Move Your Site Without Losing Your Rankings
A move can keep almost everything you have built, or lose most of it. The difference is entirely in the preparation.
Why migrations lose traffic
Not because moving is risky. Because nobody wrote down what was there before.
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The old site earns
Years of pages, rankings and links, most of which nobody has a list of.
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The addresses change
Main pages get redirected. Hundreds of smaller ones do not. Google finds dead ends.
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Everything is mapped first
Every old address recorded, matched to a real destination, tested before launch and verified after.
A migration is the fastest way to lose everything you have built in search.
New domain, new platform, new URL structure, or just a redesign that changed the addresses. Done carefully you keep almost all of it. Done carelessly you hand back years of progress for a nicer set of fonts.
The difference is entirely in the preparation.
The Honest Version: Most Losses Are Avoidable
When a site loses traffic after a move, it is almost never because moving is inherently risky.
It is nearly always the mapping
Somebody redirected the main pages and forgot the hundreds of smaller ones. Or sent everything to the homepage, which Google treats as a dead end. Or changed the addresses and never told anybody.
Some drop is normal
Even a perfect migration usually dips for a few weeks while Google re-learns the site. Anyone promising zero movement is overselling. What matters is that it comes back, and that it comes back to where it was.
The worst time to call me
Is after. Repairing a bad migration costs more than doing it properly, and some of it cannot be repaired at all because the old site is gone and nobody kept a list of what was on it.
What Goes Wrong
The same handful of mistakes, over and over.
Nobody listed the old URLs
You cannot redirect what you did not record. Once the old site is down, that list is unrecoverable.
Everything points at the homepage
The lazy shortcut. Google reads an irrelevant redirect as a dead end and the value does not transfer.
Redirect chains
Old goes to interim goes to new. Each hop loses a little and some stop being followed.
Internal links never updated
Every link inside your own content still points at the old address, so your whole site runs through redirects.
The new site blocks crawlers
A staging setting left switched on. The single most expensive checkbox in SEO.
Nobody measured before
With no baseline, you cannot tell whether you lost anything or how much.
How I Run a Migration
1. Record everything first
Every existing address, what ranks, what gets traffic, and what other sites link to. This happens before anything changes, because afterwards it is too late.
2. Map old to new, one by one
Each old address gets a specific destination that genuinely matches it. Where there is no match, that is a decision made deliberately rather than by default.
3. Test before launch
The redirect map gets checked on the staging site. Every rule requested, not read from a spreadsheet.
4. Launch and verify the same day
Every redirect requested live, crawl settings confirmed, sitemaps resubmitted, internal links repointed so nothing on the new site travels through a redirect.
5. Watch for six weeks
Search Console will show what Google is struggling with. Most post-migration problems appear in week two, not week one.
When You Do Not Need This
Your addresses are not changing. A redesign that keeps every URL is not a migration. It is a redesign, and the risk is much lower.
The site is brand new. Nothing to preserve means nothing to lose.
You have already moved and nothing dropped. Then it went fine. I will not invent a problem to fix.
What You Can Check Yourself First
If you have already moved and you are not sure whether it went well, these four checks tell you within about twenty minutes.
1. Test a handful of old addresses
Take five or six URLs from the old site, ideally your most important pages, and request them. Each one should send you to a genuinely matching page on the new site in a single step.
If they land on the homepage instead, that is the most common migration failure and it is costing you.
2. Compare what Google has kept
Search site:yourdomain.com and compare the rough number against what you had before. A large drop that has not recovered after six weeks means Google has not accepted the new addresses.
3. Look for the old site still being indexed
If the old domain is still live and indexed alongside the new one, you are competing with yourself. Both versions split whatever you had.
4. Check Search Console for a spike in 404s
The Pages report will show a jump in not-found URLs starting on your launch date. That number is a direct count of what was missed in the mapping.
What a Migration Actually Costs You If It Goes Wrong
It is worth being concrete about this, because the risk is usually described vaguely.
The traffic does not simply pause
Pages that lose their redirects lose their history. Google treats them as new, which means they start again from nothing rather than resuming where they were. Rebuilding that takes months, sometimes longer than the original climb.
Links pointing at you stop working
Every link another site has ever given you points at an old address. Without a redirect, that link now leads to a dead end and passes you nothing. You cannot ask those sites to update, and most would not.
And the damage is delayed
This is what makes migrations dangerous. The first fortnight often looks fine, because Google is still serving what it remembers. The drop arrives in week three or four, by which point the connection to the launch is less obvious and people start blaming updates instead.
Price and Turnaround
Scope |
Price |
Turnaround |
|---|---|---|
Under 100 URLs |
$599 |
1 week |
100 – 1,000 URLs |
$999 |
1 – 2 weeks |
Over 1,000 URLs |
From $1,499 |
2 – 4 weeks |
Covers the pre-move record, the mapping, launch-day verification and six weeks of monitoring. Repairing a migration that already went wrong is quoted separately and usually costs more.
Common Questions
How much traffic will I lose?
With a careful migration, usually a dip of a few weeks and then recovery. I will not promise zero movement because that is not how it works.
How long before it settles?
Four to eight weeks for most sites. Larger sites take longer because Google has more to recrawl.
Can you fix a migration that already went wrong?
Often, if the old URL list still exists somewhere. If nobody recorded it and the old site is gone, some of it is unrecoverable and I will say so.
Do I need to keep the old domain?
Yes, and for years. The redirects only work while you own it.
When should I bring you in?
Before launch. Ideally before the new site is finished, so the URL structure can still be changed.
Moving soon?
Talk to me before the new site is finished, while the URL structure can still change. The pre-launch look is free.
Or email info@shazzseo.com