Domain migrations are one of those activities that even if in the long-term can represent a benefit for an SEO process -- especially if the new domain is more relevant, has already a high authority or give better geolocalization signals with a ccTLD -- can represent a risk for SEO because of the multiple tasks that should be performed correctly in order to avoid potential non-trivial crawling and indexing problems and consequential lost of rankings and organic traffic.

I did a quick research for a recent domain migration that I needed to supervise and realized that even if there are a few resources there isn't a complete list covering all of the different aspects that should be taken into consideration in order to implement and validate a domain migration from an SEO perspective.

The checklist - infographic for an SEO friendly domain migration process

With so few information I did a checklist compiling the different activities I needed perform during the different phases of the migration process -decision making, planning, implementation and monitoring- that was a great help to keep me on track and I would like to share through the following "infographic / checklist" where I have also added some of the tools that I used:

You can click on the image above to see a bigger version of the image or download it directly from here.

Please note that this is a checklist for a domain migration process -not a redesign, URL structure change or CMS migration, that would add more complexity and additional validation to the specified phases-.

Some of the articles that were of help to build this checklist -and would be also great if you can take a look at- are:

• Surviving a Site Migration [An SEO's Guide]
• Domain Migration – An SEO Case Study
• Best practices when moving your site
• Moving your site
• The 10 Step Site Migration Process
• SEO Migration Plan – Failure to Plan is a Plan to Fail
• Web Site Migration Guide - Tips For SEOs

I hope all this helps you as much it has helped me! What other aspects do you take into consideration to make sure SEO don't suffer from domain migrations?