When a service business changes its domain or rebuilds on a new platform, every page Google has indexed has to be found again at a new address. Website migration SEO is the work of getting those pages, and the rankings they earned, across in one piece. Do it well and the calls and form fills that came from search keep coming after launch.
Our website redesign checklist walks through a full redesign from planning to the first 30 days. Below is the narrower part of a site migration that decides whether your rankings and traffic survive: what to map, what to cut, how to build the redirects, and what to tell Google once the new site is live.
What counts as a website migration
Google’s guide to site moves with URL changes covers three kinds of change: moving from HTTP to HTTPS, changing the domain name, and changing URL paths. For a service business, that usually looks like one of these:
- You’re moving to a new domain after a rebrand or a merger.
- You’re switching platforms, say leaving Squarespace or Wix, and the new system formats URLs differently.
- You’re reorganizing your services, so a page like /services/tax-prep/ becomes /tax-preparation/.
- You’re moving from HTTP to HTTPS, which changes every URL on the site.
A hosting change that keeps every URL exactly as it was is a lighter job, and Google documents it separately. Most redesigns do change the URLs, though. Plan the SEO side alongside the web development work from the start.
How a migration affects SEO, and how long recovery takes
Plan for a dip in search visibility and then a recovery. Google’s site move guide says rankings can bounce around while it recrawls and reindexes a site, and a medium-sized site can take a few weeks or more before the new URLs replace the old ones in results. Google moves the site one URL at a time, and it doesn’t count the move as done until Googlebot has visited every old and new URL at least once.
The redirects themselves don’t cost you anything. The same guide says 301s and other permanent redirects don’t lose PageRank. The traffic losses we see come from mistakes, like a page left without a redirect or a staging noindex tag that hides the new site from Google.
Google also recommends changing one thing at a time. Its help page for domain moves warns that a new domain plus new URLs in the same launch will probably cost some traffic while Google reassesses each page. If the business can wait, move the domain first and restructure second.
Before the move: Crawl the old site and list every URL
Every redesign needs a content inventory. A migration needs a complete one, because any URL missing from your list won’t get a redirect. Pull URLs from each of these places and merge them into one spreadsheet:
- Your XML sitemaps, which list the pages you’ve already submitted to Google.
- Google Analytics, for the pages that get visits from search and ads.
- The Links report in Search Console, which shows which of your pages other sites link to.
- An export from your CMS, plus a crawl of the live site.
- PDFs and images that people download or link to, since those URLs move too.
Remove the duplicates, then add columns for organic clicks, inbound links, and how often each page is internally linked from your menus and other pages. Flag every page that has brought in a lead. Also save the last few months of traffic and conversions by page, so you have something to compare against after launch.
Two setup jobs belong here too. Verify the old and new sites in Search Console, including the www and non-www versions. Then save the list of outside sites that link to you, so you can ask them to update those links later. If you verify Search Console with an HTML file, copy that file to the new site so verification doesn’t break at launch.
Decide which pages to keep, merge, or retire
A migration is the cheapest moment to prune, because you’re touching every URL anyway. Put each row of the inventory into one of three groups.
Keep
Pages that earn organic clicks or inbound links stay, ideally at the same URL. So does any page that has brought in a lead. If the URL has to change, the page gets a one-to-one redirect to its new address.
Merge
Thin pages on the same subject, like near-identical location pages or old blog posts about one service, can become one stronger page. Google’s guide says it’s fine to redirect several old URLs to one new page when that page covers what they used to say.
Retire
Pages with no traffic and no links that no longer match what you sell can go. Google says removed content should return a 404 or 410 status code on the new site. Don’t point them all at the homepage. Google may treat a pile of irrelevant redirects as soft 404 errors.
What pruning looked like for OrangeBag
When we rebuilt OrangeBag’s website, the old Squarespace site had 507 pages, 369 errors, and a site health score of 78%. We cut it to 106 pages. Fourteen days after launch, the new site brought in five commercial leads in one week, and three of them came through new pages. The full story is in our case study on the OrangeBag rebuild.
Build the 301 redirect map and avoid redirect chains
Your redirect map is the inventory spreadsheet with one more column: the final new URL for every old URL you keep or merge. Google’s documentation on redirects and Google Search recommends server-side permanent redirects, meaning a 301 or 308. Use JavaScript redirects only when nothing else is possible. If a page fails to render, Google may never see them.
Here’s what three rows look like for an accounting firm moving to a new URL structure:
- Old URL /services/tax-prep/, new URL /tax-preparation/, status 301. The content stays, so it’s a one-to-one match.
- Old URL /blog/payroll-tips-2019/, new URL /payroll-services/, status 301. It’s one of two thin posts merged into that service page.
- Old URL /holiday-hours-2021/, no new URL, status 410. It had no clicks and no links, so it’s retired.
Point every redirect at the final destination
Sites that have been redesigned before often carry old redirects. Say /services-old/ already points to /services/, and /services/ is now moving to /what-we-do/. Update the first rule so it goes straight to /what-we-do/. Googlebot will follow up to 10 hops, but Google suggests keeping a chain to three hops or fewer, and always under five.
Test the map before launch
Load the map on the staging site and run every old URL through a crawler or a short script. Each one should make a single 301 or 308 hop to a page that loads with a 200 status.
