Moving your website — to a new host, a new platform like WordPress, or a new domain — is one of the riskiest things you can do to your search rankings. Done well, visitors never notice. Done badly, you can lose months of SEO overnight. Here is how to do it right.
1. Map every URL before you move
List every page on the current site and decide where each one lands on the new site. Any URL that changes needs a permanent 301 redirect from the old address to the new one, so the SEO value transfers and no visitor hits a dead end.
2. Keep the content and structure intact
Migrate your titles, meta descriptions, headings, images (with alt text), and internal links. Stripping these out during a redesign is a common, avoidable cause of ranking drops.
3. Stage it privately first
Build and test the new site on a staging URL that is blocked from search engines. Check every page, form, and redirect before going live — never debug in public.
4. Mind the DNS and email
A host or domain move touches DNS. Plan the cutover so your website and your email keep working through the transition. Lower your DNS TTL ahead of time for a faster switch.
5. Verify after launch
Right after go-live, confirm SSL is active, submit your sitemap, test redirects, and watch Search Console for crawl errors. Run a quick website scan to catch any on-page issues introduced during the move.
Let us migrate it for you
We move sites between platforms and hosts every week — WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, GoDaddy, and custom builds — with redirects, SEO, and email handled end to end, zero downtime. See our website improvement & migration options or ask for a free migration plan.