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Website Migration SEO

Website Migration SEO That Protects Your Rankings.

Website migration SEO is the work of moving a site to a new design, platform or domain without losing the rankings and traffic it has earned. I map every URL, set up 301 redirects, protect the link equity pointing at your old pages, and watch Search Console after launch.

John Akande — Los Angeles SEO consultant for service businesses, ecommerce, SaaS and B2B

The Problem

A New Site Shouldn't Cost You Your Traffic.

A redesign, a new platform or a domain change replaces the URLs Google already knows. If the old addresses don't lead to the right new pages, the rankings those pages earned, and the value of the links pointing at them, don't carry over.

Google's own guidance says to expect temporary fluctuation during a move, and that for medium-sized sites it can take a few weeks or more for Google to show the new URLs. The aim is a short dip, not a permanent loss.

What Goes Wrong

Five Ways a Migration Loses Traffic.

Missing redirects. Old URLs return a 404, so the rankings and the links pointing at them are wasted.
The wrong kind of redirect. Google says permanent redirects show the new URL in results, while temporary ones keep showing the old one. Chains of redirects slow things down, and Google suggests keeping them short.
Staging blocks left on. A noindex tag or robots.txt rule that protected the test site stays on after launch. Google specifically advises removing blocks that were only needed for the migration.
Content cut in the redesign. Pages merged, shortened or dropped lose the content that earned their rankings, even when every redirect works.
No baseline. Nobody recorded rankings, indexed pages and traffic before launch, so no one can say what was lost or where to look.

What's Included

What Website Migration SEO Involves.

01 · Baseline

Record What You Have

A crawl of the current site, plus your indexed pages, top landing pages, rankings and incoming links, recorded before anything changes.

02 · URL Mapping

Every Old URL, Mapped

Each old URL that has traffic, rankings or links is matched to its closest new equivalent. Google calls mapping old URLs to new ones important for a reason.

03 · 301 Redirects

Permanent, Tested, Short

Server-side permanent redirects tested before launch, with no long chains and no JavaScript redirects where a server-side one is possible.

04 · Content

Keep What Earned Rankings

Titles, headings, key content, structured data and internal links preserved or changed on purpose, with internal links pointed at the final URLs.

05 · Launch

Launch-Day Checks

Staging blocks removed, canonicals and sitemap updated, analytics and Search Console working, and the Change of Address tool used if the domain changes.

06 · Monitoring

Watched After Launch

Indexing, performance and errors tracked in Search Console, and redirects kept in place for at least a year, as Google advises.

Link Equity

What Happens to Link Equity in a Migration.

Links from other sites to your old URLs are a large part of why those pages rank. “Link equity” is the industry term for that value. Google says 301 and other permanent redirects don't cause a loss in PageRank, so a correct redirect carries the value to the new URL.

That only works if each old URL points to the right page. A URL left to return a 404, or sent somewhere unrelated, gives that value nowhere to go. So I redirect each old URL to its closest equivalent and test the result before launch.

If the domain is changing, the same logic applies to every link pointing at the old domain, and Search Console's Change of Address tool comes in as well. Google says you only need that tool when moving from one domain or subdomain to another.

Experience

What I Bring to a Migration.

On McGrocer, a global Shopify grocery store, I did technical SEO across millions of legacy URLs, and organic traffic rose more than 50% within 90 days. Legacy URLs are the same raw material a migration has to handle: old addresses that already have links and rankings. At 3Kings Media House I ran website operations and SEO across more than 50 client websites.

I don't have a published before-and-after case study of a migration yet, so I won't invent one. What I can show is the process and the checks, and you can read the guides below to judge how I think about it.

How It Works

How Website Migration SEO Works.

Before launch. I crawl the current site, record the baseline, and build the URL map. I review the new site on staging for missing pages, blocked pages and content that has changed.

At launch. The redirects go live and I test them against the full map. I remove staging blocks, update the sitemap and confirm Google can crawl the new site.

After launch. I watch indexing, errors and traffic against the baseline until things settle. Anything that goes missing gets traced back to a specific old URL and fixed.

Pricing

Website Migration SEO Pricing, Quoted in Writing.

The cost depends on how many URLs matter, the platform you're moving from and to, whether the domain changes, and how much content is changing. You get a quote in writing after the free migration check, before any work starts. I don't guarantee that traffic won't dip, because Google itself says to expect some fluctuation.

If you want the problems on your current site found first, see the technical SEO audit service. If you also need the new site built, see website design.

Is This Right for You?

Who This Is For.

  • You're planning or building a redesign and don't want to lose the rankings the current site has earned
  • You're moving platforms, for example from WordPress to a framework like Next.js, or to Shopify
  • You're changing domains or rebranding, and need the old links to carry over
  • You've already launched and traffic dropped, and you need to find out why
  • You want someone to check your developer's redirect plan before launch

Free Guides

How I Think About Migrations.

Why Traffic Drops After a Redesign

What goes wrong, and the pre-launch checklist that prevents it.

Read the guide →

WordPress to Next.js

What changes when you move, and how to lower the SEO risk.

Read the guide →

Your Sitemap Is Lying to Google

Why a sitemap needs to match what actually changed.

Read the guide →

Website Migration SEO: Questions.

It's the SEO work around moving a site: a redesign, a new platform, a new domain or a URL restructure. The goal is to keep the rankings, traffic and link value your old pages have earned, by mapping every important old URL to its new equivalent, redirecting it correctly and checking the result after launch.
Google says 301 and other permanent redirects don't cause a loss in PageRank. Link equity is the industry term for the ranking value of the links pointing at a page, so a correct 301 carries it to the new URL. The catch is that a redirect has to point at the right page. A missing redirect, or one sent somewhere unrelated, wastes it.
Google says to expect temporary fluctuation, and that for medium-sized sites it can take a few weeks or more for Google to gradually show the new URLs, longer for large sites. No one can give you an exact date. A well-run migration keeps the dip short and shallow.
Google's advice is to keep redirects for as long as possible, generally at least one year. Removing them early throws away the link value still pointing at the old addresses.
Only when you move from one domain or subdomain to another. Google says you don't need it for HTTP to HTTPS moves, www or non-www switches, or path changes within the same domain.
The most common cause is missing or wrong redirects, followed by content that was cut or merged during the redesign. Staging blocks left on the live site, such as noindex tags or robots.txt rules, are another. The first step is finding which old URLs lost traffic and checking what they now return.
Often, yes. The work is the migration process run in reverse: find which old URLs lost traffic, check what each one returns, restore the redirects or content that went missing, and confirm Google can crawl and index the result. I can't promise the lost traffic comes back in full.
No. Google itself says to expect temporary fluctuation during a move. What I can do is plan the move so the risk is understood in advance, check it before and after launch, and tell you plainly what I find.
It depends on how many URLs matter, the platform you're moving from and to, whether the domain changes, and how much content is changing. I quote in writing after a free migration check and before any work starts, so you pay for your site and not for an average.

Check Your Migration Before It Costs You Traffic.

Request a free migration check. Tell me what's changing, whether that's the design, the platform or the domain, and I'll tell you the biggest risks to your rankings and whether a full migration plan is worth it.

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