SEO Migration Services That Protect Your Rankings
A bad site move can cost half your organic traffic, and some sites never win it back. Our SEO migration services exist to stop that. We map every URL, plan every redirect, and watch your rankings until they settle.
What SEO Migration Services Cover, And When You Need Them
The short version: everything that decides whether Google still recognises your site after it changes.
SEO migration services protect your search rankings while your website goes through a big change. Google has spent years learning what your pages are about and how much to trust them. Change those pages' addresses without a plan, and that trust does not move across on its own. So the work is part planning, part checking, and part watching what Google does next.
The moves that put rankings at risk
Any of these changes can cost you traffic, so each one is covered:
- New domain. A rebrand or a company name change, with every address on the site changing at once.
- New platform. Moving from, say, WordPress to Shopify, which usually rewrites your URLs even when nobody asked it to.
- Redesign on the same domain. New templates, and often quietly dropped headings, content and internal links.
- Changed URL structure. Tidying old addresses into new folders, one of the most underrated ways to lose traffic.
- HTTP to HTTPS, or new hosting. Small on paper, but still worth the checks.
- Merging two sites. After an acquisition, or when separate country sites fold into one, which is where our international SEO work overlaps.
There is an upside. A move is the one moment a business will happily fix site structure, speed and tired content, because everything is open anyway. Handled well, a migration leaves the site stronger than it started, and for stores changing platform it pairs naturally with our ecommerce SEO work.
Why A Website Migration Loses Traffic When SEO Is Left Out
Traffic does not fall after a move because Google dislikes change. It falls because signals get lost in the handover, and nearly always in one of a handful of known ways.
The usual suspects
- Missing redirects. Old pages die with a 404 error, and their rankings die with them.
- Redirect chains. One address hops to another, then another, and a little authority leaks at every hop.
- Unmapped URLs. Nobody listed every old address before the build, so nobody noticed what got left behind.
- An indexed staging site. Google finds the half-built copy and treats your real site as its duplicate.
- Lost tracking. The analytics tag never made it into the new templates, so nobody can even measure the damage.
- Dropped meta data. Rebuilt templates ship without the titles, descriptions and headings that earned the old rankings.
Every one of these is preventable, but only before launch. That is why the classic mistake is calling for help a week after the move, once the cheap fixes have expired. SEO migration services belong in the project before the build starts, not in the post-mortem. Even Google's own site move guidance expects a properly run move to cause some temporary fluctuation. The difference between temporary and permanent is the list above. If your move has already happened and traffic fell, the same checks work in reverse. Recovery is possible, just slower than prevention would have been.
Our SEO Migration Process: Before, During And After Launch
Three phases, and the first one is where migrations are actually won.
The process is the same whether you are moving a thirty-page brochure site or a store with fifty thousand URLs. Only the time changes. Before anything else we benchmark, because nobody can prove a move worked without a record of what it replaced. Then we build the two documents the whole migration hangs on.
The first is the URL map, a spreadsheet with one row per old address. Its columns are the ones we actually work with: old URL, new URL, redirect type, match quality, owner and status. The second is the launch day runbook: the ordered go and no-go checks across redirects, sitemaps, canonicals and tracking. Neither one is a secret. Ask on the first call and we will show you both, filled in, so you can judge the work before paying for it.
Every job starts with the same crawl as our technical SEO audit. The reason is simple: you want to move a healthy site, not ship old problems to a new address. Once the site is live, our SEO migration services run to a published standard, and the next section spells it out.
Before launch
We benchmark 28 days of traffic, crawl every URL and build the redirect map. The new site gets tested on staging while it stays hidden from Google.
Launch day
Redirects switch on, sitemaps and canonicals go live, and Search Console is told about the move. The tracking tag gets checked before anyone celebrates.
The 90 days after
We watch rankings, indexed pages and 404s against the benchmark. Checkpoints at day 7, 30, 60 and 90 catch drift while it is still cheap to fix.
Related: Technical SEO audit · SEO audit services
The Standard We Hold Our SEO Migration Services To
Every agency promises a safe move. We would rather publish what safe means, in numbers, and what happens if we miss it.
Most pages selling SEO migration services prove themselves with other people's percentages. We do not have a published UK migration case study, and we will not borrow or invent one. So our proof is a standard you can hold us to, and it goes into the agreement, not just onto this page.
The benchmark, the checkpoints, the threshold
- Before launch we record 28 days of organic sessions, clicks and impressions, your count of indexed URLs, and your top 100 landing pages by traffic.
- After launch we report against that record at day 7, 30, 60 and 90, and you see the same numbers we do.
- The line: a dip in the first fortnight is normal. Organic clicks still more than 20% below benchmark at day 30, and not clearly recovering, is a failed migration, not bad luck.
Cross that line and the fixing is our problem. We re-crawl the site, re-audit the redirect map and correct what we find at our own cost, with no new invoice. Nobody controls Google, so we cannot promise the dip never happens. What we can promise is that failure is defined in advance, and that our time is on the line for it. Our published Bupa teardown shows the depth we go to when we analyse a site; this standard is what that depth is for.
Who Does What: You, Your Developer, And Us
Behind most first calls sits one practical worry: what will my team and my developer actually have to do? Less than you fear, but not nothing, so here is the split we work to.
