Websites don’t usually “break” in one dramatic moment. They bleed out slowly.
Traffic dips, leads stop converting, someone notices rankings slipped, and then everyone remembers, oh right, we migrated the site last month. 

That’s why we decided to create a comprehensive website migration checklist. A lot of things can go wrong whenever any company or individual decide to undertake a website migration. 

Before we get into phases and steps, one thing upfront: migration is never just “moving files.” It’s SEO, UX, infrastructure, data, and business risk bundled into one project. Miss one part and the whole thing wobbles.  

This website migration checklist is meant to stop that wobble by arming you with must- know information before moving.

What are Different Kinds of Migrations 

Not every website migration checklist looks the same. The risk, effort, and fallout depend heavily on what you’re changing. Some website migration can be quite simple and other quite simple. 

Let’s discuss some of the major and minor reasons why businesses undertake migrations.

Change in Underlying Tech like Switching from Magento to Shopify Plus, or Shopware

There are plenty of reasons why businesses want to switch from Magento to Shopify, Shopware, a custom PHP site, or any other platform. 

Each platform comes with brand new backend logic, new data models, new templates, URLs structure, and more often than people admit.  

These custom PHP eCommerce development services usually promise better speed, easier management, or total lower cost, and they deliver, but only after the dust settles. SEO and data handling need extra attention here.

Switch from sub directories to sub domain 

/blog becomes blog.example.com looks harmless on paper. However, it basically looks like a new site to Google. Link equity, crawling behavior, and internal linking all of it changes.  

This type of move needs discipline and a comprehensive website migration check list with taking any shortcuts.

Domain migration

Rebrands, mergers, legal issues, updated Google policies, or just a better name could be one of the many reasons for Domain Migration. 

This is where businesses lose years of authority if redirects and tracking aren’t airtight. Domain migrations demand patience and precision, not speed.

Phase By Phase Website Migration Checklist

We have created 7–phase website migration checklists that any company, SEO executive, or business owners want to know everything before moving.

Phase 1: Pre Website Migration Planning & Strategy 

This phase might not feel productive, engaging or visible output, but believe us its important.

Define scope and objective of migration 

Why are you moving? Faster site? Lower costs? Rebrand? Better conversions? Diping Traffic? 
If the answer is vague, stop. A migration without a clear goal turns into uncontrolled change. Also, depending on the complexity, it can be months to year-long project. 

Conduct site audit & record findings 

One of the most important elements of our website migration checklists is conducting site audit. We recommend crawling the site, exporting URLs, backlinks, traffic drivers, templates, and recording edge cases.
This audit becomes your “before” picture. Without it, you won’t know what you lost. 

Choose migration strategy 

There isn’t one right way. Common strategies include: 

• Like-for-like migration – keep URLs, content, structure the same. Lowest SEO risk. 

• Phased migration – move sections gradually. Good for very large sites. 

• Big bang migration – everything at once. Faster, riskier, needs strong prep. 

Pick one intentionally. Don’t drift into it. 

Create secure backups of site 

Create & store backups somewhere outside the server you’re migrating from. If rollback isn’t possible, you’re gambling. This part of the website migration checklist is boring. It’s also non-negotiable. 

Make sure to backup 

• Files (code, images, media) 

• Databases  

• Media  

• Emails 

• Redirect rules (301s/404s) 

• Backlinks 

• Metadata 

• Traffic Stats

Phase 2: Website Migration Execution Preparation

As a leading PHP development company, we firmly believe preparation is where you remove unknowns. If something breaks later, this preparation phase usually helps you avoid it.

Host and server setup 

Before anything is moved, the new hosting environment needs to be able to handle the site as it exists today, not as you hope it will exist later. 

That means matching (or improving) critical specs like PHP version, database engine, memory limits, caching layers, and server response times. A surprising number of post-migration bugs come from tiny mismatches here. A plugin that worked perfectly before suddenly fails. Admin dashboards feel slow. Background jobs stop running. 

Don’t assume newer hosting automatically means better hosting. Compare configurations side by side. If the old site ran on PHP 8.0 with specific extensions, the new server needs the same, or you need a clear plan to change it safely. 

This is also the right moment to decide whether you’re adding a CDN, changing cache logic, or upgrading infrastructure. Do it now, not during launch week. 

Create staging environment 

Never migrate straight to production.  

A staging environment gives you a safe place to break things, and you will break things. URLs won’t map correctly the first time. Images will load from old paths. Forms will submit nowhere. That’s normal. 

What matters is that users and search engines never see those mistakes. 

Your staging site should be blocked from indexing, ideally behind authentication and noindex directives. It should be as close to the live environment as possible so testing actually means something. If staging behaves differently from production, it’s false confidence. 

