SEO for website migrations

A new platform, a new domain or a new design, planned by SEO and built by developers: a crawl baseline of what you have, a redirect for every URL that earns, staging checks before launch, a runbook for launch day, and monitoring until the traffic is back where it was or we can explain why it is not.

Who this is for in London

Migration SEO is for a London business about to change something fundamental about its website: the platform, the domain, the design or the URL structure. Done well, a migration is a few weeks of fluctuation and a better site at the end. Done without a plan, it is the fastest way we know to lose years of rankings in an afternoon, and it is the most expensive mistake we see on London sites. The work is to record what you have, map every URL that earns, check the new site before launch, and watch it afterwards until the numbers settle.

A law firm in Holborn (WC1) moving from a ten-year-old WordPress theme to a new design. The design agency wants to "tidy up" the URLs. Four hundred guide pages bring the firm most of its enquiries, and nobody has listed them, let alone mapped where they will go.
A furniture retailer with a showroom in Hammersmith moving ten thousand product and collection URLs from Magento to Shopify. The product URLs change format, the collection filters change entirely, and the launch is planned for the week before a sale.
A dental group in Richmond and Kingston that has acquired a second practice and wants both brands on one domain. Two sets of rankings, two Business Profiles and two sets of reviews have to arrive at one site without either practice disappearing from the map.

It is not right for you if nothing is changing: a slow or poorly indexed site that is staying where it is needs technical SEO, not a migration plan. If you have already launched and the traffic has gone, it is still us, but it is a recovery project rather than a migration: the baseline is reconstructed from Search Console history and the redirect map is written after the fact, which is harder and slower, and we will say so. The guide to drops and recovery covers that situation.

What you get

Pre-migration baseline: A full crawl of the current site, Search Console exports, rankings for the phrases that matter, the pages that earn traffic and the pages that hold links, archived so there is a record of what you had.
URL and redirect map: Every old URL mapped to its new equivalent, one hop, reviewed by hand for the pages that earn. Including images, PDFs and the pages nobody remembers that hold the links.
Content and template parity check: Titles, headings, body copy, structured data, internal links and hreflang on the new templates compared with the old, so nothing that ranked is quietly left behind.
Staging audit: The new site crawled on staging behind noindex, rendering checked the way Google sees it, speed measured, redirects tested against the map before anyone presses the button.
Launch-day runbook: The order of operations: DNS, redirects live, robots and noindex removed, sitemaps submitted, Search Console change of address for a domain move, and who checks what in the first hour.
Post-launch monitoring: Daily for the first two weeks, weekly to week eight, monthly after: 404s, redirect chains, indexing, impressions and clicks per top page against the baseline, fixed as they appear.
Build or tickets: Our developers build the new site in Next.js, Shopify or WordPress, or we write the redirect rules and template fixes as tickets your agency or team can act on, and we check their release.
A written migration report: At close-out: what moved, what dipped and recovered, what was lost and why, and what to watch for in the months after.

How it works

01
Baseline
Crawl, Search Console, rankings and links recorded before anything changes. You cannot know what you lost if you did not record what you had.
02
Map
Every URL mapped to its destination, one hop, with the earning pages checked by hand and the rules written for the rest.
03
Build and check
The new site built or reviewed on staging: parity, rendering, speed, redirects tested against the map.
04
Launch
The runbook followed in order, with a named person on each step and a check in the first hour that redirects, robots and sitemaps are right.
05
Monitor
Daily, then weekly, then monthly against the baseline. 404s and chains fixed as they appear, indexing watched until it settles.
06
Close out
The written report: what the migration cost in traffic, if anything, and what it gained. Then the normal monthly rhythm, if you want one.

How we do it

Everything starts with the baseline, because you cannot know what a migration cost you if you did not record what you had. We crawl the current site completely, export Search Console (pages, queries, impressions and clicks by page), record rankings for the phrases that matter, and list the pages that earn traffic and the pages that hold inbound links. These are often different lists: the page that brings enquiries and the old blog post that a national newspaper linked to in 2019 both have to survive. The baseline is archived and becomes the thing we measure against for the next six months.

The redirect map is the heart of the project. Every old URL is mapped to its new equivalent, one hop, never through a chain, never to the home page because "it was easier". For the pages that earn we check the mapping by hand; for the long tail we write rules and test them. Images, PDFs, old campaign URLs and the pages nobody remembers are included, because they are the ones that hold the links. Then parity: the new templates are compared with the old for titles, headings, body copy, structured data, internal links and hreflang, so nothing that ranked is left behind by a template that looked cleaner. The migration checklist and the redesign checklist set out every step in plain English.