- You, or your marketing lead. Decisions rather than labour: what moves, what gets retired, plus access to Search Console and your analytics so we can benchmark.
- Your developer. The build itself: putting our redirect map live, keeping staging hidden from Google, and shipping the fixes we specify. Every request arrives written as a ticket, ready to act on.
- Us. Everything search-shaped: the crawl, the URL map, the redirect plan, staging checks, launch day checks, and the 90 days of watching afterwards.
A good developer is not the risk here; an unowned checklist is. Developers judge a launch by whether the new site works, which is fair, because that is the job they were given. Whether the old site's rankings survived is a different checklist, and this service exists to own it. If you have no developer at all, say so early, because we can bring one in for the mechanical parts.
What SEO Migration Services Cost
No single price would be honest here, so instead: the three things that decide the number.
None of the agencies ranking for this work publishes a price. For once the silence is fair, because migrations vary too much for one figure. What we can do is name what moves the number, because "it depends" on its own is useless. Three things drive it: how many URLs move, whether the domain changes, and whether content gets rewritten on the way. A thirty-page site keeping its domain sits at one end of the range. A replatforming store with fifty thousand URLs and fresh copy sits at the other.
Our Starter SEO retainer is £495 a month, rolling monthly, with no lock-in. Retainer clients get migration support folded into the plan when a move comes up, not sold back as an extra. For a stand-alone migration we scope the job after a short look at both sites. You get one fixed figure before any work starts, so no meter runs in the background.
For the wider picture, our guide to what SEO costs in the UK is the honest version, and our pricing page shows the retainer itself. If you mainly want to know whether your move needs us at all, the free SEO review is the cheap way to find out.
Related: SEO pricing · Free SEO review
What We Will Not Promise, And What To Keep After The Move
Timing first. Planning is the slow part: a few weeks for a small site, a few months for a large or merging one. The switch itself usually fits inside a morning, and most of launch day is checking rather than changing. You get a real timeline once we have seen the URL count. We will not squeeze it to win the work, because rushed moves are what SEO migration services exist to prevent. Recovery jobs, where the move already happened, start faster, and the first fixes usually ship in the first week.
Two things are worth keeping after go-live. Keep the old domain registered, with its redirects working, for at least a year. Google re-checks old addresses for far longer than most owners expect, and so do the sites still linking to them. And keep the benchmark report, because it is the only honest way to judge the move six months later. After the 90-day window some clients carry the work into a managed SEO plan. Others simply leave with a healthier site than they arrived with, and both are fine outcomes.
No zero-dip promises, no borrowed case studies, no last-minute heroics
We will not promise your traffic never dips, because nobody honest about Google can. We will not decorate this page with percentages from clients we cannot name. There is no published UK migration case study here yet, and pretending otherwise would tell you more about us than any number could. And we will not take over a migration the day before launch and call it safe. We will tell you what is still checkable in the time left, and what is not.
SEO Migration Questions We Get Asked
The questions that decide whether people buy SEO migration services, answered straight.
Will I lose my rankings when my site moves?
Not if the move is mapped, checked and monitored. Even on a clean migration a small dip in the first two weeks is normal, so do not panic at day three. Lasting losses almost always trace back to missing redirects, unmapped URLs or content dropped in the rebuild. All three are preventable, but only before launch, which is the whole point of doing the work in advance.
How much do SEO migration services cost?
There is no fixed figure for SEO migration services. The job changes with the number of URLs, whether the domain changes and how much content is rewritten. We quote one fixed price after seeing both sites. For clients on our Starter SEO retainer, £495 a month rolling with no lock-in, migration support is part of the plan rather than an extra.
Can my web developer handle the SEO side of the migration?
Your developer is essential, but their checklist is the build: templates, hosting, the switch itself. The search checklist is a different job, covering benchmarking, URL mapping, redirect logic and post-launch monitoring, and it is the part that protects rankings. The two work best side by side, which is exactly how we run it.
More about moving without losing traffic
How long does an SEO migration take?
Planning takes a few weeks on a small site and a few months on a large or merging one. Launch day itself is short, mostly checks rather than changes. Afterwards we monitor for 90 days, with checkpoints at day 7, 30, 60 and 90. Google takes roughly that long to fully re-settle a moved site.
How long should the old domain stay live after the move?
At least a year, with its redirects working the whole time. Google re-checks old addresses for far longer than most people expect, and so do the other websites still linking to them. Letting the old domain lapse early is one of the quietest ways to throw away a clean migration.
My site already moved and traffic dropped. Can it be recovered?
Usually, yes, though recovery is slower than prevention. We re-crawl the old URL list, rebuild the redirect map, restore what was dropped in the rebuild and resubmit the site for indexing. The sooner it starts the better, because the longer old pages stay dead, the more of their history Google lets go.
Do I need SEO migration services for a redesign that keeps every URL?
Probably not the full service, and we will say so. A redesign with unchanged URLs still deserves a pre-launch check, because rebuilt templates love to drop headings, internal links and meta data. But that is a smaller piece of work than a full migration, and it is priced like one.
Move your site without losing what it has earned
Tell us what is changing: the domain, the platform, the design, or all three. We will tell you honestly how much protection the move needs, even if the answer is not much.
Raoul (Alex) Müller
Email: office@digitalmovement.uk
Phone: +44 7865 064463