SEO Migration Service: Redirect Map and Monitoring

Description

Service SEO for site migrations and redesigns

A migration changes the addresses search engines have on record for your site. WavX lists every existing URL, maps each one to its new address, implements permanent redirects, and monitors indexing and traffic after launch, following Google's site-move documentation. Google says to expect temporary ranking fluctuation during a move, so no migration can promise unchanged rankings.

Discuss your SEO/GEO/AEO strategy Last updated 2 October 2026

What counts as a migration

Any change that alters the URLs Google has on record, or the server that answers them, is a site move in Google's terms. The risk differs by type.

Change

Do URLs change?

What Google's documentation asks for

Main risk

New domain or subdomain

Yes, all of them

Redirects from every old URL, plus the Change of Address tool in Search Console

Signals not transferred because redirects are missing or the tool was not used

HTTP to HTTPS

Yes, the protocol

Redirects. No Change of Address

Mixed versions left reachable without a redirect

New platform or CMS

Usually, in part

A URL mapping and redirects for everything that changed

Old pages returning 404, or all redirected to the home page

Redesign on the same platform

Sometimes

Redirects where URLs changed; otherwise checks on content and templates

Content, internal links or markup silently dropped

New hosting or CDN, same URLs

No

DNS preparation and monitoring; no redirects

Googlebot blocked or throttled by the new server

Google's guidance is to plan changes one after the other, not all at the same time. A new domain, a new platform and a rewritten set of pages launched on one day cannot be told apart afterwards if traffic falls. Where the business allows it, WavX separates them.

The redirect map

The redirect map is the centre of the work and the main thing WavX delivers. It is a sheet with one row per existing URL and a decision for each.

How it is built

Collect every old URL. Google's documentation names the sources: the sitemaps, the server logs and analytics, the links report in Search Console, and the content management system. WavX adds a full crawl of the live site. Images, PDFs and other files are included, not only pages.

Rank them. Each URL is tagged with the search clicks it received and the external links pointing to it, so the important ones are checked by hand and not left to a pattern rule.

Decide a destination. The same content at its new address, wherever that exists. If a page has been merged into another, the page that now holds its content. If nothing equivalent exists, the URL is allowed to return a 404 or 410.

Write the rules. One-to-one rows for important URLs, pattern rules for the bulk, with the patterns tested against the full list.

Test every row. Before launch on staging, and again on the live site, each old URL is requested and the response compared with the map.

The third step is where most damage is done. Google's documentation warns against redirecting many old URLs to one irrelevant destination such as the home page, and says this can be treated as a soft 404. A redirect is a statement that the content moved there. If it did not, an honest 404 is the better answer.

What a row looks like

The entries below show the format with placeholder addresses.

Old URL

Clicks, last 12 months

External links

Action

New URL

Tested

/products.php?id=118

High

Yes

301, one-to-one

/products/steel-water-bottle-1l

Pass

/blog/2021/04/care-guide.html

Medium

/guides/bottle-care

/category/bottles?page=3

None

301, pattern rule

/collections/bottles?page=3

/offers/diwali-2022

410, no equivalent

none

How the redirects are implemented

Google recommends permanent server-side redirects, HTTP 301 or 308, and treats them as a strong signal that the target should become the canonical URL. Temporary redirects (302, 307) are a weak signal. Redirects written in JavaScript are a last resort, because Google only sees them if the page renders.

Chains are flattened. Googlebot can follow up to 10 hops, but Google advises redirecting straight to the final destination. A site that has moved twice needs its oldest URLs pointed at the newest address, not at the one in between.

Before, during and after launch

The full list is in the website migration SEO checklist. The steps below are the ones that come from Google's documentation.

Before launch

Record a baseline: indexed pages, the top pages and queries in the Performance report, and Core Web Vitals.

Verify the old and the new site in Search Console, in every variant: www and non-www, HTTP and HTTPS.

Give each new page a self-referencing canonical, and point internal links at the new URLs directly so that they do not rely on redirects.

Prepare a sitemap of the new URLs.

Keep the staging site out of the index while it is being built, and write down how, so the block is removed on launch day.

Launch day

Switch the redirects on.

Remove any noindex rule or robots.txt block carried over from staging. Google lists this as a common mistake in site moves.

Test redirects and key pages with the URL Inspection tool.

Submit the new sitemap.

For a domain or subdomain change, submit a Change of Address for every verified variant of the old domain.

For small and medium sites, Google recommends moving all URLs at once and not section by section. Large sites can move in sections to make problems easier to find.

After launch

Update the links you control: profiles, directory listings and ad landing pages. Ask the sites that link to your most important pages to update theirs.

Check that the server copes. Google says it crawls a newly moved site more heavily than usual.

