SEO Site Migration

What the service delivers Pre-migration SEO baseline audit Before any migration work begins, we crawl your entire current site and establish a complete baseline: every indexed URL and its current keyword ranking positions, every internal link and its anchor text, every piece of meta data including title tags, meta descriptions, canonical tags, and structured data markup, and every backlink pointing to your domain from external sources. This baseline serves as the benchmark against which post-migration performance is measured and the reference document from which the redirect map and meta data transfer specifications are built. Full URL mapping and redirect implementation specification Every indexed URL on the current site receives a mapped destination on the new site — one to one, old URL to new URL, with no redirect chains and no redirects pointing to the homepage as a catch-all. For migrations involving URL structure changes (for example, moving from /category/product-name/ to /product-name/ or from .php extensions to clean URLs), we build a complete redirect mapping table specifying the exact 301 redirect destination for every current URL, prioritized by page authority and organic traffic contribution. This specification is delivered to your development team in a format ready for implementation — no interpretation required. Meta data and structured data transfer specification Every title tag, meta description, canonical tag, hreflang tag (for international sites), and structured data markup block present on the current site is documented and mapped to its equivalent page on the new platform. For CMS migrations where meta data fields differ between platforms — for example, migrating from WordPress with Yoast SEO to a custom CMS — we provide field-by-field mapping specifications ensuring no meta data is lost or defaulted to CMS-generated placeholders during the transfer. XML sitemap and robots.txt configuration Post-migration XML sitemaps contain only new platform URLs with correct canonical references, submitted to Google Search Console immediately after launch to accelerate re-crawl of priority pages. Robots.txt configuration on the new platform is audited to confirm no priority page categories are accidentally blocked — a common error during CMS migrations where default platform robots.txt settings block staging environment patterns that inadvertently match production URLs. Core Web Vitals baseline and performance comparison We measure Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, and Interaction to Next Paint on the current site before migration and on the new site after launch, identifying any performance regressions introduced by the new platform, theme, or page builder. Core Web Vitals failures introduced during migration — particularly LCP above 2.5 seconds caused by unoptimized image formats or render-blocking scripts from new theme assets — suppress rankings in competitive results and require remediation before the next Google crawl cycle compounds the impact. Post-migration technical verification audit — within 7 days of launch Within 7 days of the new site going live, we conduct a full technical verification audit confirming: all 301 redirects return correct HTTP status codes with no chains or loops, canonical tags on every migrated page point to the correct new platform URL, Google Search Console is crawling and indexing new platform URLs at the expected rate with no coverage errors on priority pages, and XML sitemaps contain no references to old platform URLs or non-canonical variants. Every issue identified in the post-migration audit is resolved within the service scope at no additional cost. Ranking and traffic monitoring for 45 days post-launch We monitor keyword ranking positions and organic traffic on the new platform daily for 45 days following launch, comparing against the pre-migration baseline to identify any rankings that have not transferred correctly. Post-migration ranking fluctuation is normal for 2–4 weeks as Google re-evaluates migrated pages — we distinguish between expected temporary movement and genuine technical failures requiring intervention, and act on the latter within 48 hours of identification. Who this service is for This service covers site migrations for sites between 500 and 5,000 indexed pages, including CMS-to-CMS migrations (WordPress to Webflow, Magento to Shopify, custom platform to WordPress), URL restructuring migrations, site redesigns involving URL or structure changes, and HTTPS migrations where HTTP to HTTPS redirect configuration requires SEO verification across the full page set. For sites under 500 pages migrating domain only with no URL structure or platform changes, see SEO Domain Migration (€399). For enterprise sites above 5,000 pages or migrations involving multiple simultaneous changes — domain change, CMS change, URL restructure, and international hreflang reconfiguration combined — see SEO Enterprise Site Migration (€4,999). What a migration without SEO support costs A site migration executed without a structured SEO plan produces five specific, measurable failures that compound with every Google crawl cycle they go unresolved: Redirect chains passing reduced link authority from old URLs to new URLs — each additional hop in the chain reduces authority transfer by approximately 15%, meaning a two-hop chain passes roughly 72% of the original link equity instead of the 90–99% a direct 301 redirect transfers. Canonical tag errors on the new platform defaulting to homepage or incorrect URLs — instructing Google to treat every migrated page as a duplicate of a single page, consolidating all ranking signals onto one URL and stripping every other page of independent ranking potential. Meta data loss where CMS migration tools transfer content but not SEO-specific fields — leaving title tags defaulting to page titles, meta descriptions empty, and structured data markup absent on every migrated page simultaneously. XML sitemap misconfiguration referencing old platform URLs — directing Googlebot's crawl budget toward URLs that return 301 redirects rather than directly to new platform pages, slowing re-indexation of the full page set by weeks. Core Web Vitals regressions introduced by new theme assets — where a new platform's default JavaScript libraries and CSS frameworks increase LCP from 1.8 seconds on the old site to 4.2 seconds on the new one, triggering ranking suppression in competitive results from the first Google evaluation of the new platform. Each of these failures is preventable with pre-migration planning and post-migration verification. None of them are recoverable quickly once Google has re-evaluated the new site and competitors have filled the ranking positions vacated by the traffic drop.