SEO audits and site migrations

1Overview

Audits check a site against the same stages search engines follow: crawling, indexing and serving [4]. Most combine a crawl of the site, which shows what it serves, with Search Console data, which shows how Google processed it [5][6].

2Pre-launch checks

The most damaging launch errors come from staging settings reaching production. Google documents the mechanisms involved:

• A Disallow: / rule in robots.txt stops crawling of the whole site [8].
• A noindex meta tag or header removes pages from results once crawled [9].
• Password-protected or erroring pages fail the basic technical requirements [4].

After launch, submitting a sitemap helps Google discover the new URLs [10].

3Site migrations

Google distinguishes moves without URL changes, such as a new host, from moves with URL changes, such as a new domain or URL structure [1][2]. For moves with URL changes it recommends:

• Preparing a mapping of every old URL to its new equivalent [1].
• Using permanent server-side redirects from each old URL to its new one [1][11].
• Updating internal links, canonical tags and sitemaps to the new URLs [1].
• Using the Change of Address tool when moving to a new domain [3].
• Keeping the redirects for at least one year [1].

4Ongoing monitoring

Search Console reports issues as they appear: the Page indexing report lists pages that aren’t indexed and why [6], the Core Web Vitals report groups slow URLs [12], and the Security issues report flags hacked content or malware [13].

When traffic drops, Google’s debugging guide suggests first separating causes such as technical issues, security issues, algorithm updates and seasonal changes [7].

5Prioritising findings

Because indexing depends on crawling, and ranking on indexing, issues earlier in the pipeline hide everything after them [4]. Audits are usually prioritised the same way: blockers to crawling and indexing first, then structure and content signals, then experience.