Treat staging as the rehearsal, not a demo. 

URL mapping and redirects 

This is where SEO equity is either preserved or quietly thrown away. 

Every existing URL on the old site needs a clear destination on the new site. Not “close enough.” Not “homepage instead.” The most relevant equivalent page possible. This includes blog posts, product pages, PDFs, and even legacy URLs you think nobody uses anymore. 

Mass redirects to the homepage are one of the most damaging mistakes businesses make. They break user expectations and bleed ranking signals. Redirect chains are almost as bad, they slow crawling and dilute authority. 

Build a URL mapping document. Old URL in one column, new URL in the other. Review it manually. This is slow work, yes, but it’s also one of the highest-impact steps in the entire Website Migration Checklist. 

SSL certificate setup 

HTTPS is not a “later” task. 

Your SSL certificate must be installed, validated, and tested before launch. Mixed content errors, insecure asset loading, or broken redirects from HTTP to HTTPS can destroy trust instantly — for users and for browsers. 

Test the site with HTTPS enforced. Check that every internal asset loads securely. Confirm that old HTTP URLs redirect cleanly to HTTPS equivalents in a single step. 

Security warnings are one of the fastest ways to make a new site feel broken, even if everything else works.

Phase 3: Data Migration & Content Transfer

This is where the real weight of the migration shows up.
Design is easy compared to data. 

Data migration 

Data migration isn’t just “export and import.” 

Products, users, orders, blog posts, categories, tags, custom fields, they all need to arrive intact, connected, and usable. Counts should match. Relationships should hold. Dates, authors, and metadata should remain consistent. 

Never trust a migration tool’s success message alone. Always verify, spot-check random records, compare totals, look for edge cases like unpublished posts, draft content, or archived items. 

If data is wrong, everything downstream breaks — reporting, SEO, analytics, and trust. 

File transfer 

Images and files are easy to underestimate and painful to fix later. 

Broken image paths don’t always show up immediately. PDFs linked deep in old blog posts might silently return 404s. Downloadable assets might still exist on the old server but nowhere else. 

Create a complete inventory of media assets and verify they load correctly on the new site. This includes images embedded in content, not just the media library. 

Broken media rarely triggers alerts. Users just see a site that feels sloppy. 

CMS-specific migrations 

Every CMS has quirks, and migrations amplify them. 

WordPress might handle content well but struggle with serialized data. Shopify migrations often trip over product variants and URLs. Magento moves can break layered navigation and filters. 

Plugins and extensions deserve special attention. Some won’t behave the same way in a new environment. Others shouldn’t be migrated at all. 

Test critical flows carefully — forms, checkout, search, account creation. These are revenue and lead paths, not cosmetic features.

Phase 4: Functionality Testing 

If you skip this phase, users will do it for you. Publicly. 

Data integrity verification 

Don’t just check templates. Check real pages. 

Open random blog posts. Compare them against the old site. Look for missing paragraphs, broken formatting, wrong headings, or missing embeds. Do the same with products, categories, and landing pages. 

Migration errors often hide in places nobody thought to check — until rankings or conversions dip. 

Cross browser testing 

Chrome alone is not enough. 

Test Safari, Firefox, Edge, and mobile browsers. Mobile Safari in particular loves to expose layout and interaction bugs that don’t appear anywhere else. 

If a form breaks on one browser, it still breaks. 

Performance testing 

Measure performance before and after migration. Not just “feels faster,” but real metrics. 

Core Web Vitals, server response time, and page load behavior matter for SEO and conversions. If the new site is slower, even slightly, rankings can slide and users will bounce. 

Performance regressions are common after redesigns. If your new website is based on PHP, ensure you follow best PHP maintenance practices. 

Security testing 

Confirm permissions, admin access, firewalls, and backups are all functioning as expected. 

Make sure staging isn’t accidentally accessible. Ensure sensitive areas aren’t exposed. Verify backups actually run and can be restored. Security failures don’t announce themselves politely. 

SEO validation 

Now crawl the staging site like a search engine would. 

Check canonicals, internal links, sitemap structure, robots.txt, schema markup, and indexability. Look for redirect loops, orphaned pages, and duplicate content. 

If Google crawled this site tomorrow, would it understand it? 

That’s the bar.

Phase 5: Final Execution & Launch 

This is one of the most difficult parts of the website migration checklist and also probably the shortest. 

Pre-launch checklist 

Before flipping the switch, confirm the basics one last time.
Backups exist. Redirects are live. Analytics is ready. noindex is removed. Sitemaps are updated. 

Run through it twice. Fatigue causes mistakes. 

DNS switchover 

Lower DNS TTL in advance so changes propagate faster. Even then, expect partial propagation and temporary inconsistency. That’s normal. 

