Website migration
Definition
Migration is the move from your old website to the new one: content carried over, redirects, domain switchover, and visibility and email preserved.Migration is the most sensitive phase of a redesign, the one where years of accumulated visibility can be lost in days. It is prepared, not improvised.
The workstreams of a clean migration: content carry-over (which pages to keep, merge or drop), the 301 redirect plan (every old address forwards to its replacement), the Google Search Console transfer to signal the change to search engines, and the DNS switchover in a short window, with the email records preserved so the company's mailboxes stay up.
After the switchover, we monitor: indexing of the new version, residual 404 errors, performance. Problems caught in the first days are fixed without damage; discovered three months later, they have already cost traffic.
The complete method, step by step, is in our article migrating your website without losing your rankings.
Demand to see the redirect plan before launch. Its very existence is a good test of your supplier's seriousness.