Website Migration Without Losing Traffic or Rankings

Why migrations go wrong

Moving a website looks simple until rankings drop, forms stop working, images vanish or the checkout breaks. The usual causes are predictable: URLs change without redirects, metadata and structured data are lost, internal links break, robots or noindex settings are copied from a staging site, tracking disappears, and nobody tests before switching the domain. A careful process prevents almost all of these problems. Search engines are forgiving of a well-executed migration, but not of a careless one.

Types of migration we handle

• Platform migrations: for example Wix, Squarespace or Joomla to WordPress; WooCommerce to Shopify; Magento upgrades or moves.
• Hosting migrations: to faster, more secure, better-supported servers with minimal downtime.
• Domain and rebrand migrations: moving to a new domain name or structure with correct redirects and change-of-address handling.
• HTTPS and protocol changes and www or non-www consolidation.
• Redesign migrations where new templates and URL structures replace old ones. See website redesign.
• Multi-site consolidation: merging several sites or blogs into one stronger domain.
• International and multilingual restructures with hreflang. See international SEO.

Our migration process

1. Audit and inventory

We crawl the current site to record every URL, title, description, heading, canonical, schema, redirect, image, form and script. We also pull organic landing-page, ranking and backlink data so we know which pages matter most.

2. Migration plan and URL mapping

Every old URL is mapped to its best new destination. Where URLs change, we prepare 301 redirects. We decide which content to keep, merge or retire, and flag pages with strong rankings or links for special care.

3. Build and staging

The new site is built or copied to a protected staging environment. We check that content, media, forms, integrations, tracking and structured data are intact, and that staging is blocked from search engines.

4. Pre-launch testing

We test redirects, internal links, mobile layouts, page speed, forms, checkout and payments, analytics events, robots.txt, sitemaps and canonical tags. Our technical SEO specialists sign off before go-live.

5. Launch

We choose a low-traffic window, lower DNS TTL beforehand, switch over, remove staging restrictions, submit the new sitemap and verify everything again on the live site.

6. Post-launch monitoring

For several weeks we watch crawl errors, indexation, rankings, traffic and conversions in Search Console and analytics, and fix issues quickly. Short-term fluctuations can occur after any migration; what matters is catching and resolving problems early.

E-commerce migrations

Product data, variants, categories, customers, orders, reviews, coupons and URL structures need special handling. We migrate data in tested batches, preserve order history where possible, set up payment and shipping, and make sure product pages keep their SEO equity.

Email and DNS

Moving hosts can disrupt email if DNS records are mishandled. We document existing MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records and keep mail running through the change.

What you get

• Migration plan, URL map and redirect file
• Pre- and post-migration checklists
• Staging review before launch
• Post-launch monitoring report
• Documentation and ongoing maintenance if you want it

When not to migrate

Sometimes a migration is unnecessary. If your current platform works and the issue is design or speed, optimisation can be cheaper and safer. We will tell you honestly when moving is not worth the risk.