SEO migration:
a redesign that does not reset your rankings
A redesign or replatform is one of the few moments a site can lose most of its organic traffic overnight, almost always from broken redirects, changed URL structure, or content that quietly disappeared in the move. We plan and verify the migration specifically to prevent that, not as an afterthought once the new site is already live.
Where the money leaks today
A team redesigns a site, launches it, and only notices three weeks later that organic traffic has dropped by half, by which point the cause (a redirect rule that only covers the top 50 URLs, or a URL structure change nobody mapped against the old one) has been live long enough to cost real revenue. Migrations are usually treated as a design and development project with SEO as an afterthought checked once near the end, when it needs to be planned from the first URL-structure decision.
The long tail is where most migration damage actually happens: everyone remembers to redirect the twenty pages in the main navigation, and almost nobody maps the eight hundred older blog posts and long-tail pages that collectively account for a large share of total organic traffic, because checking each one individually feels like it is not worth the time until the traffic from all of them disappears at once.
What we do
We inventory every URL that currently earns traffic or links, map it to its destination on the new site, and write and test the redirect rules before launch, on staging, against the actual old URL list, not a sample. We check content parity so nothing with real traffic disappears without someone deciding that on purpose. On launch day we monitor crawl errors, indexing status and early ranking shifts in real time, with a rollback plan already agreed rather than improvised under pressure.
We specifically pull the full list of URLs that received any organic traffic in the past twelve months, not just the pages currently in the sitemap, since a page that earned traffic seasonally or occasionally is exactly the kind that gets missed by a mapping exercise based only on the current site structure.
What we need from you
Access to the old site’s analytics and Search Console, a complete URL list (not just the main navigation, the long tail matters most here), access to the new site or staging build, and the real planned launch date with enough lead time to test redirects properly. Share the actual reason for the migration (platform limitation, rebrand, consolidation of domains), since the risk profile and the specific things worth double-checking differ meaningfully between those scenarios.
How we measure
Redirect coverage (percentage of old high-traffic URLs correctly mapped), crawl error rate in the first week, and organic sessions and rankings at 30 and 60 days post-launch against the pre-migration baseline. We compare crawl error rate and indexed-page count daily for the first two weeks post-launch specifically, since that window is when a redirect mapping gap shows up fastest, well before it would appear in a monthly traffic report, with the rollback plan ready to execute the same day if the data calls for it.
Price and timeline
| Option | Price | What it covers | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Launch or audit | from $1,200 | URL mapping, redirect rules, launch-day monitoring, 30-day tracking | 2 to 4 weeks |
| Monthly management | from $900 / month | Extended monitoring and fixes for larger or multi-phase migrations | monthly, no lock-in |
| Full control, handover to your team | from $2,000 | Full mapping and monitoring plan handed to your development team before launch | 3 weeks |
Related
A migration is also the natural moment to fix pre-existing technical debt, since the new platform or structure is already being touched; bundling a technical SEO audit into the same project is usually cheaper than doing the audit separately a few months later once the old issues have carried over unchanged into the new build. For a multilingual site, the migration plan has to account for hreflang pairs across every language at once, which is a materially bigger mapping task than a single-language migration and worth scoping as such from the start. Run this alongside technical SEO audit to fix pre-existing issues before they migrate too, and with Core Web Vitals and speed if the new platform changes performance. Full services: SEO and content and analytics for the monitoring layer. We apply this same before/after discipline in the analytics warehouse case study. Get in touch before you set a launch date, not after.
FAQ
How much does an SEO migration cost?
From $1,200 for a site under a few thousand pages, covering mapping, redirect rules and 30-day monitoring. Larger multilingual sites or full domain changes run $2,500 to $5,000.
Can you guarantee no traffic loss?
No honest agency can guarantee zero loss, since some fluctuation is normal around any major change; what we guarantee is a mapped, tested redirect plan and fast detection if something goes wrong, which is what actually prevents a disaster rather than a small dip.
How long before we know the migration worked?
Indexing and crawl health are visible within days; a confident read on rankings and traffic typically needs 4 to 6 weeks post-launch to separate real signal from normal noise.
What if we have already migrated and lost traffic?
We run the same mapping and redirect audit retroactively; recovering from a bad migration is slower than preventing one, but the diagnosis process is the same.
What do you need from us?
Access to the old site's analytics and a full URL list, access to the new site or staging environment, and the planned launch date with enough lead time to test redirects before it happens.