SEO Migrations.

An SEO migration is the set of processes used to preserve organic search performance when a website undergoes significant change: a platform switch (WordPress to Shopify), domain change (rebrand), URL restructure, HTTPS migration, or major redesign. Without proper migration management, organic traffic losses of 20-80% are common; with careful planning, migrations can be traffic-neutral or even positive.

Migration Types and Risk Levels

Domain migrations (new domain name): highest risk, all domain authority must be transferred via 301 redirects, and Google may take 6-12 months to fully migrate PageRank. URL structure changes: high risk if existing URLs are not 301-redirected to new equivalents. Platform migrations (CMS change): medium risk if URLs are preserved; high risk if they change. Content migrations: low risk if URLs and content are preserved.

Pre-Migration Requirements

Before any migration: complete crawl of the current site capturing all URLs, rankings, and inbound link anchors; mapping old URLs to new URLs (a redirect map); baseline analytics snapshot (sessions, conversions, rankings); technical validation environment (staging site) for testing redirects, canonical tags, and structured data before launch; and stakeholder sign-off on the migration risk.

Post-Migration Monitoring

In the 4 weeks post-migration: daily rank tracking for the top 100 keywords, daily crawl error monitoring in Search Console, verification that all redirect chains resolve correctly (no chains longer than 1 hop), re-submission of the updated sitemap, and comparison of pre-vs-post crawl to identify pages lost or incorrectly redirected. Document every anomaly and triage by business impact.