Website migrations
Move to a new site without losing your rankings
Years of search visibility can disappear over a weekend. A new site goes live, the page addresses change, nobody tells Google where the old pages went, and traffic quietly falls away. Enquiries dry up, sometimes for weeks before anyone twigs.
Redirects come as standard with every website redesign we do. This page covers the full migration process, which we also run for sites built by other people. It sits within our SEO services.
When you need one
A new website
A rebuild or redesign where the page addresses change.
A new platform
Moving from Wix or Squarespace to WordPress, or between shop platforms.
A new domain
Rebranding or consolidating onto a different web address.
HTTPS or a merger
Moving from HTTP to HTTPS, or merging two websites into one.
How we do it
1
Benchmark
Traffic, rankings and enquiries by page, from Search Console and Analytics, so there’s something solid to compare against after launch.
2
List every old address
From your sitemap, a full crawl, Search Console and Analytics. Old pages that still get visits or links are easy to miss, so we look in more than one place.
3
Map each one
Every old address matched to the most relevant new page. Google warns that redirecting lots of old pages to one unrelated page, like the home page, might be treated as a soft 404.
4
Redirect properly
Google recommends permanent redirects, such as 301 or 308, kept for as long as possible and generally for at least a year. We test them on the staging site before launch.
5
Launch and watch
Redirects, sitemaps, robots.txt and analytics checked on the day, then Search Console watched for crawl errors and dropped pages. Changing domain? Search Console’s Change of Address tool comes into play.
Our approach
Why migrations go wrong
Most migration problems aren’t technical. They happen because nobody owned the job. The designer assumed the developer would do redirects, the developer assumed the SEO person would, and nobody checked until traffic dropped.
The other common cause is timing. Redirects get written the night before launch, from memory, without the old URL list. Pages that brought in steady enquiries get pointed at the home page, or nowhere at all.
We treat the migration as its own piece of work with its own checklist, started weeks before launch, not hours. That’s the difference between a dip that recovers and a drop that doesn’t.
We’ll also tell you straight how the move went. If some pages take longer to settle, or a few drop and need extra work, you’ll hear it from us first, with what we’re doing about it.
At a glance
What you get
- ✓A spreadsheet mapping every old address to its new home
- ✓Redirects set up and tested before launch
- ✓Before and after figures for traffic and rankings
- ✓Monitoring in the weeks after launch
Good to know
What to expect
Even a well-run migration can wobble. Google says visibility may fluctuate for a while during a site move, and suggests businesses with seasonal traffic move during a regular quiet spell.
A garden centre launching in March is taking a risk it doesn’t need to. So is a retailer in November.
Migration work is priced on the size of the site and the number of old addresses involved. A redesign with us includes it.
Google advises against it. Lots of old pages pointing at one unrelated page confuses visitors and might be treated as a soft 404, so the value of those pages is lost.
As long as possible. Google says generally at least a year. There’s rarely a good reason to take them down.
Often, yes, as long as the old addresses can still be worked out. The sooner we start, the better. An SEO audit is the quickest way in.
Ideally when the new site’s structure is being planned, so the redirect map can be built alongside it.
A single redirect adds very little. Chains of redirects, where one points to another, are worth avoiding, and we check for them.
For a change of domain, yes, through Search Console’s Change of Address tool. For changes within the same domain, good redirects and an updated sitemap do the job.
Redirects carry visitors from those links to the right new page. For the most valuable links, it can be worth asking the site owner to update the address too.
Yes. We can handle the migration side alongside their build, and work with their developer on the redirects.
Related services and guides
Website redesign
A new site with redirects built in.
SEO audit
Find out which pages matter most.
Technical SEO
Crawling, indexing and redirects.
Planning a business website
Including how to protect rankings at launch.
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If we are, you’ll go away knowing exactly what a partnership with TWA looks like and, more importantly, how it can benefit your business. If we’re not, we’ll tell you that too.
We’d rather turn down the wrong work than take on a client we can’t genuinely help scale.
