By Mehdi HassanHow do you decide which pages to migrate?
Decide which pages to migrate by scoring each one on two things: how it performs and whether its message still holds up. Performance tells you what search engines and visitors value. Message tells you whether the page should say the same thing on the new site.
Most audit templates only look at the first. They'll tell you to keep a blog post because it gets traffic, even if it pitches a product you no longer sell. We run audits copy-first: a page earns its place on the new site by performing and by saying something true and clear. That's the difference between moving a site and improving it.
The audit is the first stage of the pipeline in our guide to CMS content migration. Do it before exporting or importing anything.
What should a content audit before migration include?
A content audit before migration should include every indexable URL, its performance data, a message check, and a decision with a destination. Put it in one spreadsheet, one row per URL. Here's the template we use.
Column | What goes in it | Source |
|---|---|---|
URL | Full current path | Crawl and sitemap |
Type | Page, post, case study, landing page, tag | Crawl or CMS export |
Organic clicks | Last 12 months | Search Console |
Backlinks | Referring domains | Your SEO tool |
Conversions | Sign-ups or demos attributed | Analytics |
Message check | Accurate, outdated or unclear | Read the page |
Decision | Keep, merge, rewrite, redirect or delete | Audit |
New URL | Destination path, if any | Audit |
Owner and notes | Who acts on it, and why | Audit |
Gather the performance data before anything changes. Our guide to benchmarking your site before a migration covers which reports to save, so you can compare after launch.
How do you run the audit, step by step?
Run the audit in six steps: build the inventory, add performance data, read every page, decide, assign destinations, and sign off. The reading step takes the longest and matters most.
Build the inventory
Crawl the site, add sitemap URLs and CMS exports, and remove duplicates so every live URL appears once. Our guide to exporting Webflow CMS content shows how to pull collections.
Add performance data
Join clicks, referring domains and conversions to each URL. Leave blanks as zero, not empty.
Read every page
Mark the message accurate, outdated or unclear. Check product names, pricing, claims, screenshots and who the page is written for.
Make one decision per URL
Apply the rules below. If two people disagree, the page probably needs a rewrite.
Assign destinations
Give every merged, redirected and moved URL a new path. These rows become your redirect map.
Sign off
Have marketing and whoever owns SEO approve the sheet. It now defines the scope of the migration.
Keep, merge, rewrite, redirect or delete: how do you choose?
Choose with a simple rule: performance decides whether the URL matters, and message decides whether the content can move as is. Combine the two and each page lands in one of five decisions.
Performance | Message | Decision | Redirect needed? |
|---|---|---|---|
Strong | Accurate and clear | Keep | Only if the path changes |
Strong | Outdated or unclear | Rewrite | Only if the path changes |
Weak, overlaps other pages | Any | Merge | Yes, into the merged page |
Weak, but has backlinks | No longer relevant | Redirect | Yes, to the closest match |
None | No longer relevant | Delete | No; return 404 or 410 |
None | Accurate, still useful | Keep or merge | Depends on overlap |
Strong and weak are relative to your site, so set thresholds before you start, such as a minimum number of clicks or referring domains, and apply them consistently. A page that converts should be treated as strong even with modest traffic.
For example, suppose a SaaS site with 180 URLs
Hypothetical example: the audit finds 40 core pages and posts that perform and read well, which are kept. Twenty-five posts get traffic but describe an old feature set, so they're rewritten. Thirty short posts on overlapping topics are merged into eight stronger guides. Fifteen old announcements with backlinks are redirected to the changelog or a related guide, and the rest, mostly empty tag pages and outdated event pages, are deleted.
The migration now rebuilds a fraction of the original URLs, and every other URL has a planned outcome.
How do you judge message clarity on a page?
Judge message clarity by reading the page as a new buyer would and asking three questions: is it true today, is it clear who it's for, and does it lead somewhere useful. If any answer is no, the page is a rewrite.
- True today. Product names, features, pricing, integrations, screenshots and claims match what you sell now.
- Clear audience. The first lines say who the page is for and what problem it solves, in your current positioning.
- Useful next step. The page links to a relevant product page, guide or call to action, not a dead campaign.
- Quotable. Key answers are stated plainly near the top, which helps search snippets and AI answers. See our guide to answer-first page structure.
If many pages fail the same question, that's a positioning problem, not a page problem. Fix the core message once, then rewrite pages against it. Our guide to rewriting content during a migration covers when to rewrite now and when to wait until after launch.
What happens after the audit?
After the audit, the sheet becomes three working documents: the build scope, the content plan and the redirect map. Each decision feeds one of them.
Kept and rewritten pages define the templates and pages to build. Rewrites go to a writer with the message notes from the audit. Every merged, redirected or moved URL goes into the redirect map, which our 301 redirect map template helps you format and test. Put all three into your website migration project plan so the work has owners and dates.
Doing a redesign rather than a platform move? The method is the same, with more weight on the message column. Our website content audit before a redesign adapts the template for that case.
