SEO Migration Services
Move your domain, platform or URLs without handing back the rankings you spent years earning. I plan the move, build the redirect map, check the launch and stay on it until the traffic holds.
Get in touch Request a free SEO auditSenior-only, with no account managers. I took over the REHAUS migration after 82% of its 5,270 redirects turned out to point at a dead domain. Four months later, its monthly impressions were 5.9 times higher.
SEO migration services protect a website's rankings, organic traffic and AI search visibility while its domain, platform, URL structure or design changes. The work covers benchmarking, a full URL inventory, a one-to-one redirect map, content parity checks, staging QA, launch-day checks and at least 90 days of monitoring afterwards. Most of it happens before launch, which is why the best time to bring in an SEO is before anyone builds a template.
Most migrations I'm called into didn't fail on launch day. They failed weeks earlier, in a redirect map nobody checked or a platform setting nobody knew existed.
By the time the traffic graph starts to slide, the old site has usually gone, the developer has moved on to the next project and everyone assumes Google is 'just adjusting'.
I'd rather be in the room six weeks before launch. However, if you're reading this after launch with the graph heading the wrong way, I do rescues too. My website migration SEO guide covers the full process if you'd like to run it yourself.
SEO migration support, from scoping to the last redirect check.
Migration planning and scoping
Before a template exists, I agree what's changing, what can wait and what's likely to break. If you can keep your URLs, or move platform before you rebrand the domain, I'll tell you, because every extra change makes a traffic drop harder to diagnose.
Read: the pre-launch checklist
Benchmark and URL inventory
A full crawl, 16 months of Search Console data, analytics landing pages, backlinks and sitemaps, de-duplicated into one list of every URL that matters. It's the only record of the old site you'll have once it's gone.
Redirect map build and review
Every old URL with traffic, links or rankings mapped one to one to its closest equivalent, with permanent 301s, no chains and no homepage dumping. If your developer has already built the map, I'll review it line by line.
Staging and content parity QA
I crawl staging against the old site: titles, headings, body copy, internal links, canonicals, hreflang and structured data. New templates that quietly drop content are the leak I find most often after redesigns.
Launch day and 90-day monitoring
Staging blocks removed, redirects tested section by section, sitemaps submitted and Change of Address filed for domain moves. Then daily checks for the first fortnight, and a page-by-page comparison against the benchmark until the numbers settle.
Read: how to report a launch
Migration rescue
Already launched and losing traffic? I audit the chain end to end: DNS, domain settings, path-level redirects, internal links and Change of Address. Then I rebuild what's broken, starting with the URLs that carried the most clicks.
Proof: the REHAUS migration rescue
AI search continuity
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI features read your site too. I check AI crawlers can still reach it, that your content is in the raw HTML, that llms.txt and Organization schema point at the new URLs, and that Bing has the new sitemap.
Service: AI Visibility Audit
Shopify migrations
Moving to Shopify changes nearly every URL, because /products/ and /collections/ can't be removed. I handle the bulk redirect import, the Redirect versus Alias domain setting and the theme checks that platform moves need.
Read: Shopify migration SEO · Service: Shopify SEO consultant
The migrations I cover, and where each one breaks.
| Migration | Where it usually breaks | What I own |
|---|---|---|
|
Domain change .co.uk to .com, or a rebrand |
DNS, redirects from the old domain, Change of Address, external profiles | Redirect and DNS checks, Change of Address, backlink reclaim |
|
Platform change WordPress, Magento or Wix to Shopify, or a CMS rebuild |
Nearly every URL changes, and new templates drop content | The full redirect map, template parity and platform settings |
|
URL restructure new folders, slugs, or a subdomain to a subfolder |
Pattern rules that send thousands of pages to the wrong place | Rule testing against the full URL list before launch |
| Redesign, same URLs | Thinner templates, lost internal links, a noindex left over from staging | Content parity and staging QA |
| HTTP to HTTPS | Mixed content, and 302s where there should be 301s | Protocol redirects and canonical checks |
| Site merger | Two old pages competing to redirect to one new URL | Deciding which URLs win, and the consolidation map |
Doing several at once, such as a new domain, a new platform and new URLs in the same launch, is the riskiest version of all. It's also the most common, so it's where I'm most useful.
Four stages, one person.
-
Benchmark
Six weeks before launch, ideally. Baseline rankings, traffic, conversions and backlinks, a full crawl of the old site, and the URL inventory.
-
Map
The one-to-one redirect map, a content parity plan and a launch checklist, agreed with your developer before anything ships.
-
Launch
Staging crawled and signed off, then launch-day checks in a fixed order, with old URLs sampled from every section of the site.
-
Monitor
Daily crawls of the old URLs for the first fortnight, then a page-by-page comparison against the benchmark for 90 days. The redirects stay for at least a year.
A migration rescue, with the numbers.
In April 2026, REHAUS moved its Shopify store from rehaus.co.uk to rehaus.co without any SEO involvement. I took over three weeks later, with rankings in freefall and 42,593 historical clicks draining into a dead end.
Of 5,270 live redirects pointed back at the dead domain, nearly all of them landing on the homepage.
Of the clicks on the top 1,000 old product URLs now land on the right product page, after I remapped 705 of them through Shopify product IDs.
Average position four months on, down from 24.2 in the first week after the migration.
Monthly impressions, from 37,123 in April to 218,042 in July.
"Appreciate your getting stuck into this so quickly, the depth of the diagnostic is genuinely useful."
Tom Allason, Founder, REHAUS
The fix wasn't clever. The DNS for the old domain had never been updated, the old domain was set to Redirect instead of Alias in Shopify, and 530 product URLs had changed with no redirects at all. I rebuilt 2,921 redirects, removed 2,349 junk rules and filed Change of Address. The REHAUS case study has the full story, phase by phase.
