Site migration SEO
Website migrations are high-risk for SEO. Without proper planning, you can lose years of rankings overnight. We use Crawly's crawl comparison to verify every change before and after launch.
What's included
Migration SEO services
Pre-migration audit
We document current rankings, traffic, and site structure to create a baseline before anything changes.
URL mapping
Comprehensive redirect planning - every indexed page mapped to its new URL.
Staging validation
We crawl the staging site before launch to verify redirects, broken links, and schema.
Launch support
Hands-on support on go-live day to monitor redirects and catch issues immediately.
Post-migration comparison
We diff the pre and post crawls using Crawly's comparison feature to surface every change.
90-day monitoring
Daily tracking of indexing, rankings, and traffic for 90 days after launch.
Why migrations go wrong
Most migrations lose organic traffic
Studies show that up to 60% of website migrations result in significant organic traffic loss. The most common causes are entirely preventable with the right process.
We use Crawly's crawl comparison to diff the pre and post-migration crawls - surfacing every URL that changed status, lost its title, or became non-indexable. Nothing slips through.
- Incomplete redirect coverage - missing URLs return 404
- Redirect chains created by stacking new rules on old ones
- Pages that became non-indexable after migration
- Titles and H1s silently changed by the new template
- Orphaned pages with no internal links
- Crawl budget wasted on old redirect chains
How it works
Our migration process
A four-stage process that protects your organic performance before, during, and after launch.
Pre-migration crawl
We crawl the existing site and save it as the baseline - capturing every URL, title, status code, and indexability status.
URL mapping and redirects
We create a page-by-page redirect map covering every indexed URL, backlinked page, and high-traffic entry point.
Staging validation
Before launch, we crawl the staging site to verify redirects, check broken links, validate schema, and confirm mobile usability.
Post-launch monitoring
After go-live, we monitor indexing, crawl errors, rankings, and traffic - catching issues before they cause lasting damage.
Questions answered
- What types of migration do you cover?
- Platform migrations (e.g. WordPress to Webflow, Magento to Shopify), domain changes, HTTP to HTTPS, site redesigns, URL structure changes, and content consolidation. If URLs or site structure are changing, we can help.
- How do you use Crawly in migrations?
- Crawly is central to our migration workflow. We run a pre-migration crawl to establish the baseline, crawl the staging site for validation, run a post-migration crawl, and then use Crawly's Crawl Comparison feature to diff the two - surfacing every page that changed, was added, or disappeared.
- What if rankings drop after the migration?
- We include a documented recovery contingency in every migration engagement. If traffic drops post-launch, we identify the cause (missing redirects, indexability changes, content issues) and remediate quickly. Our 90-day monitoring period covers the full post-migration recovery window.
- Do you work with our development team?
- Yes - we work directly with your developer or agency to ensure SEO requirements are implemented correctly in the build. We provide developer-ready specifications and validate every redirect after implementation.
Planning a website migration?
Get in touch before you start. Tell us about your site and what's changing.