Keep the redirects. Google's guidance is as long as possible, generally at least one year.

What to monitor, and for how long

What

Where

What a healthy move looks like

Indexed pages on the old and new properties

Page indexing report

Old URLs fall as new URLs rise

404s and redirect errors

Page indexing report; server logs

No spike. Any important URL that appears here is added to the map

Clicks and impressions by page and query

Performance report, compared with the baseline

New URLs take over the queries the old ones held

Googlebot activity

Crawl Stats report; server logs

Requests moving from old addresses to new ones, without server errors

Sitemap coverage

Sitemaps report

Submitted new URLs being indexed

Google says that for a medium-sized site it can take a few weeks or more before the new URLs replace the old ones in results, and longer for large sites. WavX reports at agreed intervals through that period, and treats the first year as the window in which redirects must not be touched.

What WavX delivers

The redirect map, as a spreadsheet you keep.

The redirect rules, implemented on the server or platform, with the test results for every row.

A pre-launch crawl report on the staging site: blocked pages, missing canonicals, internal links still pointing at old URLs.

The launch-day checklist, completed and signed off.

Monitoring reports after launch, each comparing the figures in the table above against the baseline.

WavX also builds and rebuilds sites, so the SEO work can sit inside a website redesign or a move to Shopify from the start. It can equally be done alongside another team's build.

What it cannot promise

Unchanged rankings. Google states that temporary fluctuation in ranking is to be expected during a move.

A fixed recovery period. Google gives "a few weeks or more" for a medium-sized site and no figure beyond that.

Neutral results from a redesign. If the new site has less content, different page titles or a different structure, rankings may settle somewhere new, for reasons unrelated to the redirects.

A complete rescue after the fact. If a site launched months ago without redirects, some of the loss can be repaired by adding them late, but not all of it reliably. The steps for that situation are in traffic dropped after a redesign .

WavX does not publish a price for this work. It is quoted after an audit of the current site.

When you do not need this service

If you are changing hosting and every URL stays the same, Google's hosting-move guidance is a short list a competent developer can follow: test the new server, lower the DNS TTL at least a week ahead, switch, and watch the logs. That is not an SEO project.

If the Performance report in Search Console shows that the site receives almost no search clicks, there is little to protect. Put a basic redirect in place for the home page and main sections, and spend the budget on the new site.

If the new platform keeps your URLs exactly as they are, you need a technical audit of the new build before launch, not a migration.

Frequently asked questions

Can you migrate our site without losing rankings?

Nobody can promise that. Google's own site-move documentation says to expect temporary fluctuation in ranking during a move. What careful work does is remove the avoidable losses: old URLs that lead nowhere, redirects to the wrong page, and a new site that blocks crawling on launch day.

How long should the redirects stay in place?

Google's guidance is to keep them as long as possible, generally at least one year. For a domain change, the Change of Address tool forwards signals for 180 days, and Google recommends keeping the old domain for at least a year. In practice there is rarely a good reason to remove a working redirect at all.

We are only redesigning, not changing domain. Is that a migration?

It is if any URL changes, and on most redesigns some do: a new platform names pages differently, sections are merged, or old pages are dropped. If every URL stays exactly as it is, there is no redirect work, but the new templates still need checking so that content, titles, internal links and structured data are not lost.

When should you be brought in?

Before the new site's URL structure is fixed. The redirect map depends on it, and changing URLs after a build is finished is expensive. If the site has already launched and traffic has fallen, the work becomes a recovery, which is slower and less certain.

How much does migration SEO cost?

We do not publish a price for SEO work. A migration is quoted after an audit of the current site, because the cost follows the number of URLs, how many of them receive search traffic, and how different the new structure is.

Do we need Google's Change of Address tool?

Only when moving from one domain or subdomain to another. Google says it is not needed for a move from HTTP to HTTPS, between www and non-www on the same domain, or for paths that change within the same domain.

Sources

Google Search Central: Site moves with URL changes · read 2 October 2026

Google Search Central: Site moves without URL changes (hosting changes) · read 2 October 2026

Google Search Central: Redirects and Google Search · read 2 October 2026

Search Console Help: Change of Address tool · read 2 October 2026

Google Search Central: How to specify a canonical URL · read 2 October 2026

Google Search Central: Block Search indexing with noindex · read 2 October 2026

Google Search Central: Debugging drops in Google Search traffic · read 2 October 2026

Google crawling infrastructure: How HTTP status codes affect Google's crawlers · read 2 October 2026

Search Console Help: Page indexing report · read 2 October 2026

Search Console Help: Crawl Stats report · read 2 October 2026

Related

Traffic dropped after a redesign: how to find the cause

Technical SEO audit

Website redesign

Migration to Shopify

SEO and GEO services

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