How to Migrate Your Website Without Losing SEO

Changing website platforms is one of the riskiest moments for your search traffic, and it’s one of the first things founders ask us about when a redesign means a move. Plenty of companies do lose rankings in a migration. The cause is almost always the same: the new site gets built fresh, the old URLs quietly disappear, and every ranking and backlink pointing at them now lands on a dead page. It’s preventable. Here is the checklist we run on every migration so the new site keeps everything the old one earned.

Why migrations lose traffic

Search engines rank pages, and pages live at URLs. When a site moves from one platform to another, the URL structure often changes by default. Blog posts move to a new folder, service pages get renamed, and old landing pages get left behind because nobody remembered they existed. Each of those changes breaks a link that Google, AI search tools and other websites rely on. Rankings drop page by page, and traffic follows.

Metadata gets lost the same way. Titles, descriptions and structured data were set up on the old platform, and unless someone carries them over deliberately, the new pages launch without them.

The migration checklist we run

• Pull the full sitemap. Every existing page gets listed before design starts, including the ones nobody remembers making. That list becomes the scope for redirects.

• Get into the old CMS where possible. A public crawl misses hidden pages and redirects that were set up years ago. CMS access, or a full URL export, shows everything.

• Find the pages that matter. Analytics and Search Console show which pages bring traffic and leads today. Those get protected first, and their content and metadata carry over with care.

• Map every old URL to a new one. Each page either keeps its URL or gets a permanent redirect to its closest match, so nothing points at nothing. On multilingual sites, every language gets its own map.

• Carry over metadata and structured data. Every page gets a unique title and description, plus schema that tells search engines and AI tools what the business does. On CMS pages these fill in automatically, so new posts inherit them.

• Confirm the new plan supports redirects. Some website plans limit redirects. That has to be sorted before the domain moves, so it sits on the pre-launch checklist.

• Crawl both sites and compare. After the build, an automated crawl of the old and new sites catches missing pages and broken links. Then a manual pass checks every page and language on desktop, tablet and mobile.

What we need from you

Less than most teams expect. We ask only for what is easy to share:

• Access to the old platform. Read-only is fine, or a full export of URLs.

• Your traffic data. Analytics and Search Console access, or screenshots of top pages, traffic sources and conversions.

• Domain access near launch. Ideally as a delegated user, or an introduction to whoever manages your domain so we can send them the exact records.

We pull the sitemap and backlink data ourselves, so your team doesn’t have to.

After launch

Launch day is when your domain switches to the new site. The two weeks after launch are covered by included support, which is when small issues tend to surface, and we fix anything that slipped through. A well-mapped migration keeps everything that already works, and the new site gives you a stronger base to grow from.

Common questions

Will our rankings drop for a while after a migration?

Some movement in the first weeks is normal while search engines recrawl the new site. With every URL mapped and redirected, rankings usually settle back where they were. The lasting drops come from pages that disappeared without a redirect.

Can we change our URL structure during a migration?

Yes, as long as every old URL redirects to its new home. A migration is often a good moment to clean up messy URLs, and the redirect map is what makes it safe.

Do we need to keep pages that get almost no traffic?

No. Low-value pages can be folded into stronger ones. Redirect the old URL to the page that now covers the topic, so any links pointing at it still count.