This is the migration checklist I wish more owners saw before they started. The part about building the URL map from three sources — sitemap, Search Console, and analytics — is the key one most people skip. The sitemap alone misses the pages that actually earn traffic, and those are exactly the ones you can’t afford to lose.

The builder-prefix point resonates too. In real estate, property and neighborhood pages with odd slugs are usually the highest-value pages, and they’re the first to get “redirected to homepage” in a sloppy move. One thing I’d add from experience: tell the owner up front to expect a short dip even when everything is done right, so a two-week wobble doesn’t turn into panic and a rollback. How often do you find the DNS/email side — not the redirects — is what actually breaks on launch day?