The SEO migration checklist most consultants keep to themselves.

Why this isn't gated.

Most migration checklists cost you an email address. You submit it, you get added to a sequence, and three weeks later you're wondering why you're getting newsletters from someone you've never spoken to.

That's not how I work.

This checklist is the framework I use on every migration engagement. I'm giving it away because I think the information matters more than the lead. If you run a migration using this and it goes well, that's a good outcome — full stop. If you read it and realise you need someone with experience applying it to your specific site, you know where to find me.

Use it however you want.

How the checklist is prioritised: the CHI framework.

Most migration checklists treat all tasks equally. This one doesn't. Every item is tagged with one of three priority levels — not as a rough guide, but as a genuine prioritization call based on revenue impact.

‍Critical — do this first, do it properly.

Work that, if not done, puts revenue, growth, or credibility at direct risk. Missing a critical item is how migrations lose 40% of organic conversions and spend 6 months recovering. There are no shortcuts on these.

High — do it, but don't let it block the critical items.

Work that improves outcomes significantly but isn't existential. These matter — just not more than the critical items. A common mistake is spending 3 days perfecting a High item while a Critical one stays undone.

I don't care — don't do it.

Low-leverage, low-impact work that most checklists include out of habit. Chasing the perfect URL structure. Rewriting meta descriptions mid-migration. Fixing internal links that already point to URLs covered by working 301 redirects. These are not worth your time during a migration. Do them after, if at all.

This framework was part of the work that won a Friends of Search award for the No-Dip Mollie.com Migration. I covered it in a talk at SEO Benelux — Stop Ranking. Start Banking. Do Less. Earn More. — if you want the background.

The checklist gives you the framework. The judgment calls are where expertise earns its place — which pages actually make the priority list, which keywords represent real commercial intent, how to read post-launch signals on your specific platform. Those decisions depend on your site, your CRM data, and your business model. A checklist can't make them for you.

How to use this in practice.

The checklist is structured in the order things need to happen — not the order most teams actually work. Phase 1 (commercial triage) almost always gets skipped because it doesn't feel technical. It is the most important phase.

Start there. Before the redirect map, before the platform checks, before anything. Identify which pages are tied to pipeline, agree on what success looks like in commercial terms, and document your conversion baseline. Everything else is built around that foundation.

A note on the 'I don't care' items: they're in the checklist deliberately. Not because you should do them, but because you'll be tempted to — and it's useful to have a clear record of why they're not worth your time right now. Meta descriptions, perfect URL structures, internal links pointing to URLs that already 301 correctly — skip them. Come back after the migration is stable, if you come back at all.

The checklist is the same regardless of your platform. The application is not. What 'verify canonical handling' means on Webflow is a different task from what it means on HubSpot or a headless setup. The item is the same — the expertise required to execute it correctly is platform-specific.