Don’t panic-fix things that are still resolving. 

Monitor launch 

Watch logs, uptime, error rates, form submissions, and transactions closely in the first few hours. 

This is when small issues become expensive if ignored. 

Phase 6: Post Migration 

Migration doesn’t end at launch. That’s a comforting lie. 

Immediate monitoring 

Expect fluctuations. Watch for spikes in 404s, sudden traffic drops on key pages, or broken conversion paths. 

Fix issues fast. Early corrections recover faster. 

Post-migration audits 

Re-crawl the site and compare it to your pre-migration benchmarks. URL counts, metadata, internal linking, and indexation should align with expectations. 

If something slipped, this is when you catch it. 

Search engine registration 

Submit updated sitemaps. Monitor index coverage. Watch how Google reprocesses the site. 

Reindexing takes time. Don’t rush changes unless something is clearly broken. 

Continuous monitoring on GSC 

Search Console becomes your daily dashboard for the next few weeks. Coverage, enhancements, performance trends — look at patterns, not day-to-day noise. 

Recovery is a process, not a moment. 

Phase 7: Training & Changing Environment 

This part of website migration checklist seems unimportant until it’s skipped. 

End user training 

If internal teams don’t know how to use the site properly, content quality drops and issues pile up. 

Train people early on new CMS, new workflows, and layouts.  

Check for issues using Site Audit, GA4, and GSC 

Data doesn’t care about opinions. 

Use audits, analytics, and search data to validate assumptions. If something feels “off,” the numbers usually explain why. 

You Might Be Interested In: How To Develop A Scalable eCommerce Website in PHP 

Business Mistakes to Avoid 

Most website migrations don’t fail because of bad developers or bad tools. They fail because of business decisions made under pressure or in a hurry. 

The technical issues get blamed later, but the damage usually starts much earlier. 

Rushing timelines 

This is the most common and the most expensive mistake. 

Someone sets a fixed launch date, a board meeting, a campaign, a rebrand announcement, and everything else bends around that date. Redirects get rushed. Testing gets cut short. Edge cases are ignored because “we’ll fix it after launch.” 

After launch rarely comes. 

Search engines don’t respond well to half-finished migrations. Users don’t either. A rushed timeline almost guarantees missed URLs, broken flows, and ranking volatility that takes months to stabilise. 

If the timeline cannot move, the scope should. Otherwise, you’re choosing speed over stability, and paying for it later. 

Skipping rollback plans 

A rollback plan is boring. It’s also what separates professionals from hopeful optimists. 

Many teams assume migrations are one-way doors. Once the switch is flipped, they believe there’s no going back. That assumption turns small problems into full-blown incidents because nobody planned for recovery. 

A proper rollback plan answers one question clearly:
If this goes wrong, how do we return to the last known good state? 

That includes backups, DNS reversal steps, database snapshots, and ownership clarity. Without it, every post-launch issue feels like a crisis, even when it shouldn’t. 

Rollback plans don’t mean you expect failure. They mean you respect risk. 

Migrating during peak sales periods 

This one is pure self-sabotage. 

Migrating during seasonal peaks, sales events, or high-demand periods magnifies every small issue. A checkout bug during a quiet week is inconvenient. The same bug during peak traffic is catastrophic. 

Search engines also don’t care that you were “busy.” If crawl errors spike or pages disappear during high-demand periods, recovery takes longer and costs more. 

If revenue depends on timing, migration should not compete with it. There is always a better window. 

Redirecting everything to the homepage 

This mistake looks harmless and even logical to non-SEO stakeholders. 

“If the page doesn’t exist anymore, just send users to the homepage.” 

Search engines hate this. Users hate it more. 

Redirecting all old URLs to the homepage breaks relevance signals. Google expects redirected pages to land somewhere contextually similar. When that doesn’t happen, authority gets diluted instead of transferred. 

The result isn’t an immediate crash. It’s a slow bleed — rankings soften, long-tail traffic disappears, and recovery becomes harder with time. 

If a page truly has no replacement, redirect it to the closest alternative. Always. 

Assuming SEO will “just come back” 

This is the quiet killer. 

Many teams treat SEO like a rubber band. Stretch it, let go, and it snaps back. That’s not how migrations work. Search engines reassess trust, structure, and relevance after a move. If something feels off, rankings don’t rebound automatically. 

SEO recovery requires monitoring, corrections, and patience. Sometimes structural changes take weeks or months to be fully re-evaluated. 

Assuming recovery without a plan isn’t optimism. It’s neglect. 

Who Benefits from Website Migration 

Migration isn’t something every business should rush into. But for some, it’s overdue. 