Before launch the new site is audited on staging behind noindex: crawled, rendered the way Google renders it, measured for speed on a phone, and the redirects tested against the map. Launch follows a runbook with a named person on each step, in order: DNS, redirects live, the noindex and the staging robots rules removed, sitemaps submitted, Search Console change of address if the domain moved, and a check within the hour that all of it is true. Then we watch: daily for two weeks, weekly to week eight, monthly after. Muhammad Abubakar, our Full-Stack Developer and Lead, builds in Next.js and Shopify; Abdur Rehman handles WordPress; Muhammad Ali, our SEO Specialist, owns the map and the measurement; Javaid Ahmad, Senior Project Manager, keeps the launch in the right order. If another agency is building the site, we work alongside them, write the redirect rules and template fixes as tickets, and check their release.

What changes and when

Technical fixes are usually re-crawled within two to eight weeks. Local search changes often show within one to three months. Competitive London head terms usually take six to twelve months. These are typical ranges from our own work, not a promise for your site, and we report progress every month so you can see which it is.

A migration has its own timeline. Expect fluctuation for two to eight weeks after launch while Google re-crawls the old URLs, follows the redirects and re-indexes the new ones; a well-run platform or design migration usually settles within that window, with a dip that recovers. A domain change takes longer, often several months, because the authority has to be re-associated with the new domain. We monitor against the baseline until the figures match it or we can explain the difference page by page, and the close-out report says which. We do not promise zero loss, because nobody honest can: a migration that changes the platform, the design and the content at once is three changes, and some of what moved will be because the content changed.

How it is measured

What we report, against the baseline: pages indexed on the new site against pages indexed on the old, impressions and clicks per top page, 404s found and fixed, redirect chains found and fixed, rankings for the tracked phrases, Core Web Vitals field data for the new templates, and the enquiries or orders in GA4 before and after. Where it comes from: our crawls, Google Search Console (both properties for a domain move), the Chrome User Experience Report and GA4, all in accounts you own. How often: daily in the first two weeks, weekly to week eight, then monthly, with the written report at close-out.

What we do not report: a "migration success" percentage, or a traffic figure with no page-level explanation. If a page lost traffic, the report says which, why, and what we did about it.

What it costs to find out

Nothing. The free SEO audit is a written review of your site by an SEO specialist from the team, delivered within two working days of your request. If you are planning a migration, tell us in the form: we will look at the plan you have and name the three biggest risks in it, which is often enough to stop the most expensive mistake before it is made.

Migration SEO is sold as a project with a defined scope and an end date, from baseline to close-out, with monitoring included. What drives the price is the number of URLs, whether the platform, the domain or both are changing, whether we build the new site or review someone else’s, and how many markets and languages are involved. Pricing is published on the pricing page; our terms are on the before you sign page. If you want us to stay on after close-out, that becomes a managed retainer on the same month-to-month terms.

Common mistakes we see on London migrations

Every old URL redirected to the home page, so Google treats the redirects as soft 404s and the rankings go with the old pages.
The platform, the design, the URLs and the content all changed at once, so when traffic falls nobody can tell which change caused it.
The staging noindex or robots rule shipped to the live site, so the new site is launched invisible and nobody notices for a fortnight.
Images, PDFs and old campaign URLs left out of the map, taking the links that pointed at them out of the site.
Pages deleted because "nobody visits them", when they were the pages holding the inbound links.
Hreflang lost on the new templates, so country versions that took a year to sort out start competing with each other again.
A domain move with no change of address in Search Console and no property for the new domain, so there is no data to diagnose with.
The site launched on a Friday afternoon, the agency gone by Monday, and the first 404 report arriving from a customer.
Redirects done in JavaScript or with a plugin that returns the wrong status code, so the crawler never follows them.

How it fits with other services

If we are building the new site, the migration plan is part of the web design project from the first meeting, which is where it belongs. Platform-specific detail lives on the Shopify SEO and WordPress SEO pages. The crawl, rendering and speed checks on the new templates are technical SEO. Sites with country versions carry their international SEO set-up through the move, and large estates run the migration inside the governance described under enterprise SEO. If you want a second opinion on a migration someone else is planning, a one-off SEO audit of the plan and the staging site is the right shape.

Proof, stated plainly

Local SEO and a rebuilt site for Gladstone Garage, RAC Approved, with 4.6 stars across 178 Google reviews (as at 7 Jul 2026): a site rebuilt around MOT, service and repair without losing the trust the business had earned. Read the Gladstone Garage case. A Shopify store with Furnex product imagery and retail SEO for Ideal Furniture World, bringing a warehouse catalogue online. Read the Ideal Furniture World case. A bookings-first site with SEO, social and reputation for York Cars. Read the York Cars case. These show that we build sites and do the search work on them; none of them publishes a before-and-after migration traffic figure, and we say so.