Older migrations leave damage too. At 6sense, links from other sites were landing on 301 redirect chains that ended at irrelevant pages, which the 6sense case study covers. More results are on the case studies page.
Already migrated and losing traffic?
If launch was weeks ago and the graph is still falling, Google probably isn't 'adjusting'. A steep, lasting drop usually means something in the chain is broken.
These are the five things I check first.
- Redirects that don't fire: DNS or domain settings stopping old URLs from redirecting at all.
- Redirects to the wrong place: homepage dumps, chains, temporary 302s and staging URLs.
- Missing redirects: URLs that changed with no rule behind them, usually products or old blog posts.
- Technical blocks: a noindex tag, robots.txt rule or canonical left over from staging.
- Thinner pages: new templates that dropped the content the old pages ranked for.
Recovery starts the day these are fixed, not the day you launched, so the sooner I see it the better. Send me the old and new domain through the contact page and I'll tell you what I'd check first.
Who should own the SEO side of your migration.
| Question | Your developer | SEO agency | SEO migration consultant (me) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the SEO work? | The build team, alongside the build | An account manager briefs a team | The senior person you spoke to |
| Redirect map built from search data | Usually from the sitemap only | Yes | Yes, from crawl, Search Console, analytics and backlinks |
| Content parity checked on staging | Rarely | Sometimes | Yes |
| Monitoring after launch | Rarely | Often an add-on | 90 days as standard |
| AI crawler and Bing checks | Rarely | Rarely | Standard scope |
| Best for | Small sites keeping the same URLs | Large migrations that need a big team | Businesses that want one senior owner for the search risk |
Your developer still builds the site. I write the SEO specifications and redirect rules, check the work and own the search risk, so nobody has to guess. If you need a team of ten, an agency is the right call, and I'll say so on the first conversation.
Check your redirect map before you call me.
My free redirect map checker sits inside my website migration SEO guide. Paste your old and new URLs and it flags chains, loops, homepage redirects, staging links and temporary redirects, then gives you a cleaned map and server rules for Apache, Nginx, Shopify or Netlify. Nothing you paste leaves your browser.
The robots.txt generator and tester checks AI crawlers aren't blocked on the new site, and the hreflang generator rebuilds tags for international moves. Both are on the free SEO tools hub, with no login required.
SEO migration support in Leeds, and everywhere else.
I'm based in Horsforth, Leeds, and I work with businesses across the UK and the US. If you're in Leeds or West Yorkshire, I'm local.
If you're not, it makes no difference. Migrations run on crawls, spreadsheets and Search Console, and the planning session works just as well on a call.
The guides behind the work.
Every guide below comes from real migrations and audits. They're free, and they're the same playbook I use on client work.
-
Website Migration SEO: How to Move Your Site Without Losing Rankings
The checklist I use before, during and after launch, a real rescue, and the free redirect map checker.
-
Shopify Migration SEO: Keep Your Rankings in the Move
The five-link chain that carries rankings across, and what happens when one link breaks.
-
Technical SEO Audit Checklist
The 47 checks I run on a site, including the ones that matter most after a migration.
-
Internal Linking Strategy
Why internal links should point at final URLs, not through redirects, once the move is done.
-
llms.txt on Shopify
What the file says, how to change it, and why it needs the new URLs after a move.
-
SEO Reporting
How to annotate a launch so the expected dip doesn't cause panic in the next report.
SEO migration services FAQ.
What are SEO migration services?
SEO migration services protect a website's rankings, organic traffic and AI visibility through a change of domain, platform, URL structure or design. They cover benchmarking, a URL inventory, a one-to-one redirect map, content parity and staging checks, launch-day QA and post-launch monitoring, usually for at least 90 days.
How much do SEO migration services cost?
Pricing is custom, because a 40-page brochure site and a 50,000-URL store are different jobs. The work comes in three shapes: a pre-launch plan and redirect map, launch support with 90 days of monitoring, or a rescue for a migration that has already gone wrong. Ask for a quote through the contact page. For market context, my guide to SEO pricing in the UK covers what consultants and agencies charge.
When should I bring an SEO into a migration?
Before anyone designs a template, and ideally six weeks before launch, so there's time to benchmark, build the URL inventory and map the redirects. An SEO brought in during launch week usually finds the URL structure, templates and redirect plan already set.
How long does an SEO migration take?
The planning usually runs over the four to six weeks before launch, depending on how many URLs the site has. After launch, I monitor daily for the first fortnight and against the benchmark for 90 days. Google says a small to medium site can take a few weeks for most pages to move, and larger sites take longer.
Can you fix a migration that has already gone wrong?
Yes. REHAUS was three weeks into a failed migration when I took over, with 82% of its redirects pointing at a dead domain. Four months later, average position had moved from 24.2 to 10.7 and monthly impressions were 5.9 times higher. Recovery starts when the problems are fixed, so the sooner the better.
Do you work with our developer or agency?
Yes, and it's usually the best setup. Your developer or agency builds the site, while I write the SEO specifications and redirect rules, review staging and check the launch. I don't need to replace anyone.
Do you handle Shopify migrations?
Yes, including moves to Shopify from WordPress, Magento and other platforms, and domain changes on Shopify itself. My Shopify migration SEO guide covers the platform-specific steps, including the domain setting that sent every old REHAUS URL to the homepage.
Do you only work with businesses in Leeds?
No. I'm based in Leeds and work with businesses across the UK and the US. Most of the work happens remotely, in crawls, spreadsheets and Search Console, so location doesn't change the scope.
Tell me what you're moving, and when.
Send me the old domain, the new one if you have it, and your launch date. I'll reply within one business day with the risks I'd look at first, and whether a plan, launch support or a rescue fits.
Get in touch Request a free SEO audit