Site migration
Moving URLs, hosts or platforms while preserving search equity.
Site migration in plain English
A site migration is any major change that affects how search engines see your site: a new domain, a new platform, a redesign that changes URLs, a move to HTTPS, merging sites or changing site structure. Google's site move guide covers moves where URLs change.
How to check a site move went well
Before a migration, export a list of your current URLs, top landing pages and pages with links. After launch, test that old URLs redirect correctly, the new site isn't blocked by robots.txt or noindex, the sitemap is updated and Search Console is set up for the new version. Keep monitoring for several weeks.
A worked example
A garden centre moves from an old ecommerce platform to a new one. Before launch, it lists every old URL that gets traffic or links, maps each to its new equivalent and tests the redirects on a staging site. After launch it checks Search Console daily for errors. Traffic wobbles for a few weeks and then recovers.
Where it usually goes wrong
- Launching without a redirect map.
- Changing domain, design, content and URLs all at once if you can avoid it.
- Leaving the staging site's "noindex" in place.
- Assuming the web designer has handled SEO without asking.
Why a small site should care
Migrations are where many small businesses lose rankings they spent years building. The usual cause is simple: old URLs aren't redirected, content is dropped, or the new site launches with indexing blocked. With planning, most of that risk can be avoided. Migrations are separate projects from AffordSEO's monthly plan.
It's also when everyone is busiest, which is why SEO checks get skipped. Building them into the project plan from the start costs far less than recovering lost rankings afterwards.
Connected technical terms
- 301 redirect: A permanent redirect, commonly used in migrations.
- Redirect: Sending users and crawlers from one URL to another.
- HTTPS: Encrypted HTTP: expected for modern sites.
- Canonical URL: The preferred URL for duplicate or similar content, declared with rel=canonical.
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