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Website Redesign Checklist for SEO-Safe Migrations
A launch-week checklist for redirects, Core Web Vitals, accessibility, analytics, and stakeholder sign-off on website redesign projects.
Published 2026-06-08 · 10 min read
Before you start design (the week that saves launch week)
Define conversion goals and primary KPIs with stakeholders. Run a technical SEO audit and content inventory. Build a sitemap that reflects user intent and search intent together.
Assign owners for content, legal review, and analytics. Without owners, checklists become PDFs nobody opens.
Before launch (non-negotiable QA)
Validate all 301 redirects and eliminate chains. Test forms, chat, checkout, and key user journeys on mobile networks your customers use.
Run Lighthouse on primary templates for LCP, INP, and CLS. Complete WCAG checks on navigation, forms, and media. Recalculate canonical tags and schema on every template.
Launch day (order matters)
Deploy redirects before DNS cutover when possible. Submit sitemap in Search Console. Verify robots.txt and noindex rules on staging remnants.
This blog post complements our longer checklist guide with a shorter run sheet for launch week.
First 90 days (where most teams stop too early)
Track rankings for priority keywords. Fix indexation errors on revenue URLs quickly. Compare conversions to discovery baselines, not vanity traffic spikes.
Publish supporting content only after migration stability. Chasing new keywords while Coverage reports show redirect errors wastes the rebuild.
Need help with your migration? Contact our website redesign team or explore our core redesign services.