Redesign or replatform without throwing away your search visibility
A redesign, platform move or domain change can undo years of search visibility in a single launch if URLs, content and signals change without a plan. SEO Ads Hub benchmarks what you have, maps every redirect, tests the new site before launch and watches recovery closely afterwards.
When this is the right service
- Businesses planning a redesign, new CMS or ecommerce platform
- Companies changing domain, merging websites or restructuring URLs
- Teams already mid-migration who want an independent SEO check before launch
- Sites that migrated recently and lost traffic
The approach
Why migrations are where search visibility disappears
Search engines rank URLs, and a migration changes the URLs, the pages at those URLs, or both. Every page that ranks today has built up links, history and relevance. If it moves without a redirect, loses content it used to have, or ends up behind a staging block on launch day, that value is lost.
The damage is rarely caused by one big error. It comes from many small omissions: a missing redirect pattern, a template that drops the H1, internal links still pointing at old URLs, a canonical tag copied from staging. Together they add up to weeks or months of lost traffic.
How SEO Ads Hub approaches migrations
The work begins as early as possible, ideally before designs and URL structures are signed off, and continues until traffic has settled after launch. The plan follows a clear sequence: benchmark what exists, map every URL, test the new site on staging against a checklist, run the launch together, then monitor closely and fix fast.
Migrations are also where technical SEO and project management meet. Clear requirements for designers and developers, written early, prevent most problems. For online stores, category and product structures need particular care, which is covered in ecommerce SEO.
What gets reviewed
Before launch
- Redirect map coverage and accuracy
- Content parity for pages that bring traffic
- Titles, headings, canonicals and robots rules on staging
- Internal links pointing to final URLs
Technical parity
- Rendering and JavaScript dependencies
- Structured data and hreflang where relevant
- Core Web Vitals on new templates
After launch
- Redirect status codes and chains
- 404s and server errors in Search Console
- Indexing of new URLs and deindexing of old ones
- Traffic and rankings against the benchmark
How the work is done
Assess scope and risk
What is changing matters: design only, URLs, content, platform, domain or all of them at once. Each change adds risk, and the plan scales to match.
Benchmark the current site
A full crawl, Search Console and analytics data record the starting point: pages that bring traffic, links and conversions, how they perform and which searches they rank for.
Map every URL
Each old URL is mapped to its closest equivalent on the new site with a permanent redirect. Pages that truly have no replacement are retired deliberately, not by accident.
Test the new site before launch
The staging site is crawled and checked for redirects, metadata, canonicals, robots rules, structured data, internal links, rendering and performance. Launch blockers are listed separately from nice-to-haves.
Run a launch-day checklist
Staging blocks removed, redirects verified live, sitemaps submitted, analytics firing and, for domain moves, the Change of Address tool used in Search Console.
Monitor and fix quickly
Indexing, errors, rankings for key pages and organic traffic are compared with the benchmark daily at first, then weekly, and problems are fixed while they are still small.
What you receive, and when
- A migration risk assessment and SEO requirements for the project
- A benchmark report of the current site
- A complete redirect map
- A pre-launch QA report with launch blockers flagged
- A launch-day checklist
- Post-launch monitoring reports and fixes
Risk assessment, SEO requirements for designers and developers, benchmark.
Redirect mapping, template reviews and staging checks as pages are built.
Launch-day checklist run with your team, redirects and indexing verified live.
Monitoring against the benchmark, fixes, and a closing report.
What usually goes wrong
Bringing SEO in after the new site is built
By then URLs, templates and content decisions are fixed, and every SEO requirement becomes a costly change request.
Redirecting everything to the homepage
Search engines tend to treat mass homepage redirects like missing pages, so the old pages' signals are lost.
Launching with the staging noindex or robots.txt block still in place
It is one of the most common and most damaging launch mistakes, and it is easy to prevent with a checklist.
Changing design, URLs and content all at once
When everything changes, nobody can tell what caused a drop. Stage changes where the project allows it.
Forgetting images, PDFs and old redirect chains
Links point to files and older URLs too. Previous redirects should be updated to point straight to the final page.
Questions about SEO migrations
Related services and guides
Related SEO services
- Technical SEO
Crawling, indexing, rendering, architecture, canonicals, redirects, structured data and performance.
- SEO audit
A prioritized diagnosis of technical, content, authority and conversion issues, with a clear plan.
- Ecommerce SEO
Category architecture, faceted navigation, product templates, structured data and lifecycle rules.
- SEO consulting
Strategy, prioritization and expert review for teams that implement SEO themselves.
Commonly paired
SEO + Content
Strategy decides what to write; writing makes it worth finding.
SEO + Web
A site built with search architecture from the first template.
SEO + Web + Content
A new site launched with its structure, speed and copy planned together.
Talk through SEO migrations
A short application, so the first reply is specific to your business, and we can tell you honestly whether we are the right team.