Technical SEO · Advanced

Site migration

A site migration is any major change to a website's URLs, domain, platform or structure. Done without a redirect plan, it's one of the fastest ways to lose search traffic.

By Thryv StudioUpdated

Level
Advanced
Types
Domain, platform, URL structure, http to https, redesign
Key tool
A URL-by-URL redirect map
Check it free
Redirect Checker

What is a site migration?

A migration changes where or how your content lives: moving to a new domain, switching CMS, restructuring URLs, merging sites, or redesigning templates. Search engines have to re-crawl and re-evaluate everything, so mistakes show up as lost rankings.

How to migrate safely

  1. Crawl the current site and export every URL with traffic, links and rankings.
  2. Map each old URL to its new equivalent, one to one.
  3. Implement permanent (301) redirects in one hop.
  4. Keep content, titles and structured data equivalent at launch.
  5. Update internal links, canonicals, hreflang and sitemaps.
  6. For a domain move, use Search Console's Change of Address tool.
  7. Monitor crawl errors, indexing and rankings closely after launch.

Common mistakes

  • Redirecting everything to the home page.
  • Launching with noindex or robots.txt blocks left over from staging.
  • Changing content, URLs and design all at once without measuring each.

Frequently asked questions

Will rankings drop after a migration?

Some fluctuation is normal while search engines process the change. A careful redirect plan keeps it small and short.

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