The website migration SEO checklist for launch day
The launch steps from the redesign checklist still apply. A migration adds these, in the order we run them:
- Turn on the full redirect map in one release, since Google recommends moving small and medium sites all at once.
- Check that every new page has a canonical tag pointing to its own new URL, and that none still point at the old domain or the staging site.
- Swap the old URLs in menus and body copy for the new ones, so visitors and Googlebot don’t pass through a redirect on every click.
- Remove the noindex rules and robots.txt blocks used on staging.
- Submit the new XML sitemap in Search Console. Leave a sitemap of the old URLs in there too, so you can watch it empty out.
- Submit the new sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools as well, and use its Site Move tool if the domain changed.
- Update the website link in your Google Business Profile and in your social and directory listings.
- Point every ad campaign at the new landing page URLs.
- Check that your structured data, such as LocalBusiness or Organization schema, lists the new URLs.
- Make sure Google Analytics is recording visits and key events on the new domain.
After launch: Search Console, Change of Address, and tracking
Use the Change of Address tool for domain moves only
If you moved to a new domain, submit the move through the Change of Address tool in Search Console for the old site. It’s only for moves between domains or subdomains. Google says not to use it for an HTTP to HTTPS move, a switch between www and non-www, or path changes within the same domain.
First, 301 the old homepage to the new one, which Google lists as required pre-work. Open the tool from a domain-level property (example.com, not example.com/blog). Some of its pre-move checks must pass before the request goes through, and the rest only show a warning.
You need owner access to both properties from the same Google account. Submit every variant of the old domain, including www. Google forwards signals from the old site for 180 days, and it recommends keeping the old domain registered for at least a year so nobody else can buy it and use it.
Keep the redirects for at least a year
Google’s site move guide says to keep redirects as long as you can, and generally for at least one year. That gives Google time to pass signals to the new site, including credit for links that other sites still point at your old URLs. For visitors, it suggests keeping them for good, and we agree.
Check these reports every week for the first two months
- The Pages report in Search Console, for new “Not found” errors and any spike in other crawl errors.
- Both sitemaps in the Sitemaps report, where indexed pages should fall on the old one and rise on the new one.
- The Performance report, where clicks, impressions, and rankings should move over to the new URLs.
- Leads by landing page in Google Analytics, compared with the pre-launch baseline you saved.
On top of that weekly routine, we run three fixed post-migration checkpoints:
- On day 1, crawl the old URL list against the live site and run your top five pages through URL Inspection.
- In week 1, open the Page indexing report. Old URLs belong under “Page with redirect.” A “Not found (404)” on an old URL means a row is missing from the map, and “Redirect error” usually means a chain or a loop. Fix them, then click Validate fix.
- At month 1, compare clicks and keyword rankings for your top 20 pages with the pre-migration baseline. If a page vanishes, check its redirect and canonical tag.
Once traffic settles, look at how well the new pages turn visits into calls. Our guide on how to raise conversions on the new site walks through that. AI assistants pull answers from crawlable pages too, so a clean migration also protects the work you’ve put into SEO and AEO.
When to hire a website migration SEO service
A careful developer working from this checklist can often move a small site that keeps its domain and most of its URLs. Bring in outside help when there’s more at stake or more pages to move:
- You’re changing domains, especially after a rebrand.
- The site has hundreds of URLs or years of blog posts with inbound links.
- Most of your new business comes from organic search or Google Maps.
- You’re changing platforms and URL structure in the same project.
When you compare website migration SEO services, ask to see a sample redirect map, and ask who tests the redirects before launch. Also ask how long they’ll watch Search Console afterward. Google can take a few weeks or more to show the new URLs.
At Pink Fins, migrations are part of our SEO and AEO services. The people who write your redirect map are the same people tracking your rankings after launch.
Frequently asked questions
How do you migrate a website without losing search rankings?
Map every old URL to its closest new page and set up server-side 301 redirects. If the site is small or medium-sized, launch it all at once. Afterward, submit the new sitemap, fix your internal links, and check Search Console for “Not found” errors every week. Expect rankings to move around for a few weeks while Google recrawls the site.
How do you minimize the organic traffic drop after a site rebuild?
Keep URLs the same wherever you can, and change one thing at a time. Move the domain first, for example, and restructure later. Make sure no staging noindex tag survives launch, and fix broken redirects the week they show up. Then ask the sites that send you the most visitors to update their links.
How much does an SEO consultant for a website migration cost?
It mostly depends on how many URLs need a decision and whether the domain is changing. A 50-page site that keeps its domain is a much smaller job than a 500-page domain move. Ask for a fixed-scope quote that names the redirect map and the checks after launch.
Which tools help monitor performance after a migration?
Google Search Console does most of the work, mainly the Pages, Sitemaps, and Performance reports plus URL Inspection. Google Analytics tells you whether leads from each landing page are holding up. A site crawler and your server logs show broken redirects and old URLs that Googlebot still asks for.
Plan the move before you set a launch date
Start this week with the URL inventory, since every other step depends on it. Once each row says keep, merge, or retire, the redirect map is mostly a matter of filling in the last column.
If you’d like one team to build the new site and handle the redirects, take a look at our web design and development services.