Updated on January 9th, 2025 at 07:56 am
Have you recently migrated a website and experienced a decline in traffic?
We can help you recover lost organic search traffic after a botched migration with our website migration recovery service.
How to Recover Website Traffic after a Migration
Besides algorithmic changes, migrations are the most likely cause of large organic traffic losses for websites.
This is because website migrations are complex and challenging. Even simple, small websites can suffer organic visibility and traffic declines if the proper process for migrating your website is not followed.
We’ve detailed our recommendations for recovery of your website traffic after a migration. Follow these tips if your website has experienced traffic drops.
One thing to consider is the type of migration you’ve carried out on your website, some of our solutions will only be relevant in certain situations after specific types of migration.
| Migration Type | Details | Common Issue | Recommendation |
| Domain migration | olddomain.com becomes newdomain.com | Dropped content, missed redirects, content exists on old domain. | Find old or missed content or URLs which have been missed as part of the migration and, if 200s, port content to the new domain or 301 redirect the URLs if they’re no longer needed or the content already exists on the new domain |
| URL migration | /type/existing-slug/ becomes /better/new-type/ | Traffic drops after multiple URL changes | Try to keep URLs the same through all migrations. If not possible, ensure you upload a sitemap.xml file of the old URLs to your site to allow search engines to quickly find 301 redirects to new updated URL structures |
| Hosting migration | moving hosting from AWS to Siteground for example | sitemap.xml, robots.txt or .htaccess rules are dropped, missing, changed or inaccurate | Check your new hosting platform supports features and set them up. Recover your old data and add it via your new CMS or web host. Check URL structures on the new domain for issues. |
| CMS (content management system) migration | Moving from WordPress to Contentful sometimes partial site moves | Site structure becomes more difficult for search engines to crawl and discover new content (i.e. WordPress has built in subcategories and content category systems which other CMS don’t have) | Identify ways to help improve your website site structure and make pages more discoverable with better internal link structures from indexable category pages. |
| http: – https: protocol migration | Resolving URLs on https:// when the previous protocol was http:// | Mixed content warnings, some images still resolve through http:// requests | Check content across the site and update image resource URLs to reference https:// rather than http:// |
| Website redesign | Domain and URLs stay the same but the structure, layout and design of pages tend to stay the same. | Restructure drops internal links or de-prioritises high value organic pages | Check old pages and ensure that critical internal link blocks like menus or related content elements are replicated on the new site, check the new website main menu too. |
| Replatforming | Website content stays the same but the site is moved to a new CMS and hosting provider | Issues with sites becoming more reliant on JavaScript to render page content are common with replatforming. | Ensure steps like server side rendering or re-hydration are implemented before website migration to help content render rapidly for users |
The in-exhaustive list of potential issues and possible resolutions to the issues of web migrations is intended to help you understand the types of things which can go wrong with website migrations.
If you’re experiencing issues like this after a migration or are planning a website migration, then we’d recommend speaking with an SEO professional to help you quickly understand what the common issues are and how you can resolve them most rapidly.
Types of Website Migration
There are a few different types of website migration so it is important to understand which type of migration you are carrying out with your website and the content you host so you know what is the most likely cause of any traffic drop that you’ve experienced.
Here’s a list of the different types of website migration:
- Domain migration – the most complex and impactful type of website migration, all URLs will be changed because you’re migrating from exampledomain.com to newdomain.com (for example). Much of the time, these migrations are coupled with CMS migrations
- CMS migration – CMS migrations tend to occur when a website is moving from an older content management system to a newer one with more features. URLs can stay the same, but many sites take the opportunity to re-organise website structure, URL subfolders and slugs to better reflect organic search targeting and customers using the site.
- URL migration – all or parts of the site are re-structured to reorganise and re-optimise URLs. A common URL restructure occurs when webmasters re-structure content URLs to help them reflect common topics or top level products on their website. e.g. /blogs/seo-pagespeed/ might be changed to /technical-seo/pagespeed/
- Hosting migration – your website content, site structure, URL structure and technical set up might all be staying as is, but you’re moving to a new hosting provider. This is common for WordPress site owners who might be looking for cheaper web hosting but can also be performed by larger sites looking to consolidate acquired sites into a single hosting service.
