Migrating your website doesn’t have to be risky. With Website Success, we handle every aspect of your migration if you’re an SEO client — planning, technical optimisation, redirects, content management, and post-launch monitoring.
If you’re not using our SEO services, careful planning and attention to the points in this blog post can help you avoid common pitfalls.
Key Takeaways:
- Plan every step: URL mapping, backups, and coordination.
- Manage technical SEO: redirects, speed, mobile optimisation.
- Monitor post-launch: traffic, rankings, and errors.
Migrating your website can be exciting!
It’s a chance to improve design, functionality, and user experience. But without careful planning, it can also pose serious risks to your SEO. Broken links, lost traffic, and ranking drops are common if SEO isn’t prioritised.
At Website Success, we make sure your migration is smooth and stress-free. If you have SEO services with us, we handle every step, from planning to post-launch monitoring, so your rankings, traffic, and search visibility are protected.
1. Pre-Migration Planning
What we do for SEO clients:
- Audit your current site: Identify high-performing pages and keyword rankings to preserve.
- Set clear migration goals: Whether improving page speed, redesigning, or restructuring content, every step is planned.
- Create a full URL map: Ensure every page is mapped to the new structure to maintain traffic and rankings.
- Backup your website: Complete backup before making changes.
- Coordinate our team: Developers, designers, and stakeholders are aligned to prevent mistakes.
If you’re handling it yourself:
- Make a list of your top pages and URLs.
- Know your SEO goals and what you want to improve.
- Back up your entire site before starting any changes.
Not sure if your SEO is working as it should? Here’s 6 signs you might be right.
If you don’t require SEO support, here’s what you need to watch out for and why.
2. Technical SEO Management
With our SEO services:
- Staging environment: Test your site fully on Siteglide
before going live.
- Robots.txt & meta directives: Keep important pages indexable.
- Site speed & Core Web Vitals: Optimised for fast loading and smooth user experience.
- Mobile responsiveness: Fully mobile-friendly, supporting Google’s mobile-first indexing.
- Update Sitemap and Submit to Search Console
If you’re DIYing:
- Test your site speed and mobile performance.
- Make sure Google can crawl and index all key pages.
- Optimise images and code to prevent slow load times.
3. URL & Redirect Strategy
With us:
- 301 redirects: Avoid changing URLs on a site migration where possible. Where this isn’t the case make sure the altered URLs point to the correct new page.
- Avoid redirect chains: Preserve link equity.
- Canonical tags & internal links: Prevent duplicate content and broken links.
Do it yourself warning signs:
- Missing redirects = lost traffic.
- Chains and loops = SEO value leaks.
- Broken internal links = poor user experience and ranking drops.
4. Content & Metadata
With our SEO team:
- Review and optimise title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and structured data.
- Preserve high-performing pages and keyword strategy.
- Add alt text to all images for SEO and accessibility.
If you’re managing alone:
- Check that your metadata is accurate.
- Ensure your key pages keep their ranking potential.
- Don’t forget alt text for images.
5. Post-Migration Monitoring
With SEO services:
- Crawl your new site for errors and broken links.
- Track traffic and rankings to ensure visibility is maintained.
- Submit sitemaps and monitor 404s and redirects.
- Check backlinks point to the correct pages.
DIY tips:
- Regularly check analytics for sudden drops.
- Use a crawler to find errors.
- Update your sitemap in Google Search Console.
6. Leveraging Siteglide
With us:
- Staging & preview before going live.
- Fast, secure hosting for improved speed and reliability.
- Flexible CMS for content, metadata, and link updates.
- Built-in SEO tools for sitemaps, and performance monitoring.
DIY caution:
- Not testing changes fully can break your site.
- Missing Siteglide’s built-in SEO tools means extra manual work.
Think you might need support? Find out more about what our SEO services include.
Website Migration & SEO Services in Chichester
If you have SEO with us, we’ll take care of everything during your migration, so you can focus on running your business while we protect your traffic and rankings.
