How to check redirects before an SEO migration
A migration checklist for confirming old URLs redirect cleanly, final pages are indexable, and sitemap and robots.txt signals agree.
SEO migrations fail when old URLs, canonical URLs, sitemap entries, and robots.txt rules send conflicting signals.
Before requesting indexing, verify the actual HTTP path from old URLs to new pages and make sure search engines can crawl the final destination.
Map old URLs to final pages
Test representative old URLs, high-traffic pages, campaign URLs, category pages, and locale variants.
Each important old URL should usually redirect in one hop to the most relevant new URL, not to the homepage or a soft 404.
Check status and crawl signals
A final SEO page should normally return 200, use the expected canonical URL, and avoid noindex when it should be indexed.
Robots.txt should not block the final page, required assets, or sitemap discovery.
Submit only clean sitemap URLs
The sitemap should list canonical URLs that return 200 and represent pages worth indexing.
Avoid parameter URLs, tracking links, redirected URLs, and duplicate locale variants in the submitted sitemap.
SEO migration redirect checklist
- Test old URLs, new URLs, http/https, www/non-www, and locale variants.
- Avoid long redirect chains and homepage fallbacks.
- Confirm final pages return 200 and have the expected canonical URL.
- Check robots.txt rules against important final URLs.
- Submit a sitemap that contains only canonical, indexable pages.
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