Website Migration SEO
A new website, a new domain or a new platform can undo years of search visibility in a weekend if the old addresses are left behind. Website migration SEO is the planning and checking that carries your existing rankings, links and leads over to the new site. At OnlyaClick it is part of our SEO services.
You get a complete map of every old URL and where it goes, tested before launch and monitored after it.
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What Migration SEO Is
Search engines know your site as a list of addresses. Every page that ranks, every link another site points at you and every bookmark a customer saved is tied to one of them. When a redesign renames pages, a platform switch changes the URL pattern, or the business moves to a new domain, those addresses stop working unless each one is sent to the right new page.
Google’s own site move guidance calls mapping old URLs to new ones essential, recommends permanent server redirects such as 301 or 308, and says to keep them for at least a year. Migration SEO turns that guidance into a checked plan for your specific site.
Who It Is For
Any business whose website earns calls or sales from search and is about to change in a way visitors would notice in the address bar. Common cases are a full redesign, a move from one platform to another such as Wix or Squarespace to WordPress or Shopify, a rebrand onto a new domain, merging two websites into one, or restructuring service and location pages.
It is simplest when we join before the new site is built. We can also step in after a launch that went badly, to recover what can still be recovered.
What the Engagement Includes
A full inventory of old URLs
A crawl of the current site combined with your sitemaps, Google Search Console, analytics and backlink data, so pages that only outside sites link to are not missed.
The redirect map
Every old URL matched to its closest new equivalent, one to one. Not everything pointed at the home page, which Google specifically advises against, and no chains of redirect after redirect.
Content and on-page parity
A check that the pages which earn traffic keep their substance, titles, descriptions, headings, internal links and structured data on the new site, instead of being trimmed in the redesign.
Staging review
A crawl of the new site before launch, looking for noindex tags left on from development, blocked resources, missing canonical tags, broken links and slow templates.
Launch day and after
Redirects tested live, new sitemaps submitted, the Change of Address tool used in Search Console when the domain itself changes, and your Google Business Profile and key listings updated to the new address.
How It Works, Step by Step
1. Consultation. We learn what is changing, when, who is building the new site, and which pages bring in the most business today.
2. Baseline. We record current rankings, traffic, conversions and indexed pages, so there is a clear before picture to compare against.
3. Map and review. We build the redirect map and review the new site on staging, then hand your developer a written list of what must be fixed before launch.
4. Launch. We pick a lower traffic window where possible, test the redirects as soon as the site is live, and submit the new sitemap.
5. Monitor. For the following weeks we watch crawl errors, indexing and traffic on both old and new URLs, and fix anything that slipped through.
How to Measure the Results
Redirect coverage: the share of old URLs that land on a working, relevant new page, with no 404 errors on pages that once earned traffic or links.
Indexing of the new site: new URLs appearing in the Search Console Page indexing report as the old ones drop out.
Organic traffic against the baseline: clicks and impressions to the key pages, compared with the weeks before launch.
Leads: calls and form submissions, tracked the same way before and after so the numbers are comparable.
Google says rankings may fluctuate while it recrawls a moved site, and that a medium sized site can take a few weeks or more to settle. We cannot remove that period. The aim is to keep it short and to make sure nothing is permanently lost.
How It Connects to Our Other Services
Migration SEO is part of our SEO services. It often begins with a technical SEO audit of the current site, so known problems are fixed in the move instead of copied into it. When our website development team builds the new site, the redirect map and SEO checks are part of the project. Businesses with several locations get the same care for every location page as part of multi-location SEO, and local SEO clients have their Business Profile links updated on launch day.
Website Migration SEO Questions
Will we lose rankings when we launch the new website?
Some movement is normal. Google says rankings may fluctuate while it recrawls and reindexes a moved site. Lasting losses usually come from missing redirects, lost content or pages left blocked from indexing, and those are what the migration plan is built to prevent.
How long should the old redirects stay in place?
Google recommends keeping them for at least one year, and suggests considering keeping them indefinitely for visitors. If you are changing domains, keep the old domain registered and renewed so the redirects keep working.
Do we need the Change of Address tool in Search Console?
Only when the domain or subdomain changes. Google says it is not needed for a move from http to https, a switch between www and non-www, or new page addresses on the same domain. Those moves rely on redirects and an updated sitemap.
Book a Migration SEO Consultation
Tell us your current website, what is changing and your planned launch date. The earlier we see the plan, the more we can protect. If the new site is already live and traffic has dropped, tell us that too, and we will look at what can be recovered.