Ever relaunched your website and watched your rankings vanish overnight?  Or maybe you’re staring at a nosediving traffic graph, realizing it all began the day you switched platforms.  It sounds like you had a bad migration – and you’re not alone.

Stick with us, and we’ll walk you through how to avoid these pitfalls or recover if things go sideways.

What went wrong in a migration and how to fix it using Search Console

In our last post, we taught you how to create 404 redirects which fix broken links on your website and this is about to come in very useful. Because today, we’re diving into that dreaded word: website migrations.

Whether you’re redesigning, moving to a new platform, changing domains or just tinkering under the hood a migration is one of the most SEO-critical events your site will ever face.

New clients often reach out to us when they spot their traffic tanking. We check the timeline, and it usually lines up with a new website design or switching platforms – and they didn’t do a proper migration.

It’s common to see traffic dips when the wrong steps are missed, but don’t panic, by the end of this post, you’ll have a clear action plan and a PDF checklist to guide you through every step of the way along. We’ve also got some recovery tips if you’ve already migrated and things aren’t looking as good as anticipated.

All this can be a lot easier than you think.

IS YOUR TRAFFIC REALLY MISSING –  OR JUST NOT BEING TRACKED?

Before you break out into a cold sweat, let’s make sure your traffic really is gone, and it isn’t just a tracking glitch. After a migration, popular tracking tags like Adobe Analytics, GA4 or your Search Console settings can get left behind. This makes it look like your traffic plummeted when in fact your healthy stream of visitors simply aren’t being recorded.

So if you’re using GA4 then check your Realtime report and try navigating your site. Do your own visits show up? If not, then your GA4 tags might not be present or firing. Alternatively use a browser plugin like Ghostery or Tag Assistant to audit all the tracking and marketing tags on your site.

Next, log into Search Console and confirm your property still includes the correct domain and URL prefix. It could be something as simple as your old website having www in the domain and your new domain doesn’t… you just need to let Search Console know. We covered adding a new Search Console Property in a previous post, so we recommend reading or watching that one for full instructions.

It takes minutes to fix missing tracking and a few hours for those numbers to refresh. Always check this first before moving on to redirects, sitemaps, or performance reports.

WHY MIGRATIONS AREN’T JUST MOVING PAGES

It’s tempting to treat a migration like a design refresh, but there’s a lot more at stake. Migrations with knock on effects can include:

• There might be theme tweaks:
  You swap out your site’s look but keep URLs and content the same.
  But, that new code can still affect things like load times or hidden metadata.
• You could switch CMS platforms:
  Moving from something like Squarespace to WordPress often changes URL structures, which means all the SEO equity associated with those pages can vanish if not handled correctly.
• There are also content overhauls:
  Reorganising pages for a new business direction, merging with another company, or deleting old content can break backlinks and internal links.
  Search Engines treat those pages as completely new, essentially resetting the SEO equity from scratch.

Every change you make has SEO consequences: lost link equity, broken internal links, mismatched URLs, disappearing content and missing metadata. If SEO wasn’t baked into your planning from day one, you’ve already set yourself up for headaches. Think of a migration as an SEO-critical event… not just a design task.

STEP 1: AUDIT THE STAGING SITE BEFORE LAUNCH (DON’T LAUNCH BLIND)

Picture this: your staging site accidentally goes live, and Google starts indexing placeholder pages. We see it a lot, suddenly there are two versions of your brand available to the public – and one of them is still a work in progress. Google might not know which one is the correct version and send traffic to your preview version instead. To avoid that nightmare, audit your staging environment first.

To double check that it isn’t being indexed by Google or Bing just do a site search for site:preview.com and replace preview.com with the domain of your staging server. If some pages appear in the results then mention this to your web developer as soon as possible. Ask them to hide the under development site from search engines using the robots.txt file or use password protection.

STEP 2: BUILD A LIST OF EVERY KNOWN URL

Next, you need a comprehensive list of URLs from both your old and new sites. This will be your roadmap for redirects – something which we covered in full detail in our previous video.

You can download them from Google Search Console indexing and performance reports, XML sitemaps, Google Analytics along with web crawlers like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb. You don’t need to use all these sources, but depending on the complexity of your site it helps to get the clearest picture possible.

Remember, the devil is in the details when it comes to migration so try not to miss anything from your old website.

Now it would take a whole episode explaining how to export those lists of pages from each tool and merging them into one spreadsheet. But instead, we’ve put them all in one handy free cheat sheet which is available to download at wearegenessee.com/show  We’ll also be updating that when things change and new tools come out. One tip – save all this legacy data in case you need it again in six months!

You’ll need to do the same process for your new staging site after everything is complete.