We have not yet published a London migration case with a traffic figure. We would rather say so than present a rebuild as a measured migration. Ask us for a reference call; every case we publish names the client, the figure, the source and the date.

Get your free SEO auditA person reviews your site within two working days. Three fields, no call required.

Proof, with sources

Results ledger: 3 client figures with their source and the date checked
Client	Where	Measure	Figure	Source	Checked
Gladstone Garage	York	Google rating, out of 5	4.6 stars from 178¹	Companies House and industry accreditations	verifiednot dated
Ideal Furniture World	Leeds	Shopify and imagery	no figure claimed²	Hulk project record, published store screenshot and idealfurnitureworld.com	verifiednot dated
York Cars	York	Find. Call. Book.	no figure claimed³	Hulk project record, selected work and yorkcars.co.uk	verifiednot dated

See all 12 case studies How we verify a figure

verified:: figure read from the platform or the client's analytics on the date shown
re-verify:: older than six months, being re-checked
pending:: supplied by the client, not yet checked by us

Who does the work

Muhammad Ali

SEO Specialist

Connects search intent, technical foundations and local visibility into a practical plan for growth.

Momna Imran

Communications & Audit

Makes complex findings understandable and keeps every recommendation grounded in evidence people can inspect.

Specialists across the group contribute where a brief needs them, and you deal with one named account lead throughout.

Meet the team

Services that sit beside this one

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Crawl, indexing, Core Web Vitals, structured data and migrations, fixed by developers who ship code.

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A full, hand-written audit with a prioritised fix list, for sites that need the truth before the plan.

Everything we do, explained

SEO migration: questions answered

Will we lose traffic when we migrate?

Some fluctuation for two to eight weeks is normal while Google follows the redirects and re-indexes. A well-run platform or design migration usually settles within that window with a dip that recovers. Nobody honest can promise zero loss, especially if the content changes too; what we promise is the baseline, the map, the checks and the monitoring, and a page-by-page explanation of anything that did not come back.

How long does recovery take?

Platform and design changes usually settle within two to eight weeks. A domain change often takes several months, because the authority has to be re-associated with the new domain. These are typical ranges from our own work, not a promise, and we monitor against the baseline until the figures match or we can explain the difference.

Do you build the new site or just advise?

Either. Our developers build in Next.js, Shopify and WordPress with the migration plan inside the project from the start. If another agency or your own team is building, we write the redirect map and template fixes as tickets, audit the staging site, and check the release. Both routes get the same runbook and monitoring.

Can we change the URLs at the same time?

You can, if there is a reason. Every change adds risk, so we ask what the new structure gains and whether it is worth it now. If it is, the map handles it; if the only reason is tidiness, we usually recommend keeping the URLs and changing them later as a separate, smaller project.

Is a domain change different from a platform change?

Yes. A platform change keeps the domain, so the authority stays put and recovery is usually weeks. A domain change moves everything, needs a change of address in Search Console and a new property, and usually takes months to settle. Merging two domains into one is a domain change for one of them.

When should we involve you?

Before the design agency has decided the URLs, and ideally before the platform is chosen. The baseline and the map are cheap at that stage. If you are a week from launch we can still help, with a shorter list, and if you have already launched and lost traffic it becomes a recovery project.

We have already migrated and traffic has dropped. Can you help?

Yes. We reconstruct the baseline from Search Console history and the Wayback Machine, find the old URLs that are returning 404s or redirecting badly, and build the map after the fact. It is slower than planning ahead, and some loss may be permanent if the old pages were removed from the index, but most of it is usually recoverable.

What does it cost and is there a contract?

A migration is a project with a defined scope and an end date, including the monitoring. The price depends on the number of URLs, whether the platform, the domain or both are changing, whether we build or review, and how many markets are involved. Pricing is published on the pricing page; there is no minimum term, and any retainer afterwards runs month to month with 30 days’ notice. These terms are proposed and are confirmed in writing before you sign.

Who does the work?

Named people you can look up. Muhammad Abubakar leads development on Next.js and Shopify, Abdur Rehman handles WordPress, Muhammad Ali owns the SEO map and measurement, and Javaid Ahmad runs the launch as Senior Project Manager. All 28 people are on the team page with real names, roles and photographs.

Your free SEO audit, in writing

Send the address. A person reads it and replies within two working days with what holds you back in London search and the three fixes that matter most. No automated score, no call required first.

Reviewed by hand by our SEO specialist. You get their name the same working day.

Mon to Fri, 09:00 to 18:00 · +44 7435 755127

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