SEO Migration & 301 Mapping
This is where migrations lose their traffic. We built the whole job around not losing it.
Start a projectReplatforms don’t lose traffic because the new platform is worse — they lose it because the redirect map was an afterthought. A URL structure changes, a handful of category pages don’t get mapped, metadata doesn’t carry over cleanly, and three months later a brand is staring at a ranking chart that fell off a cliff the week they cut over. By the time it’s visible in analytics, the damage is already indexed.
We build the redirect map first, not last. A full crawl of the existing site produces a complete inventory of every indexed URL, which becomes a validated 301 map to the new platform — checked against the live inventory before cutover, not assumed to be complete. Metadata and structured data get carried over template by template. Then, through the weeks after launch, we track rankings and crawl errors daily and fix what breaks while it’s still small. This is the part of a replatform most agencies treat as done at go-live. We treat it as the job.
Built and run, end to end.
Full-index crawl and URL inventory
Before anything moves, we crawl the existing site end to end and build a complete inventory of every indexed URL — products, categories, filtered pages, blog posts, everything Google currently ranks. You can't protect a URL you never inventoried.
301 map construction and validation
Every URL in the inventory gets mapped to its destination on the new platform and built into a validated 301 redirect set — not a generic pattern rule that catches most cases and silently drops the rest. We test the map against the live inventory before cutover, not after.
Metadata and structured-data parity
Title tags, meta descriptions, canonical tags, and structured data carry ranking signal the redirect map alone won't protect. We carry them over deliberately to the new platform's templates and verify parity page type by page type before launch.
Post-launch rank and crawl-error monitoring
The days after cutover are when a missed redirect or a broken canonical actually shows up — in Search Console crawl errors and in ranking movement. We track both daily through the stabilization window and fix regressions while they're still small.
Questions, answered.
Why does traffic drop after a replatform?
Almost always the same handful of causes: incomplete redirect coverage, a changed URL structure with no mapping, dropped metadata, or orphaned pages that lost their internal links. None of it is inevitable — it's what happens when SEO is treated as a launch-week checklist instead of the core of the migration plan.
How many redirects do we actually need?
One for every URL Google has indexed, full stop. Not just your top pages — filtered category pages, old blog posts, and thin product pages that still hold a trickle of ranking all count. We build the map from a full crawl, not a guess at what matters.
How long does it take Google to settle after a migration?
Some short-term fluctuation in the first few weeks is normal as Google recrawls and re-indexes the new URLs. A sustained drop past that point means something in the redirect or metadata map was missed — which is exactly what daily monitoring through cutover is built to catch.
Do you monitor rankings after launch, or just build the redirect map?
We monitor. The redirect map is only half the job — the other half is watching what actually happens once it's live. We track rankings and crawl errors daily through the stabilization window and fix what breaks while it's still a small problem, not a quarter of lost traffic.