ABC
1
Pre Migration
2
Create a time planAnalyze what day of the week is best to do a migration, depending on traffic.
3
Do a complete crawl of the old websiteUse a web crawler such as Screaming Frog or Xenu. Save the crawl somewhere so you can compare later.
4
Do a PageSpeed Insight test Check every taxonomy and type of page of your website. Homepage, product page, blog post, podcast, etc. Save results somewhere to compare later.
5
Do a redirect map If you are changing the layout or doing a domain migration, carefully craft a redirect map so you know where all your old URLs will lead to.
6
Create a list of currently indexed pages Either use GSC or use Google Search operators to create a list of all your indexed pages to compare later. If the site is too big for that, at least get an approximate number of indexed pages.
7
Create a backupMost important part of your pre-migration. Be sure if anything goes wrong you can bring back the old version of your website.
8
Migration Day
9
Do a complete crawl of the new websiteUse the same tool you used in your pre-migration check.
10
Check for new 404sCheck the number of new 404s.
11
Check pre-planned redirectsCheck if all redirects are working properly
12
Check canonicalsCheck if your pages have self-canonicals and if they aren't keeping the old ones.
13
Check meta tagsMostly check for new nofollow, noindex attributes
14
Check www/non-www redirectsLoad a random URL with the wrong prefix (www.domain.com if your site's canonical address is domain.com or vice-versa) and see if redirects properly.
15
Check http/https redirectsLoad a random URL using http:// and see if redirects properly.
16
Go over most important pages and manually inspect if everything behaves normallyManually browse to see if everything is acting normally.
17
Manually check contact forms/CTAsManually browse and check everything.
18
Do a new Pagespeed Insight test and compareCompare your results with the previous ones. If scores are a lot lower than the pre-migration ones figure out what is slowing them down.
19
Check mobile version layoutManually browse the mobile version of your new website and see if everything is ok.
20
Check sitemapCheck if every page you want indexed is there.
21
Validate robots.txtCheck your robots.txt file in an online validator.
22
Reconnect GSC and GABe sure you have your Search Console and Analytics tool connected and gathering data from day 1.
23
Post Migration (1 week)
24
Check # of indexed pagesCompare the number of indexed URLs you have with the pre-migration check.
25
Check GSC dataSee if you experienced any big drops in organic traffic.
26
Check GA dataSee if there are any anomalities in Analytics data. Be wary of doubled traffic, this may be a sign of having 2 GA properties connected.