blog single

Moving a website without losing search traffic

Analyst comparing traffic charts before and after a launch

Published on:

September 12, 2024

TAG:

SEO

BY:

Edgeless Team

Read Time:

6 MIN READ

post detail

A site migration is any change that alters the address of a page or the way search engines read it. A new platform, a new domain, a redesign that renames sections, or a move from pages to a single page application all qualify. Each one risks the traffic that took years to build, and most of the risk comes from a small number of avoidable mistakes.

Inventory the old site before you touch it

Start with a full crawl of the current site. Export every URL that returns a successful response, plus every URL that already redirects. Add the URLs from your sitemap, your analytics and your search console. The union of those lists is your migration inventory, and every item needs a destination.

Record more than the URL. For each page, note the title, the main heading, the number of internal links pointing to it, the external links from other sites and the organic traffic over the last twelve months. That record tells you which pages must keep their exact address and which can move with a redirect.

Export all indexed URLs from Search Console.
Crawl the site and include pages that are not linked from navigation.
List every backlink from external sites and the page it points to.
Record organic entrances and conversions per URL.
Identify the pages that rank for commercial queries.
Note parameters, pagination and any URL patterns generated by filters.

Map every URL to one destination

Create a spreadsheet with one row per old URL and one destination. A page that still exists under the same path maps to itself. A page that moved maps to the closest equivalent, not to the home page. Redirecting everything to the home page tells search engines that the old content is gone and gives visitors a generic landing page instead of the answer they wanted.

Use permanent redirects for permanent moves. A temporary redirect passes visitors along but tells search engines to keep the old URL in the index, which is not what you want after a migration. Remove chains where one redirect points to another redirect, and avoid redirect loops by checking the map before launch.

Decide what happens to pages that no longer have an equivalent. If the content is gone for good, return a clear not found page with links to relevant sections. If the content moved into a new page, redirect to that page. Do not redirect a removed product to an unrelated category.

Two people reviewing a redirect map on a monitor — One row per old URL. A redirect map that points everything to the home page hides the pages that lost their equivalent.

Launch in stages where possible

If the new site can run alongside the old one, launch on a staging domain with authentication and test the crawl before the switch. Check that robots rules do not block the staging site from being tested, and check that the production site does not accidentally inherit those rules. A launch that blocks search engines is one of the most common and most expensive migration errors.

Switch DNS during a quiet period and watch the old URLs immediately. Request indexing for the most important pages in Search Console. Keep the old site available for a short period if the platform allows it, so a rollback is possible without restoring from backup.

Watch the data for six weeks

Traffic rarely returns to normal on day one. Expect a dip while search engines recrawl and reassess. What matters is the direction after two weeks. Compare impressions and clicks per landing page, not just the site total. A site total can look stable while a commercial section has collapsed.

Check the crawl reports for server errors, soft 404s and redirect chains. Verify that canonical tags point to the new URLs and that internal links use the new addresses. Update the sitemap, submit it, and remove the old one. Update analytics goals and campaign tracking so the reporting does not break silently.

Keep the redirect map in the repository after launch. It documents why a URL changed, which helps the next person who finds an old link in a proposal or a printed brochure.

Details that are easy to miss

Pick one version of each address and redirect the others. The http and https versions, the version with www and the version without, and the version with a trailing slash should all resolve to the same page. Search engines treat these as different URLs until a canonical tag or a redirect says otherwise.

Set the canonical tag on every page to the new address. Use absolute URLs, not relative ones, so a copy of the page on a staging domain cannot claim to be the original. Check that pagination pages point to themselves rather than to the first page, and that filtered URLs do not create thousands of near duplicates.

Update structured data and Open Graph tags as part of the migration. A page can rank correctly and still share an old title and image when someone posts the link. Those tags are part of the page's identity, and they are easy to forget when the visual design is the focus.

Keep the business informed

Tell the people who use the site internally before the switch. Sales teams bookmark pages, support teams paste links into replies and finance may have a report that reads from a specific URL. A short list of changed addresses, sent before launch, prevents a week of broken links in customer emails.

Expect questions about the traffic dip. Prepare one page that shows the plan, the expected timeline and the checks being run. A clear explanation in week one prevents a panic that leads to rushed changes, and rushed changes during a migration are how small dips become large ones.

Keep a shared tracker of oddities that appear after launch: a page that returns the wrong status, a link that points to an old section, a form that sends to the wrong queue. Logging them in one place makes it easier to spot a pattern and to confirm when the list reaches zero.

Keep a rollback path

Decide in advance what would trigger a rollback and who can call it. A sharp rise in server errors, a checkout that fails or a login loop are clear triggers. Keep the old environment deployable for at least a week after launch, and keep the DNS change documented so it can be reversed quickly.

A rollback is a controlled response to evidence. The teams that plan for one usually need it less, because the preparation exposes the risky areas before launch and gives everyone a shared definition of what good looks like.

A migration is a promise to keep every useful page reachable. The redirect map is how you keep it.
Edgeless Team

The mistakes that cost the most

The costliest errors are predictable. Blocking the site with a robots rule left over from staging. Losing the analytics tag during the rebuild. Changing every URL without a map. Serving a soft 404 for pages that moved. Forgetting that the old domain still has links pointing at it. Each one has a check that takes minutes and prevents months of recovery.

Add those checks to the launch runbook and assign a name to each. A migration is a project with a deadline, and the checks that belong to nobody are the ones that get skipped at the end of a long day.

We plan and run site migrations with URL inventories, redirect maps, staged launches and post launch monitoring.

Explore digital marketing

Migrations go well when the old site is documented before the new one launches. Inventory, map, test, then watch. The work is mostly preparation, and the preparation is what protects the traffic.

SEO

Migration

Web

Moving a website without losing search traffic

Let's Talk About Your Project