Successful website migration: why it matters and how to get it right

Changing domain, changing platform or rebuilding the whole website is something almost every business does sooner or later. The problem is that, done carelessly, you can lose in a few days the rankings it took years to earn. The good news is that almost every mistake can be avoided with good planning.

Updated in 2026. We've rewritten the guide with the specific steps we follow in our migrations: the redirect map, Search Console's change of address tool and the mistakes we see most often. We've included our own experience of moving this website from WordPress to a custom build.

When do you need to migrate a website?

We call it a migration whenever something fundamental about a website changes. The most common ones are:

• Domain change: a new brand name or moving from a .es to a .com.
• Platform change: for example, from WordPress to Shopify, or from a website builder to a custom build.
• Redesign with a new structure: when URLs change, pages are merged or the menu is reorganized.
• Merging two websites into one.
• Hosting change: the simplest, because URLs don't change, but it has its own risks.
• Moving from HTTP to HTTPS, which every website should have by now.

The more URLs change, the higher the risk. A well-executed hosting change shouldn't be noticeable; changing domain and platform at the same time is the most delicate migration of all.

1. Full backup

Before touching anything, make a backup of the files and the database, and store it off the server. If something goes wrong, it's your way back.

Also keep a copy of what you can't see: the text of each page, the SEO titles and descriptions, the images and, if it's a store, products, customers and orders.

2. Take stock of your current website

You need to know what you have before you move it. Get a list of every URL on your current website. You can pull it from several sources, and it's worth combining them:

• A crawler such as Screaming Frog, which goes through the website the way Google would.
• The current sitemap.
• Google Search Console: the pages Google has indexed and the ones that get clicks.
• Google Analytics: the pages that get visits.

Flag the important ones: those that get the most traffic, sales or external links. They're the ones you can't afford to lose. Also take a snapshot of where you stand today (visits, rankings for your main keywords and sales) to compare against afterwards.

3. Prepare the 301 redirect map

This is the most important step of the whole migration. Every old URL has to lead to its equivalent on the new website through a 301 (permanent) redirect. That way Google transfers the old page's rankings to the new one, and anyone arriving from an old link doesn't hit an error.

Prepare a table with two columns, old URL and new URL, and follow these rules:

• Each page to its closest equivalent, not everything to the home page. Redirecting hundreds of URLs to the home page is almost the same as deleting them.
• A single hop: the old URL should lead straight to the final one, with no chains of redirects.
• If a page disappears with no equivalent, a good 404 error page is better than a redirect that makes no sense.
• Keep URLs that don't need to change. The best redirect is the one you don't need.

When we moved this website from WordPress to a custom build, we went through the old URLs one by one, including those of the English version, and made sure each one reached its destination in a single hop, even with the trailing slash WordPress used to add.

4. Test the new website before launch

Set up the new website in a staging environment and check calmly:

• That titles, descriptions and important text have been carried over.
• That it looks right on mobile and loads fast.
• That forms, the cart and payments work.
• That the redirects in your map work. You can check them all at once with a crawler.
• That the Google Analytics tag and any other tracking are installed.

One very important detail: the staging environment must be blocked from Google (with a password or noindex), and that block has to be removed on launch day. Forgetting it is one of the most common mistakes, and it leaves the new website invisible on Google.

5. Launch day

• Pick a quiet time, never just before a campaign or your peak season.
• Publish the new website and switch on the redirects at the same time.
• Check your most important pages and a few old URLs by hand.
• Submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console.
• If you've changed domain, use Search Console's Change of address tool, which tells Google about the move. Keep the old domain and its redirects live for a long time, at least a year.

6. After the migration

Keep a close eye on things for the first few weeks. It's normal to see some movement in rankings while Google processes the changes, but not a sharp, sustained drop. Check:

• In Search Console, the page indexing report and any new 404 errors. Every 404 on a page that used to get visits is a missing redirect.
• That Google is gradually showing the new URLs instead of the old ones.
• Visits, rankings for your main keywords and sales, compared with the snapshot you took beforehand.
• The links on your social media profiles, Google Business Profile and directories. Update them to the new URLs.

If something drops, it's almost always because of a missing redirect or one that points to the wrong place. That's why the map from step 3 is so important: it lets you find and fix the problem in minutes.