Post-acquisition 90-day checklist
Work through infrastructure, access, SEO, and monitoring tasks in the first 90 days after acquiring an online business. Each task has an optional note field for a date, an owner, or a link — check items off as you complete them, then export the whole checklist (with your notes) to a branded PDF or a CSV for your records.
Frequently asked questions
Why is preserving SEO especially risky right after an acquisition?
Any change to hosting, domain configuration, or URL structure can trigger a re-crawl that temporarily (or permanently, if done incorrectly) tanks rankings — search engines treat unexpected technical changes as a signal to re-evaluate the site. The most common mistake is migrating hosting or making URL changes in the same week as the ownership transfer without first confirming 301 redirects and canonical tags are intact, which compounds two risky changes into one unmonitored event.
What access should I revoke from the seller, and how quickly?
Everything: hosting/server admin, domain registrar, payment processor, CMS/admin logins, third-party tool accounts (email platform, ad accounts, analytics), and any API keys used by the business. Do this within the first few days once you've confirmed you have working access yourself — leaving seller access live for weeks "just in case" is the most common way post-acquisition disputes turn into security incidents.
What should I actually monitor in the first 30 days?
Uptime and error rates (to catch anything broken by the transfer itself), organic traffic and rankings for your top pages (to catch SEO fallout early), and revenue against the pre-acquisition baseline (to catch problems with payment processing or checkout that wouldn't show up in a general uptime check). Set explicit thresholds — for example, a 10% week-over-week traffic drop — so you're not relying on gut feel to notice a problem.
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