
Implementing 301 redirects
301 redirects ensure that any user visiting an outdated URL is automatically redirected to the new one, which also retains most of the SEO value. Without redirects, your visitors may encounter 404 errors, which can result in a poor user experience and send negative signals to search engines, indicating that your site is unreliable.
Content pruning
A migration is the perfect chance to audit and prune outdated or less valuable content. Removing this unoptimized content or re-optimizing these pages will improve the overall quality of your site, which positively signals to search engines that your site is reliable and worth ranking higher.
Pros and cons of website migration
Before we get into the conclusion, let’s look at the benefits and potential downsides to minimize your risks.
Pros
- Improved User Experience (UX): A fresh design, faster load times, and streamlined navigation to keep visitors engaged.
- Better Technology & Flexibility: Switching to a modern CMS offers you access to new tools, plugins, and integrations.
- Brand Refresh: A migration often aligns with rebranding, helping you modernize your digital presence and appeal to today’s audience.
- Long-Term Growth: When executed correctly, migrations establish a stronger foundation for scaling content, e-commerce, or global traffic.
Cons and risk
- SEO Ranking Loss: If redirects aren’t properly set up, you risk losing existing rankings, backlinks, and organic traffic.
- Temporary Traffic Drops: Even well-executed migrations can cause short-term visibility fluctuations while search engines re-crawl your site.
- Performance Issues: New hosting or plugins may slow down your site if not optimized.
- Content Loss or Duplication: Migrating without a content audit can lead to outdated, duplicate, or missing pages.
- Complexity & Costs: Website migrations require coordination between developers, designers, SEO specialists, and content teams—making them resource-heavy.
How to minimize risk during migration
- Always run your migration in a staging environment before going live.
- Tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs can help crawl your site both before and after migration.
- Submit updated XML sitemaps to Google Search Console right after the migration.
- Keep track of KPIs daily after launch (traffic, rankings, conversions).
Conclusion – Revamp your site with a website migration
Successfully migrating a website takes thoughtful planning and precise execution. With the right approach and tools, a migration can boost your search visibility, improve SEO performance, and elevate the overall user experience. Use our website migration checklist to guide your move.
It still sounds like a lot, right? You’re moving to a new site to grow your brand, but juggling content creation, SEO authority, and rankings is no small feat. That’s where SDB Agency comes in. Our close-knit team of UX and SEO professionals handles strategy, content production, and performance tracking, allowing you to confidently launch your new site and see results faster.
Need help improving your SaaS site or product? Get in touch! We can help.
Over 10 years of experience in SaaS UX design, built 150 projects, owns two SaaS businesses in the iGaming space, and is passionate about tennis & books.
