Site transitions can take multiple forms. It is important to get a good understanding of exactly what is changing and how, as early as possible. This important step will help guide the specific tasks involved in future steps. Questions to ask:

1. Is it a full site transition or just transition of a sub-set of the site? Is the sub-set a subdomain, a folder or a set of URLs?
2. Is the site transition just a server infrastructure update or a CMS/e-commerce platform version update?
3. Will the transition affect the domain name?
4. Will the transition affect the existing URL structures?
5. Does the site transition involve changes to page layouts or re-coding of templates?
6. Will the transition change the URL’s for existing pages even if structures are not changing (for example, in case the products or content are re-loaded in the database and acquire a new id that is referenced in the URL)?
7. What specific pages are affected? What category pages are affected? What product/content pages are affected?

The next step with a site transition is to assess the risk to the organic search channel because of the transition. Knowing the extent of the changes involved in the transition through Step 1 is going to be very useful in assessing the risk. Things to research include:

1. Last 12 months total organic search traffic to the site
2. Last 12 months total organic traffic where the homepage was the entry point (landing page)
   • This will help determine the percentage of your total organic traffic that is dependent on the homepage to generate
   • Traffic to the homepage is relatively safe and not as affected as traffic that enters through other parts of the site in case of transitions
3. Last 12 months total organic traffic where the category/sub-category pages were the entry point
   • Same as above, this will help determine the percentage of your total traffic dependent on category/sub-category pages
   • These are usually at most risk in case of full site transitions and even partial site transitions since they tend to include deeper pages
4. Last 12 months total organic traffic where the product/content pages were the entry point
   • Similar to above, these pages are also at risk, but typically do not make up a huge portion of most sites and it is easier to mitigate the downside with some of the strategies outlined below.
5. Last 30 days highest non-brand traffic driving keywords from organic search
6. Rankings for Top keywords and the type of URLs ranking
   • If most of your top non-brand keywords have the homepage ranking highest, while not a good thing, does mitigate the extent of the risk    

An inventory of assets is the next crucial step in order to determine the elements that make up the search “equity” for the site and determining how to handle them. Here is a checklist of things that are often overlooked in transitions but are essential to carry forward from old to new site/pages during transition:

1. Content on pages  
   • Such as homepage or category intro text, category descriptions etc.
   • Irrespective of the kind of transition, it is important to review and ensure any content on the old site is preserved or improved upon when transitioning to the new site
2. Page titles, Meta descriptions, robots meta tags, H1 tags  
   • All these are essential elements that define how your page is optimized
   • Any site transitions should take into account preservation of these elements so as to minimize any impact due to the pages being perceived as different
3. Canonical URL tags
   • Existing canonical URL tag would need to be re-assessed before being carried over to new site
   • In case of changing URL structures, old canonical tags on pages can reference outdated pages and will need to be updated
4. Internal links  
   • This is usually the trickiest and the easiest to break
   • Just like external links help indicate the authoritativeness of your website from an outsider’s point of view, the internal links help search engines understand the sections of your site that you deem most important to direct visitors to
   • It is important the internal linking structure on the new site at the very least match the old site if not improve upon it
5. External Links
   • This is one area where site transitions have a devastating impact if unplanned
   • External links and domains pointing to pages on your site are one of the biggest determinants of your site’s search “equity”
   • As part of any transition plan it is essential to have a full list of external links and domains pointing into to each page of your site that is being changed

The above steps help ultimately with the following checklist for managing a transition

1. In case the URL structure of the site is changing make sure each and every old URL is mapped to an equivalent new URL and there is a 301 redirect in place from the old URL to the new URL
   • This will also have the benefit of making sure that both internal links and external links pointing to the old page remain valid and doesn’t result a 404 error when being accessed by users or search engines
     
2. Actionable Insights : Reset actionable insights by going to Domain Settings > Actionable Insights > Reset.  Actionable Insights can then be reactivated for new domain.
   
3. In case the existing URL does not have an equivalent page on the new site, 301 redirect  it to the next best page (if any) or a parent page (a higher level category or the homepage)
   
4. Prepare a full sitemap before-hand to submit to both Google and Bing as soon as the site is transitioned
5. If possible, build links to the deeper categories/sub-categories of the site

A crucial aspect of any site transition is being able to review the health of the site and performance before, during and after the transition. There are certain specific KPI’s that are highly recommended to track

1. Prepare daily ranking reports from the day of the transition in order to see
   • If any of the top non-brand keyword rankings have been negatively affected
   • If the OLD highest ranking URL’s are being replaced with the correct new highest ranking URL
2. Check the cached dates of a sampling of URL’s to review progress of crawling and indexation of new pages
3. Track traffic by Page Types (homepage, product/content page, category pages) to make sure traffic levels to different Page Types remain consistent
4. Crawl (using Xenu or similar) and verify that there are no 404 errors
5. Crawl and verify that all redirects planned have been correctly implemented  

Apart from the above, there may be other specific things to note per the details of your transition. In case of questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!