How to Migrate Your Site Without Losing Traffic
Most website redesigns don’t fail because of design, they fail because nobody planned the SEO.
This guide walks you through the exact steps to protect your traffic before a new site goes live. You’ll learn how to pull your top-performing pages from Google Search Console, crawl your existing site, and map your URLs properly so nothing important gets lost in the process.
Work through each tutorial in order – this is the groundwork that stops a redesign from turning into a rankings disaster.
Table of Contents
- Tutorial 1: Software Requirements
- Tutorial 2: Google Search Console
- Tutorial 3: GSC to Google Sheets
- Tutorial 4: Screaming Frog Site Crawl
- Tutorial 5: How to Check Pages for Traffic
- Tutorial 6: Mapping
- Tutorial 7: How to Review Performance
Tutorial 1
Software Requirements
I recommend the following software:
- Screaming frog crawler software https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
- Sitebulb website auditing software https://sitebulb.com/
- Google Sheets https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/
- Google Search Console https://search.google.com/search-console/about
Software Walkthru
A brief overview of Screaming Frog and Sitebulb.
Tutorial 2
Google Search Console
If the website is an established site, it’s important to be able to understand what the pre-design launch rankings are, and what pages are currently getting traffic.
It’s important to identify any trends as well. Has traffic been increasing or decreasing recently? Are there any normal seasonal increases or decreases?
Tutorial 3
GSC -> Google Sheets
We now need to add our benchmark data to Google Sheets.
Tutorial 4
Screaming Frog Site Crawl
In this tutorial, I show you how to add the universal tracking code to your Showit website. This will enable you to track your SEO performance and see which pages are doing well, and which ones need some improvement.
Tutorial 5
How to Check Pages for Traffic
As part of the re-design, the client may want to remove pages. It’s best to check the traffic on those pages first so that an informed decision can be made on what to do with those pages.
It’s usually best to add a redirection from the old page to the new page.
But, if the old page is no longer relevant then it’s fine to go ahead and delete it and not direct it. Once it’s been deleted, Google will let you know via Google Search Console. This does NOT mean Google has a problem with you deleting it. Here’s the thing, Google doesn’t know you’re working on a redesign, so the message from the robot 🤖 is really just a heads-up on what it found – if you know about it already and the deletion was intentional, then you’re all good and there’s no action required. After a few weeks, Google will remove this page from the index.
Tutorial 6
Mapping
The next step is to map out the original URLs and the new URLs from the staging site.
The purpose of this is to check everything matches as it should.
Here’s a link to a mapping Google Sheet template. Feel free to make a copy.
Tutorial 7
How to Review Performance
Reviewing performance after launch is so important!
Key areas to look out for:
- Indexing status changes
- Adrop in impressions or rankings
SEO Migration Mapping Template:
Course Tutor
Hey! I’m Karen! I’m a wedding photographer and SEO consultant, specializing in coaching other photographers to help their businesses get found online.
I usually work live on video calls with clients, that way I can optimize the technical stuff whilst photographers learn about how Google works, and how they can use algorithms as an awesome match maker, rather than being an obstruction. I’ve been able to help lots of clients grow their traffic, and I’d love to help you too!
I hope you find the tutorials that I’ve put together useful. Enjoy!
Want to Chat About Working Together on Your SEO?
I’d love to help you improve your SEO rankings so that you can get more traffic from your ideal clients.