What a technical SEO audit finds after a domain migration

The short answer

After a domain migration, a technical SEO audit checks five things: that every old URL redirects permanently and directly to its closest equivalent, that nothing important ends in a 404, that the new domain’s sitemap and canonicals point only at the new host, that internal links no longer depend on redirects, and that Search Console has been told about the move. Most of what goes wrong is old URLs nobody remembered.

Google’s site move guidance sets the baseline: use permanent redirects such as 301, redirect “to the final destination directly” rather than through chains, update sitemaps to the new URLs, submit a Change of Address when the domain changes, and keep the redirects “generally at least 1 year”. It also says visibility may fluctuate temporarily during a move, which is a reason to measure rather than react.

What the audit typically finds

1. Old URLs that were never mapped

Rebuilds are planned from the current page list. Search engines remember older pages: retired campaigns, old service names, links shared years ago. Start from the old sitemap, Search Console’s page reports and any URL that ever had impressions, not from the new site.

2. Redirects to the home page

Sending every unmatched URL to the home page looks tidy and tells the visitor nothing. Where a close equivalent exists, redirect to it. Where none exists, a deliberate 404 or 410 is more honest than an unrelated destination.

3. Chains

An old URL that redirects to an intermediate address, which redirects again, wastes a request and invites breakage when one link in the chain changes. Every rule should point straight at a live page.

4. Leftovers that still point at the old host

Canonical tags, structured data, sitemaps, social images and internal links written as absolute URLs on the old domain all keep pointing backwards. Each one is small; together they send mixed signals about which host is the real one.

5. Search Console steps assumed rather than confirmed

Both properties verified, the Change of Address submitted from the old one, the new sitemap submitted and processed. Each is quick to check and easy to assume.

The worked example: this site’s own move

Wilde Digital moved from wildedigital.ca to wildedigital.agency to remove a country-code domain signal from a business that works internationally. The old domain now answers with permanent redirects to the new one. What the audit of that move found and enforces:

• The old sitemap is a test input. Every URL from the pre-rebuild sitemap is checked on each build: it must be a live page, a redirect or a deliberate retirement, or the build’s audit fails.
• A forgotten URL turned up anyway. An old proposal link, never in that sitemap, was still known to search and ended in a 404 on the new domain. It now redirects permanently and directly to the contact page. Unmapped legacy URLs are a typical migration finding, and one happened here despite the sitemap check.
• Retired place-name pages were mapped, not recreated. The old site had location landing pages. Each now redirects in one step to the closest service page, because the business is not sold by location and the new site does not rebuild that pattern.
• One page was retired on purpose. An old ROI calculator returns 410 rather than redirecting, because its figures had no measured basis and no current page answers the same question.
• Chains cannot be built. The build refuses any redirect whose target is not a published page, so a rule can never point at another redirect.
• The sitemap comes from the page list. It lists only live, indexable pages on the new host, each with the date its content last changed.

What this example does not show is a search result. The move is complete; its effect on rankings and traffic has not been measured here, and none is claimed.

Run the core checks yourself

1. Export every URL the old domain ever had: the old sitemap, Search Console’s pages with impressions, and any links you know were shared.
2. Request each one on the old domain and record the status code and final address. A crawler in list mode does this in minutes, or from a terminal, with one old path per line in old-urls.txt:

   while read p; do curl -s -o /dev/null -L --max-redirs 5 -w "%{http_code} hops=%{num_redirects} %{url_effective}  $p\n" "https://old-domain.example$p"; done < old-urls.txt

   Anything other than 200 hops=1 on the expected page, or a deliberate 410, needs a look.
3. Flag anything that returns 404, lands on the home page, or takes more than one redirect to arrive.
4. Open the new home page source and search for the old domain. Repeat in the sitemap and structured data.
5. In Search Console, confirm both properties are verified and the Change of Address shows as submitted.

A clean result means the move was carried out correctly. It does not predict rankings; it removes the migration defects you found.

When to hand it over

The checks above cover most small sites. A larger site, a move that also changed URL structure, or a migration whose redirects live in a CDN or server configuration you cannot read is where a full audit earns its cost. Wilde Digital’s technical SEO audit is $1,500 USD per agreed audit, and a smaller fixed site check is $400 USD per site. If the question is which domain to move to in the first place, read whether a .agency or .com domain is better for an international service business.