Website Migration SEO Checklist UK 2026
25 August 2026
A UK-focused SEO migration checklist: redirects, indexing, analytics, and pitfalls. Step-by-step to protect rankings and traffic.
Before You Move: Audit Your Existing Site
Capture a full benchmark before touching anything. Export your top 100 landing pages from Google Search Console (UK filtered), crawl the entire site with Screaming Frog, and record your current rankings in BrightLocal or Ahrefs for key UK search terms like 'plumber London' or 'best SIPP provider'. Log your total indexed pages, referral domains, and organic sessions from GA4. Save a copy of your robots.txt and every canonical URL. This baseline is your safety net—if anything drops after go-live, you’ll know exactly what to compare against. For UK domains, also verify both .co.uk and .uk variants, and decide on www vs non-www. If you change domain, register any relevant UK TLDs to stop competitors snap-purchasing your old name.
Build a Complete URL Map and 301 Redirect Plan
Every old URL must resolve to a new UK-relevant equivalent, not just your homepage. Create a spreadsheet mapping legacy URLs to new ones—think /product.php?id=123 to /cleaning-supplies/eco-friendly-floor-wipes. Use 301 redirects, not 302s, for permanent moves. Test redirects in a staging environment before going live. If you use wildcard redirects, list them explicitly in your plan; Google treats them differently. Keep redirect chains under three hops—each hop leaks link equity. For a UK e-commerce site with 10,000 URLs, expect this to take a full week. Remember to update the country setting in both platforms: use UK locale URLs with /en-gb/ paths if you’re running a regional subfolder, and use hreflang tags if you also target Ireland (.ie) or non-English users.
Technical On-Page: Keep UK Signals Strong
Don’t rewrite title tags and metadata unless you absolutely must—preserve keyword intent for UK search volume. Update all internal links from old to new URLs, including your header, footer, and breadcrumb navigation. Regenerate your XML sitemap with the new URLs and submit it to Search Console as a UK property. Remove any noindex tags from pages you want indexed, and ensure your robots.txt doesn’t accidentally block CSS or JS—Google needs those to render mobile layouts. Add JSON-LD LocalBusiness markup with your UK address, phone number (with +44 code), and opening hours. If you use a CDN, set the geo-targeting to the UK in Search Console so Google associates the site with a UK audience rather than a global one.
Post-Launch Monitoring and Indexing
The first 48 hours after migration are critical. Run a crawl with Screaming Frog to find 404s and redirect chains. Use Search Console’s URL Inspection tool to force-index your homepage, category pages, and top money pages. Submit your new sitemap and monitor the 'Page Indexing' and 'Sitemaps' reports daily for the first week. Check that your UK rankings for priority keywords have not dropped by more than 20%—if they have, investigate redirects or site speed issues. Monitor your Google Business Profile, because migration can affect local pack rankings if your website URL changes. Keep GA4 event tracking intact; double-check that your tag fires correctly on the new domain. Continuously review server logs for unusual crawl activity from Googlebot UK.
Common UK Migration Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
The biggest mistake is leaving old URLs live without redirects—that splits link equity and causes duplicate content. Another is moving from HTTP to HTTPS during the same migration; do one change at a time to simplify troubleshooting. UK businesses often forget to update their Google Business Profile URL and their directory citations on Yell, Trustpilot, and the FCA register if they’re in financial services. DNS delays are another issue: if you change nameservers, make sure the old site stays live for at least 72 hours. Also, don’t hide the migration from users—put a banner telling UK visitors about the new site, but ensure it doesn’t block crawl access. Finally, keep an internal archive of your old site offline for at least 3 months so you can extract data or create redirects you missed.
FAQ
Plan for 4–8 weeks total. The pre-migration audit and URL mapping typically take 1–2 weeks. Staging and testing add another week. Go-live takes 1–3 days, and post-launch monitoring should run for at least 4 weeks to catch and fix any indexation or ranking issues. Larger e-commerce or UK government sites can take 12 weeks or more.