Website migration SEO that protects your rankings through launch

Website migration SEO is the planning and testing that protects organic traffic when a site changes significantly, whether that is a new platform, a redesign, a new URL structure or a new domain. It includes benchmarking current performance, mapping redirects, testing the new site before launch and monitoring after go-live, so rankings transfer to the new URLs.

Some short-term fluctuation is common while search engines recrawl and process the changes, even on well-run migrations. Serious, lasting losses usually come from missing redirects, dropped content or indexing mistakes, and those are preventable. No one can promise zero movement, but careful SEO migration planning keeps the risk low and recovery quick.

As early as possible, ideally while the new site is being planned and before designs and URL structures are final. That's when SEO input is cheapest to act on. We recommend involving us at least six to eight weeks before launch, and very large sites benefit from SEO involvement from the start of the project.

Redirect mapping is matching every old URL to the most relevant new URL and implementing a permanent 301 redirect between them. It preserves the rankings and backlink value of the old page. Good mapping avoids redirect chains and never sends large numbers of old pages to the homepage, which search engines often treat as soft 404s.

Use 301 redirects for permanent moves, which covers almost every migration. A 301 tells search engines the old URL has been replaced and that signals should consolidate on the new one. Temporary 302 redirects are meant for short-term changes. Google may eventually treat long-standing 302s as permanent, but 301s send the clearest signal from day one.

Keep redirects for as long as possible. Google recommends maintaining them for at least a year after a site move, and we suggest keeping them indefinitely where your platform allows. Old URLs can keep receiving links, bookmarks and traffic for years, and removing redirects throws that value away.

A domain migration needs one-to-one redirects for every URL, both domains verified in Search Console, a Change of Address request, updated sitemaps and a Bing Webmaster Tools update. We also move internal links, canonicals and hreflang to the new domain and contact sites with important backlinks to ask them to update their links.

Yes. We compare the old site's URLs, reconstructed from archived crawls, analytics and backlink data, with the new site to find missing redirects, lost content and indexing problems. Recovery work focuses first on the pages that drove the most traffic and revenue. The sooner we start, the more value can be recovered.

Yes, that's the usual setup. Your developers or web agency build the site, and we provide the SEO requirements, redirect map, staging QA and launch checklist. We join planning calls, review tickets and test on staging. We fit into your project management tools and release process rather than adding a parallel one.

It depends on site size, the type of migration, the number of markets and how much monitoring you need after launch. A redesign that keeps its URLs needs far less work than a multi-country domain migration. We scope each project after reviewing your current site and the migration plan, then quote for the full engagement.

Well-managed migrations often return to pre-launch traffic levels within a few weeks, while large sites can take a few months for search engines to fully process every change. Domain migrations generally take longer than redesigns. We monitor against the baseline throughout, so you always know whether recovery is on track.