The SEO Migration Survival Guide: Keep Your Rankings When Switching Platforms

SEO Migrations Go Wrong More Often Than They Go Right

Here's a stat that should terrify you: according to a 2025 Ahrefs study, 60% of website migrations result in organic traffic loss. Not a temporary dip — a sustained drop that takes 6-12 months to recover from. Some sites never recover.

The reasons are preventable. Every time. But they require methodical execution and zero shortcuts. Here's the exact process we follow on every migration.

Before You Touch Anything: The Pre-Migration Audit

1. Crawl Your Existing Site

Use Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Ahrefs to crawl your entire site. Export a complete list of:

• Every URL (including pagination, filtered views, and parameter URLs)
• Title tags and meta descriptions
• H1 tags
• Canonical URLs
• Internal links
• Hreflang tags (if multilingual)
• Structured data (JSON-LD)
• HTTP status codes

This is your baseline. You'll compare against it after migration.

2. Identify Your Traffic Pages

Open Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Find every page that receives organic traffic. Sort by sessions. The top 20% of pages typically drive 80% of your organic traffic.

These pages are sacred. Their URLs must not change. Their meta tags must not change. Their content must not change. Any modification risks losing their rankings.

3. Document Your Backlink Profile

Use Ahrefs or Moz to export every external link pointing to your site. These links are your SEO authority. If the pages they point to return 404 after migration, you lose that authority permanently.

The Redirect Map: Your Most Important Document

Before writing a single line of code, create a complete redirect map. Every old URL mapped to its new URL. Every single one.

Rules for redirects:

• Use 301 redirects, not 302. 301 = permanent. 302 = temporary. Google treats them differently. A 302 tells Google to keep indexing the old URL. A 301 tells Google to transfer ranking authority to the new URL.
• Keep URLs the same when possible. The best redirect is no redirect. If your old URL is /about and your new URL can also be /about, don't change it.
• Redirect chains are toxic. If A redirects to B which redirects to C, Google may not follow the full chain. Each redirect also adds latency. Maximum one redirect hop per URL.
• Don't redirect everything to the homepage. This is the most common mistake. Redirecting 50 pages to your homepage tells Google those 50 pages no longer exist. Their rankings evaporate.

During Migration: The Critical Checklist

Meta Tags

• Every page must have a unique title tag (50-60 characters)
• Every page must have a unique meta description (150-160 characters)
• Title tags should match or improve upon the old ones (don't change titles of ranking pages)
• Open Graph tags for social sharing
• Twitter Card tags

Technical SEO

• XML sitemap generated and accessible at /sitemap.xml
• robots.txt allows crawling of all important pages
• Canonical URLs set correctly (self-referencing)
• No noindex tags on pages that should be indexed
• HTTPS enforced with proper redirects from HTTP
• Hreflang tags preserved (if multilingual)

Content Parity

• All content from old pages exists on new pages (don't accidentally delete paragraphs during migration)
• All images have alt attributes
• Internal links point to correct new URLs (not old URLs that redirect)
• No broken links (run a full link check before launch)

Performance

• Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) should be better than before, not worse
• Run Lighthouse on every key page
• Test on mobile (Google uses mobile-first indexing)
• Verify server response times under 200ms

After Launch: The First 30 Days

Day 1

• Submit new sitemap to Google Search Console
• Request indexing for your most important pages
• Monitor for crawl errors in Search Console
• Verify all 301 redirects are working (test every single one)

Days 2-7

• Monitor organic traffic daily — expect a 10-20% fluctuation (normal)
• Check Search Console for any new 404 errors
• Verify Google is discovering and indexing your new pages
• Monitor ranking positions for your top keywords

Days 8-30

• Traffic should stabilize within 2-3 weeks
• Rankings may fluctuate but should return to baseline
• If traffic drops more than 30% and doesn't recover by day 14, investigate immediately
• Look for pages that lost rankings — check their content, meta tags, and redirect status

Common SEO Migration Mistakes (We See These Every Week)

1. Not creating redirects at all. "Our URLs are the same!" — but are they? WordPress uses /2024/03/post-title/, your new site uses /blog/post-title. Every changed URL needs a redirect.
1. Launching without a sitemap. Google won't discover your new URL structure without a sitemap. Submit one on day one.
1. Changing title tags on ranking pages. "We improved the titles!" Great. You also lost the rankings that those exact titles earned over months of indexing.
1. Blocking the staging site with robots.txt, then forgetting to remove it. We've seen this happen more times than we'd like to admit. Always check robots.txt on launch day.
1. Not testing redirects. Writing a redirect map is step one. Testing every redirect is step two. Skip step two and you'll find the broken ones in your Search Console error report — two weeks later.

The Upside: SEO Usually Gets Better After Migration

If you do the migration right, your SEO should improve. A Next.js site is faster, leaner, and more technically sound than WordPress or Webflow. Better Core Web Vitals, cleaner markup, faster server response times — these all contribute to higher rankings.

We typically see a 10-25% increase in organic traffic within 3 months of a well-executed migration. The key word is "well-executed."