How do you migrate a website without losing SEO?
Short answer
Map every URL that earns clicks, impressions or links to its closest new equivalent, redirect each one directly with no chains, carry structured data and internal links across, and monitor the new site daily for the first weeks. Most migration losses come from URLs nobody inventoried.
Build the inventory first
Combine Search Console, analytics and a crawl into one list. Include URLs that already return errors but still rank; they often carry traffic nobody knows about.
Decide what survives
Not every URL needs to exist on the new site, but every URL with value needs a destination. Redirecting everything to the homepage is treated as a soft 404 and loses the equity.
Check before launch
- Redirects tested on staging, one hop each
- Rendering checked without JavaScript
- Structured data, canonicals and hreflang present on every template
- robots.txt not still blocking the whole site from staging
Watch after launch
Daily checks of Search Console coverage, 404s and key page rankings for the first two to three weeks, then weekly until traffic settles.
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Within 24 hours you get a fixed scope, a delivery window and a price, or a short note saying we are not the right agency for it.