What is website migration SEO and how do you protect your rankings?

A website migration is any significant change to your site that affects its URLs, structure or platform. Moving from HTTP to HTTPS, changing your domain name, switching content management systems, or redesigning your site architecture are all migrations. Each one carries risk: if Google cannot follow the old URLs to the new ones, you lose rankings, traffic and revenue.

The good news is that a properly planned migration preserves most of your search visibility. The bad news is that most site owners treat it as a design or development project and forget the SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. side until after launch.

What counts as a website migration?

Not every site update is a migration. A migration means the old and new versions live at different URLs, so search engines and users need to be told where things moved. Common scenarios include changing your domain name (rebrand or new TLD), moving from HTTP to HTTPS, switching platforms (WordPress to another CMS, or a custom build to Shopify), and redesigning your site architecture (flattening the structure, merging sections, changing URL patterns). Even moving a subsite from example.com/blog to blog.example.com counts.

Each of these looks different to Google, but the underlying SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. workflow is the same.

The SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. migration workflow

The process splits into three phases: before, during and after launch.

Before you move, audit the old site. Export a full list of URLs that currently get traffic from Google Search Console or your SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. tool. Note the pages with the most impressions, highest rankings, and the most inbound links. These are the pages you cannot afford to lose. Map each old URL to its new counterpart in a spreadsheet.

Set up 301 redirects from every old URL to the matching new one. This is non-negotiable. A 301 redirect passes most of the link equity from the old page to the new one. If you change domain and let old URLs go to a generic homepage, every deep page loses its rankings. Use your server config or CMS to implement redirects at the web server level.

Update your internal links. If your new site links back to old URLs (through navigation, related posts or footer links), visitors and crawlers hit redirect chains. A full internal link sweep and replace should happen before launch.

Submit a new sitemap. Generate an XML sitemap for the new site and submit it in Google Search Console. Remove the old sitemap to avoid sending mixed signals.

Update your canonical URLs. Every page should declare a self-referencing canonical so Google knows the new URL is the preferred version.

Update external references. Change your Google Business Profile, social media profiles, directory listings and paid ad destination URLs to point to the new site. These are often forgotten and create a long tail of 404s.

After launch, monitor Google Search Console daily for the first two weeks. Check for a spike in 404 errors, a drop in indexed pages, and any manual action notifications. The Index Coverage report is your dashboard. Run a full crawl with a tool like Screaming Frog or use the free SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. report at https://victory.digital/run-a-seo-report to catch broken redirects and missing canonicals.

Common migration mistakes

The most common mistake is treating redirects as optional. A site that redesigns without redirecting old URLs to new ones loses years of accumulated authority. The second is redirecting everything to the homepage instead of matching old URLs to their specific new equivalents. Google treats a homepage redirect as a soft 404 for the original URL.

Another frequent error is changing the URL structure and the content at the same time. If a page moves to a new URL and its content changes substantially, Google has nothing familiar to anchor the rankings to. Where possible, keep the content the same during the move and improve it in a separate update.

Does Victory Digital handle migrations?

Yes. Our technical SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. team plans and executes site migrations as part of our SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. packages, which range from GBP 980 to GBP 3,920 per month depending on scope. Every migration includes a pre-move audit, 301 redirect mapping, internal link audit, sitemap submission, and post-launch monitoring in Google Search Console.

Start with a free SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. report at https://victory.digital/run-a-seo-report to check your site's current health before any migration. For a full SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. service, see the packages and pricing at https://victory.digital/seo-packages.