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Website SEO Migration

Website migration SEO that protects the rankings you already have

A redesign is the most common way a business loses organic traffic overnight. The new site looks better, the URLs changed, redirects were partial, and three weeks later enquiries have halved with nobody able to explain why.

Migration SEO is preventative work. Done before launch it is straightforward. Done after a traffic collapse it is recovery — slower, more expensive, and not always complete.

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What this delivers

  • Rankings and traffic retained through the launch
  • A complete, verified redirect map with no chains or loops
  • Early detection if something does go wrong
  • A launch you can plan around instead of hope through

What's included

What website SEO migration covers

The concrete scope of work. Nothing here is filler — every item exists because it changes what a site is capable of ranking for.

  • Pre-migration baseline

    A full record of current rankings, indexed URLs, traffic by page and top queries — the reference point against which the launch is judged.

  • Domain migration

    Moving to a new domain with the correct redirect structure, Search Console change of address, and monitoring through the reindexing period.

  • Website redesign SEO

    Reviewing the new design and templates before launch for heading structure, content retention, internal linking and rendering.

  • URL migration

    Deciding which URLs change and which do not. Every change costs something, so changes have to be justified rather than made for tidiness.

  • Redirect mapping

    A complete old-to-new map covering every indexed URL, checked for chains and loops, with the reasoning for each destination.

  • Metadata migration

    Titles, descriptions, canonicals, structured data and image alt text carried across — commonly lost entirely in a platform change.

  • Search visibility protection

    Staging environment blocked from indexing, launch-day verification, and a rollback plan if something is materially wrong.

  • Indexing checks

    Verifying the new URLs are crawled and indexed, and that the old ones are correctly redirecting rather than 404ing.

  • Post-migration monitoring

    Daily checks in the first fortnight, then weekly — ranking movement, crawl errors, indexation and traffic by page against the baseline.

In detail

How website SEO migration actually works

What actually goes wrong in a migration

Migration failures are rarely exotic. The same handful of mistakes accounts for almost every case, and each is preventable with a checklist.

MistakeConsequencePrevention
No redirects, or only for main pagesEvery deep page 404s; rankings and links are lostA complete redirect map covering every indexed URL, not just the menu.
Redirecting everything to the homepageTreated as soft 404s; the ranking value does not transferRedirect each URL to its closest equivalent page.
Staging site left indexableDuplicate content and, occasionally, the staging site outranking productionBlock staging with authentication, not only robots.txt.
Metadata not carried overTitles revert to defaults; click-through and rankings dropExport and migrate metadata as a deliberate step.
Content trimmed for design reasonsPages lose the depth that earned their rankingsCompare word count and covered topics per template before launch.
Internal links still pointing at old URLsRedirect chains; slower crawling; diluted signalsUpdate internal links to final destinations in the codebase.
Launching without a baselineNo way to prove or diagnose a dropRecord rankings, indexed URLs and page-level traffic beforehand.

The migration sequence

  1. 01

    Baseline everything

    Export every indexed URL, current rankings, page-level organic traffic and top queries. This is the only defensible reference point after launch.

  2. 02

    Decide what changes

    Question every URL change. Structural improvements are sometimes worth the cost; tidiness rarely is.

  3. 03

    Build the redirect map

    Every old URL mapped to its closest new equivalent, verified for chains, loops and accidental 404s.

  4. 04

    Pre-launch template review

    New templates checked for headings, content retention, internal linking, metadata, canonicals, schema and mobile rendering.

  5. 05

    Launch-day verification

    Redirects tested live, robots.txt confirmed, sitemap submitted, indexing checked immediately rather than the following week.

  6. 06

    Monitoring window

    Daily checks for two weeks, then weekly for a quarter. Fluctuation is expected; a sustained decline in a specific section is a problem.

Domain changes specifically

Changing domain — rebranding, moving from a subdomain, or consolidating multiple sites — is the highest-risk migration because every URL on the site changes at once.

  • One-to-one 301 redirects for every indexed URL, never a blanket redirect
  • Both domains verified in Search Console, with the change of address tool used
  • The old domain kept and renewed for at least a year, ideally longer
  • The highest-value external links identified and, where possible, updated at source
  • All internal links, sitemaps, canonicals and structured data updated to the new domain
  • Google Business Profile, citations and social profiles updated to match

Recovering a migration that already went wrong

If traffic has already dropped, recovery follows a diagnostic order rather than guesswork.

  1. 1Establish exactly when the drop began — Search Console dates it precisely
  2. 2Crawl the old URL list and identify everything now returning 404 or redirecting incorrectly
  3. 3Compare old and new page content for what was removed or shortened
  4. 4Check indexation: how many new URLs are indexed versus how many old ones were
  5. 5Verify metadata, canonicals and structured data survived the move
  6. 6Fix in order of traffic value — the pages that were earning most come first

Most losses are recoverable if the old URL list still exists. Where it does not, Search Console history and archived crawls can usually reconstruct enough of it. This work overlaps heavily with a technical SEO engagement.

Questions

Website SEO Migration — common questions

We are redesigning our website. When should you be involved?
Before the URL structure is decided — ideally at wireframe stage. That is when redirect mapping and content retention are cheap. Involvement after launch means recovery rather than prevention.
Will we lose rankings when we redesign?
Not necessarily. A well-executed migration with complete redirects and retained content typically holds its rankings through a short fluctuation. Losses come from changed URLs without redirects, or from content being cut for design reasons.
How long should old URLs redirect for?
Permanently, in practice. Google eventually treats a 301 as final, but external links and bookmarks persist for years. Removing redirects later creates 404s from links that were still passing value.
Can we change our URL structure without losing traffic?
Yes, with a complete redirect map and updated internal links. But it should be justified by a real structural benefit — changing URLs purely for neatness costs more than it returns.
We changed platform and traffic dropped. Can it be recovered?
Usually a substantial part of it, particularly if the old URL list is available and the drop is recent. The first step is diagnosis: what changed, when, and which pages lost the most.

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Want to know if website SEO migration is what your site needs?

The free audit answers that specifically. We look at your site and tell you where the real constraint is — which is not always where people expect.

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