Before launch: 10x cheaper than after
6 weeks: when damage usually surfaces
Recovery: possible, rarely complete

Already launched and lost traffic? Start with an audit.

SEO Migration

Most large organic traffic losses trace back to a redirect map approved under deadline pressure. The damage appears about six weeks after launch, once the project has already been declared a success.

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Search Engine Optimization

Being found on Google, in AI answers, on maps and in marketplaces.

Pattern: It is almost never one big mistake.

Why migrations go wrong

Migrations fail through accumulation rather than catastrophe. A few hundred URLs missing from the redirect map. Redirect chains three hops deep. Parameters silently dropped. Hreflang clusters broken because one market launched late. Canonical tags still pointing at the staging domain. Individually minor, collectively expensive.

The timing makes it worse. Google takes weeks to reprocess a large site, so launch week often looks fine. By the time the decline is unambiguous, the team has moved on, nobody connects it to the migration, and several sprints of unrelated work sit on top of the cause.

The single highest-value moment to involve us is before URL structure is finalised. After launch we are doing recovery, which costs more and rarely returns everything.

Is this you?: If none of these apply, this probably isn’t the service you need.

Migration types we cover

Migration	Main risk
Platform change (e.g. to Shopify, Magento, headless)	URL structure changes across the entire catalogue at once
Domain change or rebrand	Complete loss of accumulated authority if redirects are incomplete
HTTP to HTTPS, or www consolidation	Duplicate versions served simultaneously, splitting signals
Redesign with no URL change	Template-level content and internal link loss, which is easy to miss
Site consolidation or separation	Merging or splitting authority between properties
Internationalisation	Hreflang architecture built wrong at the outset is painful to unpick

8 areas: One body of work, not a menu.

All services

What’s included

Pre-migration baseline

Recording current rankings, traffic, indexation and top-performing URLs, so post-launch comparison is measured rather than remembered.

URL mapping

Old to new mapping for every URL with traffic, rankings or links, including parameter and pagination handling.

Redirect specification

Single-hop redirects with correct status codes, written as a spec your developers implement and we verify.

Staging validation

Crawling the staging environment before launch to catch noindex directives, staging canonicals, blocked robots files and rendering regressions.

Content and template parity

Verifying content, metadata, structured data and internal links survived the rebuild. Redesigns commonly drop internal links nobody notices.

Launch-day monitoring

Watching crawl behaviour, server responses and indexation in the hours and days after cutover, when problems are cheapest to fix.

Post-launch tracking

Comparing against baseline over the following weeks and diagnosing anything unexpected.

Recovery work

For migrations already live and losing traffic: identifying what broke and what can realistically be restored.

Common questions: Asked on most first calls.

Questions

When should we bring you in?

Before URL structure is finalised. That is when decisions are still cheap. Practically, as early as you have a platform decision and a rough timeline.

We launch in two weeks. Is it too late?

Not useless. We can validate staging, review the redirect map and set up monitoring, which catches the most damaging category of error. We cannot influence architecture decisions already made.

We launched three months ago and traffic fell 40%. Can you fix it?

Often a substantial portion. We start by establishing what changed and what was lost, then rebuild what is recoverable. Expect to recover most rather than all, and expect it to take months.

How long should traffic take to recover after a clean migration?

On a well-executed migration, expect some fluctuation for two to four weeks and a return to baseline within four to eight. Larger sites take longer because reprocessing takes longer.

Do you work with our development agency?

Yes, and that is the usual arrangement. We write the specification and verify implementation; they build it.

Related: Often scoped alongside this.

Next step: We look at your site before the call.

Start with a free audit

An automated crawl plus a 30-minute walkthrough of what we can see from outside your site. If what you need isn’t something we do well, we’ll tell you.

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