Before you move a website: a checklist for your team

Define the change and assign owners

Write down whether you are changing the domain, platform, URL structure, content, or design. Assign owners for redirects, content, measurement, and verification. When everything changes together, identifying the cause of a problem becomes harder.

Before the move, record pages that bring visits and inquiries, pages with inbound links, and pages important to your product. Agree who can stop a launch if a problem appears and how to return to the previous version.

Map old URLs to new destinations

Build a table containing each old URL, its new destination, the reason, and the person who verified it. Begin with important pages, then complete the inventory. A removed page needs an explicit decision, not an automatic destination unrelated to its content.

For moves with URL changes, Google advises URL mapping and permanent server-side redirects to relevant destinations. Update internal links, canonicals, and sitemaps too. Sending many old pages to an unrelated homepage does not replace a proper mapping.

Test journeys before opening the site

Choose examples from each template, language, and type of move. Alongside automated checks, ask someone to follow the visitor journey. A sample verification table could include:

• Visit an old URL and reach the corresponding new destination.
• Open a new page and check its heading, content, and links.
• Switch between Hebrew and English and reach the equivalent page.
• Submit an inquiry in a test environment and verify the relevant measurement.
• Check the indexing instructions intended for launch without accidentally opening the test environment.

Keep checking after launch

Immediately check important URLs and redirects from outside the deployment environment, as a visitor would. Divide follow-up checks between engineering, marketing, and the site owner. Keep a record of faults and fixes so changes in your data can be compared with specific events.

Google notes that temporary fluctuations can occur while it processes a move and recommends keeping redirects for at least a year. Monitor old and new URLs in Search Console. A technically correct move does not guarantee that every ranking will stay the same.