Migrate without losing your rankings.
Migrations do not lose traffic. Unmapped URLs and missing baselines lose traffic. This task exists so nothing of value goes dark, and so we can prove within days, not months, whether the launch held. It refuses to run without a full crawl baseline and a signed-off rollback plan, because those two things turn a scary launch into a boring one.
What you get
The method
The sacred baseline
A complete URL inventory from crawl, Search Console, sitemap, analytics and backlink data, with traffic, rankings and links per URL. Captured while the old site is live, retained for a year.
Value tiers
Every URL is tiered. Tier one, the money and linked pages, gets mandatory one-to-one redirects. Tier two is mapped or consciously consolidated. Tier three is a clean removal list, not an afterthought.
Redirect map and parity
Old to new with no chains and no blanket-to-homepage, delivered as a CSV and server config. A parity check confirms titles, metas, schema and canonicals survive the new templates, staging diffed against baseline.
Launch-day runbook
Ordered steps: redirects live, robots unblocked, sitemaps swapped, change-of-address filed for domain moves, cache purged. Rollback triggers are defined before launch, not improvised during it.
Day 1, 7 and 30 verification
The new site is crawled against the map for 404s, chains and soft-404s with a same-day fix list, coverage and positions compared to baseline, and a day-30 verdict delivered.
Who this is for, and who it is not
It is for teams with a launch coming: a redesign, a replatform, a domain move, or consolidating several sites into one. Book it weeks before launch so the baseline is captured in time.
It is not for sites with no launch planned, or launches already shipped without a baseline; a safety net has to be set before the fall, not after it. If you have already migrated and lost traffic, a Technical SEO Audit is the recovery route. If the launch is still ahead of you, our guide to website migration sets out what the baseline has to contain and what Google's own documentation actually specifies.
What happens after checkout
Weeks before launch
Baseline captured, URLs tiered, redirect map and parity checklist built, runbook written and signed off.
Launch day
Your developers execute the runbook. We stand by, watching for the rollback triggers we agreed in advance.
Day 1 and day 7
The new site is crawled against the map, problems fixed same day, coverage and positions checked against baseline.
Day 30 verdict
Recovered, gaps and actions in a plain report, with up to three revision rounds included.
What this replaces
| Alternative | Typical cost | What you actually get |
|---|---|---|
| Winging it with a redirect plugin | $0 to $100 | Blanket redirects to the homepage, lost rankings, no baseline to diagnose |
| Agency migration project | $5,000+ | This work, wrapped inside a much bigger retainer |
| Doing nothing | Free | The 20 to 60 percent traffic drop that funds this task many times over |
Questions, answered straight
When should I book this?
Weeks before launch, not after. The baseline must be captured while the old site is live.
Do you build the redirects?
We deliver the map and server config; your developers implement. We verify every redirect after launch.
What if traffic drops anyway?
The day-1 and day-7 checks catch problems while they are cheap to fix. That is the point of the runbook.
Do you execute the migration?
No, and that is deliberate. We spec, verify and monitor; your team controls the launch, which keeps the liability line clean.
What kinds of migration does this cover?
Redesigns, replatforms, CMS switches, domain moves and consolidations. Tell us the scope at checkout.
How long does it take?
Scoped to your launch window, since the work spans weeks before and 30 days after. Pair it with Rank Tracking, effectively mandatory here.