Updated
Change platform, domain or URLs without losing rankings.
A migration is where hard-won rankings quietly disappear. New platform, new URLs, missing redirects, and six months of traffic gone overnight. I plan and run migrations so that does not happen. I project-managed a national distributor from Magento to a custom Laravel platform over two years and 1.5 million line items, and rankings held throughout. This is the work that protects what you already have.
Why migrations lose rankings.
A drop after a migration is almost never bad luck. It is one of a short list of avoidable mistakes. Knowing them is half the job.
| The mistake | What happens | How I stop it |
|---|---|---|
| URLs change, no redirects | Google loses the link between the page it ranked and the page that now exists. Rankings evaporate. | A one-to-one redirect map from every old URL to its best new match, built before launch. |
| Everything points at the homepage | Lazy redirects dump all the old pages onto one URL. The ranking signals do not carry. | Each old URL maps to the closest matching new page, so the signal follows the content. |
| Content and structure change silently | New templates drop headings, text or internal links the old rankings depended on. | Parity checks compare old and new on titles, headings, content and links before cutover. |
| Staging gets indexed | Google finds the test site, indexes duplicates, and confuses itself about which is real. | Staging blocked from indexing from day one, and checked again before and after launch. |
The work is in the preparation.
Launch day should be boring. It is boring because everything below happened first.
Crawl and map
Crawl the old site in full. Every URL, every ranking page, every internal link. Nothing gets migrated that we have not accounted for.
Build the redirect map
Every old URL mapped to its best new match with a permanent 301. No chains, no dead ends, no dumping to the homepage.
Check parity on staging
Compare old and new on the things Google cares about: titles, headings, content, internal links, schema. Fix the gaps before anyone launches.
Cut over and watch
A controlled launch, then close monitoring of logs, crawl errors and rankings. Catch anything the plan missed while it is still small.
Magento to custom Laravel. Rankings held.
A national distributor with close to 1.5 million line items moved off Magento onto a custom Laravel platform. I ran the project top to bottom over two years: the migration plan, the redirect strategy, the courier integrations with DHL and DPD, the accounting integration with Sage, and a team of two developers, a frontend developer and two SEO managers. Rankings and traffic held through the change, and the new site performed better than the old one.
Scale is a planning problem, not a barrier. Tell me what you are moving and I will tell you what it takes to move it safely.
Best fit.
A quick sanity check before we talk.
Right project for me
- You are moving platform, domain or URL structure and cannot afford to lose rankings.
- You want the SEO planned in from the start, not bolted on after launch.
- You want someone who can run the whole project, not just hand over a redirect list.
Not the right brief
- You already launched, lost rankings, and want a one-hour fix. That is a recovery job, worth its own conversation.
- You want SEO sign-off on a plan you will not change.
- You have no way to add redirects or edit the new build.
Migration SEO FAQ.
Why do sites lose rankings after a migration?
How do you keep rankings during a replatform?
What is a redirect map and why does it matter?
How big a migration can you handle?
Planning a move? Plan the SEO in first.
Bring the new platform, the timeline and the current site. The first reply focuses on what could cost you rankings, and how to avoid it.
Book a call