Businesses held back by slow or outdated platforms 

If your site is slow no matter how much you optimise, if updates break things, or if basic improvements feel risky, the platform is likely the problem. Migration can unlock speed, stability, and scalability that patchwork fixes never will. 

Teams buried under technical debt 

When every change requires workarounds, undocumented fixes, or “don’t touch this” warnings, your site becomes fragile. Over time, innovation slows because nobody wants to break anything. 

Migration gives teams a chance to reset, cleaner architecture, clearer ownership, and fewer hidden dependencies. 

Brands rebranding or expanding 

Rebrands, mergers, and international expansion often force structural changes anyway. When handled carefully, migration lets you align technology, content, and branding instead of stacking compromises on top of an old setup. 

Done right, it becomes a growth move, not just a technical one. 

Sites struggling with performance or security 

Outdated frameworks and hosting environments carry real risks. Security patches become harder. Performance gains become marginal. Compliance becomes stressful. 

Migration here isn’t cosmetic, it’s preventative maintenance for the business itself. 

Who Should Migrate & Who Should Not Migrate? 

Migration is not a badge of progress. It’s a tool. And like any tool, timing matters. 

Who should migrate 

You should seriously consider migration when your website is actively limiting growth, stability, or operational efficiency. That includes situations where performance issues are persistent, updates are risky, or the platform no longer supports business goals. 

In these cases, not migrating is often the riskier choice. While you wait or comtemplate updating your old PHP site, it’s better to ensure you are following the best PHP security practices for enterprise and consumer applications 

Who should wait before migrating 

If your traffic is already unstable, rankings are fluctuating heavily, or internal teams aren’t aligned on goals and responsibilities, migration will amplify those problems. 

Migration introduces change. If the foundation is already shaky, the move will feel far worse than it needed to. 

Waiting doesn’t mean avoiding migration forever. It means preparing properly so the move helps instead of hurts. 

F.A.Qs 

How to do website migration? 

Website migration should always start with planning, not execution. First, audit your existing site, back up everything, and decide what stays the same versus what changes. Move the site in a staging environment, test functionality, SEO, and performance thoroughly, then launch carefully and monitor traffic, errors, and rankings closely after going live. 

What are the phases of migration? 

Website migration typically happens in six phases: planning and strategy, technical preparation, data and content transfer, functionality and SEO testing, final launch, and post-migration monitoring. Skipping or rushing any phase increases the risk of traffic loss, broken pages, or long-term SEO damage. 

What is an example of website migration? 

A common example of website migration is moving an eCommerce site from WordPress and WooCommerce to Shopify Plus while keeping the same URLs, content structure, and SEO signals intact. This type of migration focuses on platform change without sacrificing rankings or existing organic traffic. 

Does website migration affect SEO? 

Yes, website migration can significantly affect SEO, either positively or negatively. If redirects, internal links, indexing rules, and content are handled correctly, rankings can recover or even improve. Poor execution, however, can lead to traffic drops, deindexing, and long recovery periods. 

Will I lose my email if I transfer my domain? 

You will only lose email access if email hosting is not migrated or configured separately. Domains, websites, and email services are independent, but many businesses forget to recreate email records (MX, SPF, DKIM) during migration, which causes email disruption. 

What is involved in a website migration? 

A website migration involves moving content, databases, files, hosting infrastructure, domain settings, SEO elements, analytics, and sometimes user data. It also includes testing, redirect management, performance optimisation, and coordination between technical teams and business stakeholders. 

Is it okay to move to a completely new domain? 

Yes, moving to a new domain is fine if it’s done carefully with proper 301 redirects, updated internal links, and patience for search engines to reprocess signals. Domain migrations usually take longer to stabilise than platform changes, but they can succeed with the right setup. 

What is the golden triangle of SEO? 

The golden triangle of SEO consists of high-quality content, strong backlinks, and a solid technical foundation. During a website migration, protecting all three is essential, as weakening even one can affect rankings and organic visibility. 

Can I transfer my domain from one website to another? 

Yes, you can transfer a domain between websites or hosting providers because domains and hosting are separate services. The key is updating DNS records correctly and ensuring the new site is fully ready before pointing the domain to it. 

How do I migrate one website to another? 

To migrate one website to another, take full backups, set up a staging site, migrate content and data, map and test redirects, validate SEO and functionality, and only then switch DNS. After launch, monitor errors, traffic, and performance closely to catch issues early. 

What is the first step in any website migration project? 

The first step in any website migration project is understanding why the migration is happening. Clear objectives, such as performance improvement, rebranding, or platform limitations, guide every technical and strategic decision that follows. 

How to convert old website to new website? 

Converting an old website to a new one requires careful planning, content auditing, technical setup, staged testing, and structured redirects. Using a detailed checklist ensures nothing critical, SEO, data, performance, or user experience, is lost during the transition.