- Protocol migration – occurs when a website moves from http:// to https:// however, removing subdomains like www. are also commonly considered a protocol migration. Content, structure, design and URL structures generally are recommended to be retained through these migrations.
- Replatforming – Similar to a CMS migration, replatforming generally occurs when a site is being migrated to a new CMS or away from antiquated technology.
- Website redesign – while not a migration in some sense, because there’s limited core technical change, website redesigns can and commonly do lead to organic search traffic fluctuations. This is because website redesigns can be as far reaching as a total restructure of all website features but can also be limited to a simple logo update or colour palette change.
Web migrations can include any combination of the types of migration listed above, for example, a website could;
- move host and CMS
- re-structure URLs
- redesign brand visuals and website colours
- update protocol from http: to https:
- host all indexable content on a new domain
As part of a single migration.
This would be a fairly complex example of a website migration but is not uncommon.
Mostly, website migrations are carried out to achieve a specific task like a simple URL restructure or a brand update.
However, when more complex migrations are being carried out, speaking with an SEO specialist is highly recommended to help you plan and organise a successful project to protect your website traffic.
How to Migrate a Website Without Losing SEO Value
Migrating a website is much simpler if you have a plan and you understand what is changing so you can consider what the likely impacts will be.
We’d highly recommend engaging with an SEO consultant because they’ll be able to help you prepare much more thoroughly.
Essentially you need to:
- create a big list of URLs with detailed traffic stats behind them (so you can understand URLs with organic value)
- plan and map redirects (if you’re changing URLs or domains)
- create a staging website with the new web pages and content designs
- check your new pages for parity with your old ones, pay special attention to written content, meta tags and link structures
- set up all tracking and analytics on the new website
- test crawling of the new site
- check technical SEO on the new site, like sitemaps, canonical URLs and robots.txt
- finalise your redirects
- push live the new site and update DNS to resolve your domain on the new site
- push live redirects of content so old URLs push users to new pages
- recrawl and check redirects for status codes, should be using 301s and resolving on planned pages
- once you’re happy, update Google Search Console, trigger the change of address tool, if you’re moving domains and monitor performance
There is a considerable amount more to website migrations than what we’ve included above this is just a brief run-through of how we’d generally recommend approaching a migration.
Our Website Migration Service
We offer a highly detailed website migration assistance service, designed to help you approach your site migration project in one of three different ways.
- Get through it migration – this is our cheapest migration package and it varies by site size, sector and traffic level. This migration package is designed to offer consistent SEO performance with a lighter touch to migrations. This service isn’t recommended for established brands or businesses but can offer a lightweight and cost effective way to get SEO expertise involved in your project.
- Detailed Migration – we’ll help you perfectly optimise the migration process, so you can be certain you’ll retain all of your organic traffic. This migration service implements a highly detailed SEO plan which ensures that you’ll retain organic value in your website, whatever the type of migration you’re implementing. Perfect for sites of any size or any vertical. We’ve worked on numerous migrations before, so have the experience to help you navigate the process effectively and leave you in a great place for future growth.
- SEO growth migrations – our most detailed and comprehensive migration service. This package helps you improve website traffic through the migration process. We will undertake detailed content reviews and competitive analysis to help your website experience an uptick once the migration is complete. We’re able to help identify opportunities through migration recommendation work that can ensure your business grows through your migration.
Our migration service packages are priced per job, based on the size of the website you’re migrating the specific type of aims you have for the outcome of the migration and the sector your website exists in.
If you’re in a highly competitive, intricate or detailed sector or have a very large website then your SEO costs will be higher. If you’re a small business owner with a compact website in a lower competition or with only local rankings we can help you for much less.
SEO Migration Checklist
Prefer to tackle migrations alone? Or a seasoned SEO professional with lots of experience? Try our SEO migration checklist which contains over 11 pages of detailed recommendations to help you fully understand the end to end process of a website migration and each task to carry out within every step of the process for a flawless migration every time.
There are more details of the SEO migration checklist here but the list aims to help you;
- plan properly and create detailed lists with information you need to know
- understand critical checks at each step
- allow you to update your to do lists with specific SEO checks
- help you see which elements matter for SEO
- accelerate SEO migration tasks with recommended tools and services to make your job simpler and easier
Find out more about our SEO migration checklist.
