SEO MIGRATION
Website Migration Without the Traffic Massacre
Most migrations lose 10-30% of organic traffic. Some never recover. We've migrated sites that gained traffic on launch day — because we don't leave the SEO to the dev team's afterthoughts.
Get The Damage ReportWhy Most SEO Migration Goes Wrong
You've probably experienced at least one of these. Here's why.
The "We'll Handle SEO After Launch" Disaster
Your dev team or agency treats SEO as a post-launch cleanup task. By then it's too late. URLs have changed, redirects are wrong or missing, and Google is re-crawling a site that looks brand new — in the worst way. 301 redirects added after the fact don't undo the damage of a botched launch.
Traffic Cliff After Relaunch
You redesigned your site, it looks beautiful, and organic traffic fell off a cliff. Pages that ranked for years are returning 404s. Internal links point to dead URLs. Your sitemap still references the old structure. This is the most common migration outcome — and it's entirely preventable.
No One Owns the Migration SEO
The design agency handles the look. The dev team handles the build. Your marketing person handles content. Nobody is responsible for making sure Google still ranks you after launch. SEO migration falls through the cracks because everyone assumes someone else is handling it.
34%
of site migrations lose significant organic traffic
301
redirects are the single most critical migration element
72hrs
window where most migration damage occurs
90 days
post-migration monitoring period
How We Protect Your Traffic During Migration
We've managed migrations for sites with 50 pages and sites with 50,000 pages. The process is the same — meticulous pre-work, surgical execution, and obsessive post-launch monitoring. The difference between a migration that loses traffic and one that gains it is almost always preparation.
Pre-Migration Audit & Crawl Baseline
Before anything moves, we crawl your entire existing site and document everything: every URL, every redirect chain, every inbound link, every page that ranks for anything. This is your baseline.
We identify your high-value pages — the ones driving actual traffic and revenue — and flag them for priority protection. A page that gets 50 visits a month from a keyword you rank #3 for is worth more attention than 200 pages that get zero traffic.
We also audit your current technical SEO health. If you have existing issues (broken redirects, orphaned pages, duplicate content), we fix them before migration — not after. Migrating a broken site just moves the problems to a new URL structure.
Redirect Mapping & URL Architecture
This is where most migrations fail. Redirect mapping isn't a spreadsheet someone fills out the day before launch. It's a strategic document that maps every old URL to its correct new destination.
We build redirect maps that account for:
- Every indexed URL (not just the ones in your CMS) - Every URL with inbound backlinks (these are the ones that pass authority) - Parameter URLs and faceted navigation paths - Legacy redirects that are already in place (redirect chains kill PageRank) - Non-200 status codes that need cleanup
We also design the new URL structure for SEO before the dev team builds it. URL architecture decisions made during development are nearly impossible to undo after launch without triggering another migration.
Content Parity & On-Page Preservation
Redesigns love to cut content. "It's cleaner" they say, as they delete the 800-word service description that ranks #2 for your most valuable keyword.
We audit every page's content against its current rankings and ensure the new version preserves the signals Google is rewarding. That doesn't mean copying content verbatim — it means understanding why a page ranks and making sure the new version maintains or improves those signals.
Title tags, meta descriptions, heading structures, internal linking patterns, schema markup — all of it gets mapped from old to new. Nothing gets lost in the redesign shuffle.
Launch Day Execution
We don't launch on a Friday. We don't launch before a holiday. We launch when we can monitor the site in real-time for the first 48 hours.
Launch day protocol includes:
- Deploy redirects before the new site goes live (or simultaneously) - Verify every redirect is firing correctly with automated crawl - Submit updated sitemap to Google Search Console immediately - Force-crawl high-priority URLs using the URL Inspection tool - Monitor server logs for 404 spikes and crawl errors - Check Google's index status in real-time
Most migration traffic loss happens in the first 72 hours because errors aren't caught fast enough. We catch them in minutes.
Post-Migration Monitoring (90 Days)
The migration isn't done when the site launches. It's done when Google has fully recrawled, reindexed, and re-ranked your content — and your traffic is stable or growing.
We monitor for 90 days post-migration:
- Daily crawl error reports from Search Console - Keyword position tracking across all priority terms - Organic traffic comparison (pre vs post, page by page) - Backlink status — are referring domains still pointing to live URLs? - Core Web Vitals on the new platform - Index coverage — are all pages being indexed correctly?
If something drops, we diagnose and fix it within 24 hours. Not next sprint. Not next month. Now.
RELATED INSIGHTS
Go Deeper on SEO Migration
Tactical breakdowns you can use today — no fluff, no filler.
Website Migration SEO Checklist: 47 Things to Do Before You Launch
The complete SEO migration checklist used by our team. Pre-migration, launch day, and post-migration — every step that prevents traffic loss.
SEO Migration Strategy: Planning a Site Move That Doesn't Kill Your Rankings
A strategic guide to planning website migrations — platform changes, redesigns, and domain moves — without losing organic traffic and rankings.
How to Migrate a Website Without Losing Organic Traffic
Site migrations don't have to mean traffic loss. Here's the process that preserves — and often improves — organic performance through platform changes and redesigns.
Migrating Soon? Don't Gamble Your Rankings.
Get a pre-migration audit that identifies every risk before you launch — not after your traffic tanks.