SEO migration: redesign your website without losing traffic
A redesign changes URLs, page templates and often the technology. Without preparation, Google loses track of pages that were bringing you clients. We inventory what performs, redirect every URL to its true destination and monitor the site for 90 days after launch.
They trust us
What is at stake in a redesign
A redesign can wipe out years of SEO
The risk does not come from the new design. It comes from what disappears without anyone noticing: a URL that changes with no redirect, a merged page whose useful content is dropped, a noindex tag left over from staging, external links that now land on a 404 error.
A public example: a major French SEO company saw its ranked keywords drop from 4,418 to 1,356 between March and July 2026, during its website redesign (DataForSEO data, France). These figures do not tell the whole story of the causes, but they show that a redesign needs preparing, even at specialists.
An SEO migration treats this risk as a project of its own, with its inventory, redirect map and checks. Whether the redesign is built by our team or by another agency.
We did it on our own website
On October 30, 2026, AVANGARDISM moved from Webflow to Next.js. Each of the 45 old URLs was redirected 301 to its equivalent page, in a single hop, with no redirect chains and no mass redirect to the homepage. An automated test checks that every destination exists.
Our 6-step method
How does an SEO migration work?
- 01
URL and traffic inventory
We cross-check the site crawl, the sitemap, Google Search Console, your analytics tool and external links. Each URL gets its weight: visits, queries, conversions, backlinks. You know what to protect first.
- 02
One-to-one redirect map
Each old URL is matched with the page that takes over its content, not the homepage. The map is a spreadsheet reviewed with your teams, with no redirect chains: a single hop to the final destination.
- 03
QA on a non-indexed staging site
The new site is tested on an environment closed to search engines. We crawl staging, replay the redirect map and compare content page by page before any switchover.
- 04
Tags and structured data check
Titles, meta descriptions, H1s, canonical tags, hreflang, robots, sitemap and structured data: everything is checked on the page templates, then on a sample of real pages.
- 05
Go-live
On launch day, we check the redirects in production, lift the staging blocks, submit the new sitemap and watch Google’s first crawls.
- 06
90 days of monitoring
For 3 months, we track indexing, errors, rankings and traffic of the priority pages. Each issue is fixed or escalated to the technical team, with regular check-ins.
What budget should you plan for an SEO migration?
It depends on the number of URLs, the languages, how much changes and who builds the site. The quote sets the scope of the inventory, the deliverables and the length of monitoring. The free pre-audit helps estimate the scale.
Request a quoteWhat you receive
Your SEO migration deliverables
Documents your developers, your agency or your marketing team can use directly. Each recommendation says what to do, on which URLs, and how to check it.
- URL inventory: each page with its traffic, queries, conversions and external links.
- One-to-one redirect map: old URL, new destination, redirect type, approval status.
- SEO acceptance test plan: the checks to run on staging, template by template.
- Tags audit report: titles, canonicals, hreflang, robots, sitemap and structured data.
- Go-live checklist: launch day checks, in order, each with an owner.
- 90-day monitoring: indexing, errors, rankings and traffic of the priority pages, with the fixes made.
Before you start
Your questions about SEO migration
No. Fluctuations are common while Google discovers the changes, but a lasting loss usually comes from avoidable mistakes: URLs with no redirect, deleted content, blocked pages. No agency can guarantee zero fluctuation, but these mistakes can be avoided.