Most ranking losses on a migration happen because nobody mapped the URLs before launch.
A replatform, domain move, or URL restructure is exactly the moment years of accumulated SEO equity is most at risk, every redirect, every canonical, every bit of structured data has to carry over correctly, on day one, not fixed retroactively once Search Console shows the damage.
This is the same discipline behind our own technical SEO work, applied to a hard deadline: a full URL map, redirect rules tested before go live, and rankings monitored closely in the weeks after.
How we run a migration
In this order, every time.
- 01 · Full URL and content audit, before anything moves
- Every indexed URL catalogued against its replacement, so nothing gets silently dropped in the move.
- 02 · Redirect mapping and testing
- One-to-one 301s wherever a genuine equivalent page exists, no blanket redirects to the homepage, tested against the staging environment before launch.
- 03 · Structured data and canonical parity
- Schema and canonical tags rebuilt to match the new architecture exactly, so search engines don't have to re-learn the site from scratch.
- 04 · Post-launch monitoring
- Rankings, indexation and crawl errors tracked closely in the first weeks, when problems are cheapest to catch and fix.
Proof from real work
Clients where this was the job.
Questions, answered straight
No fluff, as promised.
How much traffic loss should we expect during a migration?
Done properly, close to none. Some short-term ranking fluctuation while Google re-crawls is normal, sustained traffic loss is a sign the redirect map or structured data wasn't handled correctly.
Can you run this if you're not building the new site?
Yes, we run the SEO side of a migration alongside whoever handles the build. Though if you're also rebuilding the platform, see web development for how we do both together.
Replatforming soon
and worried about rankings?
Tell us the timeline. We'll tell you exactly what needs mapping before launch day.
Prefer email? hello@saigon.digital