SEO migration Move the site. Keep the rankings.
A redesign, a replatform, a domain change or a move off WordPress is a migration whether anyone calls it one or not. An SEO migration carries the URLs, the titles and the rankings across.
250+ live client engagements · Melbourne-based, working across Australia, the UK, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and New Zealand
Seven ways a launch
loses the rankings.
None of these are exotic. They are what we find on a site that has just been rebuilt, and none announces itself in a browser.
Every old URL redirects to the homepage
A wildcard instead of a map. A redirect to a page that answers nothing is a soft 404.
Titles and meta descriptions arrive empty
They used to come from a plugin. Now they come from code, and a field nobody wired renders blank.
The staging index block ships with the site
A robots file meant to keep the build private, promoted untouched. It de-indexes the live site.
The content only exists after JavaScript runs
The response a crawler reads is an empty shell. The browser assembled the rest a second later.
Redirects chain, loop, or answer with the wrong code
Chains dilute, loops fail, and a 302 asks Google to carry on indexing the old URL.
Canonicals and links point at a host you left behind
The www host, or the staging domain. The sitemap usually still lists the old URLs too.
Tracking stops firing on the new templates
Nobody can tell whether enquiries fell, when they fell, or which part caused it.
One cutover. No second attempt.
Less a judgement call than an inventory: every indexable URL either has a destination, or it does not.
1
attempt at cutover
The switch happens once. Everything before it is preparation, everything after it is repair.
2
crawls that decide it
The old site before it is touched, the new one once it is live. The difference is the job.
301
the redirect that carries
A permanent redirect passes the signals on. A 302 asks Google to keep the old URL instead.
404
what an unmapped URL returns
Anything missing from the map answers with nothing. Worse is a redirect to an unrelated page.
200
the status that proves nothing
A page can answer 200 with an empty title and no inbound link. Green is not a grade.
0
indexable URLs missing from the map
The only acceptable number. A wildcard cannot tell a service page from a tag archive.
The site looks finished. That is what makes a bad migration hard to see.
A rebuilt site gets inspected on the pages the team helped design. The damage sits on the long tail — older posts, service variants, the pages quietly earning enquiries.
None of it is visible in a browser, only in a crawl, and only against an earlier one.
Australia · UK · KSA · UAE · NZ
250+
Active client engagements
Search, paid media, web and tracking under one roof
Google reviews
5.0
Rating across every review
We run our own review system on ourselves before we sell you one
The SoudCoh Standard v1.0
41
Clauses published in full
The operating rules, written down where you can read them first
Firm-level figures from the SoudCoh record, not a forecast for your launch. Migration work is reported against your own pre-launch crawl.
Ten things happen on a migration. Here they are, in order.
Most of it sits before the launch. A migration booked in go-live week is already a recovery job.
Crawl and inventory the site you have
Every indexable URL with its title, description, canonical, headings, structured data and links, captured before anything changes.
Map old to new, row by row
A reviewable ledger with a destination for every URL, decided by a person rather than a wildcard.
Carry the titles, descriptions and canonicals across
Each one transfers unchanged or changes deliberately and is recorded. On a new stack they come from code.
Rebuild the internal links as links
Navigation, pagination and filtered listings as anchors a crawler can follow, not application state a click reveals.
Check what the crawler actually receives
The response before JavaScript runs, not the page after. If the copy appears later, the template is fixed.
Block staging properly, and only staging
Kept out of the index by a method that cannot travel with the build into production.
Plan the launch in tranches
Sections cut over in stages, so a defect is contained to one tranche and can be rolled back alone.
Cut over, then crawl immediately
Redirects, robots file, sitemap, canonicals and tracking verified on the live host within the hour.
Diff the two crawls and work the list
Lost titles, pages with no inbound link, chained redirects, canonicals on the wrong host, URLs no longer indexable.
Re-check the ledger, then hold the window open
Every redirect tested again live, then indexing, coverage and enquiries watched for weeks. Some defects surface late.
Keyed to the launch, not to the calendar.
- Before the build
Baseline and inventory
We crawl the current site while the new one is still a design. Nobody else will keep that record.
- During the build
The map and the templates
The ledger is written and reviewed, and templates checked for titles, canonicals and crawlable links as built.
- Launch week
Rehearsal on staging
The whole cutover is run on staging: redirects tested, crawl compared, index block confirmed, rollback agreed in writing.
- Launch day
Cutover and the first crawl
The tranche goes live and is crawled within the hour, on the live host, before anyone goes home.
- Week 1
The diff, worked down
The two crawls are compared and defects fixed in the order of what each URL was earning.
- Weeks 2–8
Recovery, and the honest version of it
Read against your own pre-launch baseline. Some movement is normal; we say which part is settling.
You keep the baseline crawl, the inventory and the ledger whether or not we run the launch.
Migration work lives in two of the six stages.
Compound is how our team works — six stages every change passes through. A launch leans on these two.
Sweep
Waste is found daily, named, and priced.
On a migration the sweep is the crawl diff: missing titles, chained redirects, orphaned pages, canonicals on the wrong host, found and named.
Statement
A fixed rhythm, good news or bad.
Reporting runs against your own pre-migration baseline, including the weeks where the honest answer is that it is still settling.
What we publish.
The studies below are lead generation accounts and every tile says which channel. We publish no migration case study, so that work is reported against your own pre-migration baseline.
- Site rebuild · Cleaning48%more warm, ready-to-convert enquiriesConversion rate up 60% · average site speed improved 42% after the rebuildMade2Clean
- Organic + paid · Cleaning · Sydney80%boost in organic traffic65% more qualified leads · twice the quote-form submissions off the same service areaOperaShine
- Paid search · Cleaning · Melbourne138jobs booked in 41 daysA$20.43 cost per job · 21.20% conversion rate · A$2,819.92 ad spendPink Flamingo
- Paid search · Carpet cleaning · Perth53jobs in the first 15 daysA$24.92 cost per job · brand-new account, no conversion history at launchCleanetic
Before you ask us anything
Here is what everybody asks first.
Migrations, answered.
Timing, cost, contracts, who owns the map, what a staged launch means, and what happens when rankings do not recover.
The first call is free and there is no deck.
Book a free strategy callA migration is the riskiest week of a rebuild.
It almost always arrives attached to something else — a new site, a new platform, a new domain. SEO services compares the search work side by side.
- Website designA redesign is a migration whether or not anyone calls it one. This is the build side.
- Technical SEOCrawling, indexing, rendering and speed on the site you have, once the launch is behind you.
- Custom web app developmentWhen the move off a CMS is really a move to an application, with URLs designed rather than inherited.
- Counting what the new site producesTags rebuilt on the new templates, so a fall in enquiries is visible rather than suspected.
- E-commerce SEOCatalogue moves carry the most URLs and variants, which is where a redirect map breaks first.
- Local SEOA domain or address change touches the Business Profile and every listing carrying the old details.
- When the recommendation comes from an assistantAssistants read much the same response a crawler does, so a client-side-only rebuild can hide you there.
Four briefings sit next to this work: what to do when the site itself is the problem, how long search work takes to show, the tag that breaks measurement on a new build, and what to expect an agency to be able to explain.
Get the pre-launch crawl
We crawl the site you have now, inventory every indexable URL with its title and canonical, and hand you the baseline. Yours to keep either way.
No pitch deck. No upsell. A real conversation and a file your developers can act on.