Website migration

Website migration is the process of moving a website to a new domain, platform, hosting provider or structure while keeping its content, search visibility and user experience intact. Done well, visitors and search engines barely notice the change. Done badly, rankings and traffic can drop for months.

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What is a website migration?

A migration happens whenever something fundamental about a site changes: where it lives, what it runs on, what its URLs look like or which domain it uses. The content may stay identical, but search engines have to discover, crawl and index the new version, and they rely on signals such as redirects to connect old pages to new ones.

It matters because a website carries years of accumulated authority: backlinks, indexed pages, user habits and bookmarks. A migration is the moment when all of that can be preserved or lost. The goal is never only to move pages, it is to transfer their value.

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Types of website migration

• Platform migration: moving to another CMS or framework, for example from WordPress to Webflow.
• Domain migration: changing the domain name or merging several domains into one.
• Hosting migration: switching web hosting or CDN while URLs and design stay the same.
• Structure migration: changing URL patterns, navigation or information architecture.
• Protocol migration: moving from HTTP to HTTPS.
• Redesign: changing layout and templates, sometimes with content changes.

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Migration risk by type

The more URLs change, the higher the risk, because every changed URL needs a clean redirect.

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A step-by-step migration checklist

1. Audit the current site: crawl it with a tool such as Screaming Frog and export every URL, title, meta description and status code.
2. Record a baseline: organic traffic, top pages, rankings and backlinks, so you can measure the impact afterwards.
3. Build the redirect map: match each old URL to its closest new equivalent.
4. Build and test on staging: block indexing there and check templates, metadata, structured data and internal links.
5. Launch: update DNS, publish, enable the redirects and submit the new XML sitemap.
6. Monitor: watch crawl errors, indexing and traffic daily for the first weeks.

A redirect map is usually a simple table that ends up as 301 rules:

/old-blog/my-article → /blog/my-article (301)

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Common pitfalls and best practices

The most frequent mistakes are missing or chained redirects, redirecting everything to the homepage, leaving a noindex tag from staging in production, and losing metadata or structured data during the move. Another classic is forgetting images, PDFs and old campaign URLs that still receive backlinks.

Avoid launching during a seasonal traffic peak, keep the old domain and redirects active for at least a year, and change only what you need. Moving platform, domain and design in one go multiplies the risks, so separate the steps when you can. Finally, keep analytics and tracking tags in place so you can compare before and after.

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Website migration at BeBranded

We plan migrations around SEO from the first day: crawl audit, redirect map, staging checks and post-launch monitoring. Whether you move to Webflow or change domain, it is part of our website service.