If you want to clone your existing system HD to a new drive (regardless of whether it's an HD or SSD) you will need an external drive enclosure that you can put the new SSD into while you run the cloning process. (In your case, you will need an external enclosure that supports USB3, FW800 or Thunderbolt.) Connect the external drive to your MBP, and format the SSD as APFS.
In order to clone your existing system HD, I suggest using Carbon Copy Cloner. I have used it for many years and it works extremely well. Once you successfully make your bootable clone on the SSD, test it by restarting your MBP from the external drive; if all is well, everything should be exactly as it was with your original drive. Assuming that works, shut down your MBP & the external drive and then replace the MBP's HD with your new SSD.
Note that even after successfully cloning your system to the new drive, some apps may not run from the new drive due to licensing issues - because some vendor licensing methods were/are linked to an internal ID of the specific drive the app was originally installed on or a hash of system IDs which are now different because you changed out the drive. As a consequence you may need to uninstall and reinstall certain apps. In the past I have had to do this with Adobe Photoshop & Acrobat and a few other apps.
