Website migration without losing SEO: switch sites without losing your rankings
Redesign, platform change or new domain: we crawl your site before touching it, map every URL to its 301 redirect, test in a staging environment and monitor Search Console for 90 days.
- Pre-migration crawl
- 301 redirects
- Staging environment
- 90 days of monitoring
What can go wrong in a migration.
Most traffic drops after a redesign don't come from the design: they come from what got lost along the way.
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Traffic loss from changed URLs
If a page changes its address and nobody tells Google where it went, the ranking it had is lost with it.
HIGH IMPACT -
Missing or chained redirects
An old URL that returns a 404, or that hops three times before landing, wastes the links other sites gave you.
HIGH IMPACT -
Lost metadata
Titles, descriptions, canonicals and structured data that don't carry over leave Google guessing what each page is about.
MEDIUM IMPACT -
Lost content
Text, FAQs or articles that “didn't fit the new design” are often exactly the ones that brought in visitors.
HIGH IMPACT -
Broken internal links
Menus and links pointing to old addresses force Google through redirects and blur the site's hierarchy.
MEDIUM IMPACT -
Blocks carried over from staging
A staging noindex or robots.txt that reaches production can pull the entire site out of Google within days.
HIGH IMPACT
How we migrate without losing rankings.
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Baseline crawl
Before touching anything, we crawl every URL with its titles, headings, canonicals and links, and save your Search Console and Analytics data.
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301 redirect map
Every old URL gets an equivalent destination, one by one, with no wildcards that send everything to the home page.
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Testing in staging
The new site is fully tested before it goes live: redirects, metadata, internal links, speed, forms and conversion events.
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Launch and Search Console verification
We go live, submit the sitemaps, check the redirects in production and review indexing from day one.
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90 days of monitoring
We compare traffic, rankings and errors against the baseline and fix whatever comes up before it turns into a drop.
What kind of change it's for.
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Website redesign
You change the design and structure but keep the domain. It's the most common migration and the one that usually moves the most URLs.
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Platform change
From Wix, Joomla, Drupal or a custom build to WordPress, with content and URLs under control.
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Domain change
A new brand or domain, with complete redirects and the change of address notice in Search Console.
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Store migration to WooCommerce
From Shopify or another platform to WooCommerce, protecting category and product URLs, which are the ones that sell the most.
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Site merger
Two or more sites becoming one, deciding which content stays, which gets combined and where each page redirects.
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URL structure change
Removing dates, folders or parameters from addresses without losing what those pages had already earned.
Improvised migration vs. planned migration.
Our own migration: gulupadigital.com.
In 2026 we redesigned gulupadigital.com with a new WordPress theme. The site had 155 pages and more than 900 articles, in Spanish and English, with country and city landing pages that were already ranking.
Before launch we built the complete baseline: we crawled every HTML URL, saved titles, headings and links, and set one simple rule: no URL changes. The only exceptions are four explicit 301 redirects, one by one, with no wildcards.
We'll publish the before-and-after numbers here once we have 60 days of data since launch.
- pages
- 155
- articles
- 900+
- HTML URLs crawled
- 2,652
- explicit 301 redirects
- 4
Baseline: production crawl on October 5, 2026.
Frequently asked questions about website migrations.
How much traffic is lost in a migration?
It depends on how it's done. With complete redirects and prior testing, the goal is to keep your rankings; zero variation can't be promised. Some movement in the first weeks is normal while Google processes the changes, and monitoring tells that adjustment apart from a real problem.
How long does a website migration take?
It depends on the number of URLs and the type of change. A service site with a few dozen pages can be planned in days; a site with hundreds of articles or a store with thousands of products needs more mapping and testing time. We include the timeline in the proposal.
Does it work for a domain change?
Yes. Besides the redirect map, we keep the old domain live with its 301s, use Search Console's change of address tool and update the profiles and links you control.
What if I switch from Shopify to WooCommerce?
It can be done without losing rankings if you protect product and category URLs, which change format between platforms. We map each product to its new address and keep titles, descriptions and images.
Can you migrate a site you didn't build?
Yes. We start with a baseline crawl of your current site, no matter who built it or which platform it runs on.
What do I need to get started?
Access to your current site, Search Console and Analytics, if you have them. If you don't, we set them up before we start so we have something to compare against.
Plan your migration without losing SEO
Tell us what you're changing and we'll send you a proposal with the scope. We start with a 30-minute meeting.
- Pre-migration crawl
- 301 map, one by one
- 90 days of monitoring
