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SEO for website migrations and redesigns
A new website is one of the easiest ways to lose search traffic overnight. Most of the damage is avoidable with a few weeks of planning.
Who needs migration support
A website migration is any change that alters how search engines see your site: a redesign, a new CMS, a change of domain, merging two sites, moving to HTTPS, or restructuring URLs. In Oxford we are most often asked to help with:
- Spin-outs rebranding after a funding round, moving from a project or University-hosted site to a commercial domain.
- Companies merging websites after an acquisition or when consolidating product sites.
- Retailers replatforming, for example from Magento to Shopify.
- Professional firms and colleges redesigning a large, ageing site.
- Hotels changing booking engines or merging property sites into a group site.
What is included, step by step
- Pre-migration audit. Crawl the current site, export Search Console and analytics data, and record which pages earn traffic, links and conversions. This is the baseline everything is judged against.
- Structure review. Review the new sitemap and designs for content that is being dropped, merged or moved, and advise where it risks losing rankings.
- Redirect map. One-to-one 301 redirects from every old URL that matters to its closest new equivalent, including images, PDFs and old campaign URLs with links.
- Staging checks. Crawl the new site before launch for broken links, missing titles, noindex tags, canonical errors, structured data and speed problems.
- Launch-day checks. Test redirects, robots.txt, sitemaps, analytics tags and Search Console settings within hours of launch.
- Post-launch monitoring. Daily for the first week, then weekly for two months: indexing, crawl errors, rankings, traffic and conversions.
- Fix list. Anything that goes wrong is caught, explained and prioritised quickly.
| Stage | When | Key output |
|---|---|---|
| Planning | Before design sign-off | Baseline, structure recommendations |
| Build | During development | Redirect map, SEO requirements for developers |
| Pre-launch | One to two weeks before | Staging crawl and fix list |
| Launch | Launch day | Live checks and Search Console updates |
| Aftercare | Eight weeks after | Monitoring reports and fixes |
How long it takes
Our involvement typically spans the length of the web project plus eight weeks. The intensive work is in the planning stage, the week before launch and the first fortnight after it.
If your launch date is fixed, tell us as early as possible. The redirect map is the part that most often runs late, because it depends on final URLs from the developer and decisions about content from your team.
What drives the cost
- Number of URLs, especially old URLs with links or traffic.
- Type of migration. A domain change or merger is more complex than a redesign on the same domain.
- Platforms involved, and how redirects can be managed on them.
- Languages and regional sites.
- How much of the redirect mapping your team can do with our guidance.
A typical Oxford migration
Picture an engineering firm on a business park in Abingdon merging two product sites into one new company website, with a new CMS. The old sites have around 600 URLs between them, including datasheets that trade buyers have bookmarked and that distributors link to. Our work would start before the designer finalises the sitemap: we would identify which old pages earn traffic and links, make sure each has a home on the new site, and map every old URL, including PDFs, to its new equivalent.
Two weeks before launch, we would crawl the staging site and give the developer a fix list. On launch day, we would test every redirect, submit the new sitemap and register the change in Search Console. For the next eight weeks we would watch indexing, rankings and enquiries against the baseline, and catch problems while they are small. The aim is a launch that nobody outside the company notices, except that the new site is better.
Common mistakes
The costliest migration mistake is dropping content. Pages removed because they look old or untidy are often the ones bringing in search traffic. Check the data before deciding what goes.
- Redirecting everything to the homepage instead of to the closest equivalent page.
- Launching with staging settings, such as noindex tags or a robots.txt block, still in place.
- Changing too much at once: domain, design, structure and content in one launch.
- Forgetting PDFs, images and subdomains.
- Removing redirects after a few months. Keep them for at least a year, and longer for pages with valuable links.
- Launching in your busiest season. Retailers and tourism businesses should avoid peak months.
How we measure success
- Old URLs correctly redirected, tested in full.
- Indexed pages and crawl errors before and after.
- Organic clicks and conversions against the pre-launch baseline, adjusted for seasonality.
- Rankings for priority searches through the transition.
Related services
The pre-migration work is a form of technical SEO audit, and a redesign is an ideal moment to improve thin pages through SEO content. Retailers should also read our ecommerce SEO page. Many of the rebrands we see come from science companies around Abingdon and Milton Park, and our post on spin-out websites covers the early-stage version of this problem.
Frequently asked questions
When should we involve an SEO in a redesign?
Before the new site structure and designs are signed off. Changes to URLs, navigation and content are much cheaper to get right at the planning stage than to repair after launch.
Will we lose traffic when we launch?
A short dip while Google processes the change is common even with a well-run migration. Large or lasting losses usually come from missing redirects, removed content, blocked crawling or a changed structure. Those are what our process is designed to prevent.
We are changing domain name. Is that riskier?
Yes, a domain change adds risk because every URL changes and authority has to transfer. It can be done safely with complete redirects, the Change of Address tool in Search Console and careful monitoring, ideally kept separate from other big changes.
Can you help after a migration has gone wrong?
Yes. We compare the old and new sites, find missing redirects and lost content, and prioritise repairs. The sooner this happens after launch, the more can be recovered.
Do you build the new website?
No. We work alongside your web designer or developer, so you can choose whoever suits the project. Our role is to protect and improve search performance through the change.