STEP 4: REDIRECTS  –  THE NON-NEGOTIABLE

YOU NEED A REDIRECT MAP. FULL STOP.

You’ll need to create a side-by-side spreadsheet mapping each old URL to its new counterpart. For example you might have to map your old “about-the-company” URL to the “about-us” URL. Or map your old “shop” URL to the new “store” URLs.

Without proper redirects, Google and users both end up on 404 pages, and you lose hard-earned SEO equity.

If you’ve got lots of these URLs and don’t know where to start, it’s worth putting that spreadsheet into some kind of priority order. You could start working by the highest impressions in Search Console or top revenue generating pages from Google Analytics. These priority pages should get redirected first.

And if you have any control over those URLs, keeping the filename conventions consistent on the old and new sites. Don’t create a new page called /contact-us when you already have one called /contact unless you have a really compelling reason. Remember, consistency helps preserve your rankings.

At the end of this process you should have a full spreadsheet of every old URL and it’s new location – we’ll call it the migration redirection map. You need to share that document for your stakeholders and developers to review. If you’re setting up your own redirects then watch our previous video on 404s and broken links – you’ll know exactly what to do from there.

If any of this seems overwhelming, drop us an email at show@wearegenesse.com – no challenge too small. If you’ve already gone live without these in place, it’s not too late.

Start retroactively mapping the URLs and putting in 301s as soon as possible – even a late redirect map is better than none. The longer you leave this the more search engines will crawl your site and discover pages are missing. And the longer they encounter broken links, the more rankings will decay . Remember you’ll need to use a list of URLs from the older version of the site before you migrated. If you haven’t got that list, try pulling data from Search Console performance reports and your analytics reports PRIOR to the migration date.

Rebuilding Google’s trust can take weeks or even months – but this checklist will get you back on track. 

TIPS AND TRICKS

Here are some other common tips and tricks for a migration.

First, move metadata accurately. Page titles, H1s, and meta descriptions should carry over or be updated thoughtfully. Random rewrites can confuse search engines.

Also, avoid irrelevant targets. Redirecting /sale/2022 to your homepage may seem convenient, but it dilutes relevance and doesn’t help users.

You’re going to want to avoid redirect chains.  So don’t link /a to /b to /c to /d … Redirect /a straight to the final /d.

One final note, servers are case sensitive, they treat upper and lowercase differently.

LAUNCH DAY CHECKLIST 

On the day, before you hit Publish, run through this checklist:

• Confirm all 301 redirects are live on your server.
• Generate and upload your new XML sitemap – we did a whole episode about that.
• Update robots.txt with the correct disallow and allow rules – make sure the new site can be seen by search engines.
• Test Search Console and any analytics tags – make sure the data is flowing.
• Run a full crawler with Screaming Frog to catch any missing redirects or noindex tags.

If you’re switching domains entirely, go to Change of Address in Settings in Search Console, select your old and new domains, and follow the prompts.

Once you’re live, go to Search Console, head to Sitemaps, enter your new sitemap URL, and click Submit.

Google isn’t psychic – you have to give it your new map unless it’s got the same URL as the old one.

MONITOR

For the next two weeks you’ll need to check 404s every day.  In Search Console’s Coverage report, filter for 404 errors and address them immediately. This isn’t a one-time task – keep an eye on new dead links and set up alerts if you can.

Also compare before and after performance.  Use Search Console and any analytics tools to review branded vs non-branded traffic. Look at things like Total clicks, click-through rate, and average position. Also refer to your bounce and conversion rates on top priority pages. Look for unexpected drops page by page – that tells you exactly where you need to focus.

If you skipped earlier migration steps and launched without redirects or updated tracking, this process becomes your “repair dashboard.” Look for high-performing pages that have dropped sharply or even disappeared. Those are often your missing redirects or misconfigured tags. Use that insight to prioritise recovery.

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You now have the steps to plan, launch, and recover, no matter what. 

Head to wearegenessee.com/show to grab our free migration checklist which includes links to all the useful tools and all the other episodes.

But if you’re not comfortable with the time-consuming mapping hundreds or thousands of pages or any of the technical aspects then please get in touch. Our team lives and breathes migrations – no problem too big or small. Email show@wearegenessee.com and let us shoulder the heavy lifting.

If post-migration traffic has plunged more than 50% or you’re losing branded traffic something more serious has happened so definitely get in touch. If this video helped explain migrations, then hit like, subscribe and drop a comment. We read them all.

Next up, we’ll dive into Performance Reports in Search Console to help you spot trends and uncover opportunities like a pro. Remember, we’re here to make sure when people search they find your business – and choose your business.