“Migrating your site? Just make sure Google doesn’t lose your new address.”
A properly planned SEO migration is essential to maintain search visibility throughout the transition. Whether you switch hosting providers, change your domain name, move to a different CMS or platform, or redesign your website, every type of website migration carries potential risks for SEO.
Our team recently spoke with a business that relaunched its site with a fresh design but failed to update internal links and saw a noticeable traffic drop. From missing redirects to broken pages, even small mistakes can have long-term effects. This blog covers similar SEO errors that are common during various website migrations and how to avoid them to protect your visibility.
What is Website Migration?
Website migration may involve:
- Moving the website to a new hosting provider
- Switching to a new domain name
- Changing the website platform or CMS (e.g., from Wix to WordPress)
- Implementing HTTPS (from HTTP)
- Updating the site structure or URLs
- Performing a complete website redesign
These actions contribute to the overall website migration process and must be managed carefully to avoid negative SEO effects.
Critical SEO Mistakes to Avoid During a Website Migration
Many sites lose rankings after a migration, not because they moved, but because they forgot to take SEO with them.
Before we dive in, here’s a crucial reminder: back up your entire website. This includes your database, content files, redirects, SEO settings, and platform-specific configurations. Having a full backup is your safety net if anything goes wrong during migration.
Hosting-Related SEO Mistakes
1. Downtime or DNS issues: Many wonder, “does changing hosting affect SEO?” The answer is yes—if your site goes offline during the move, Google may consider it unreliable and lower your rankings.
Always plan the migration during low-traffic hours, double-check DNS and nameserver settings, and keep the old host active until the new site is fully tested. This way, you’ll minimize downtime, preserve your search visibility, and ensure your SEO website migration stays on track.
2. Slow server speed or distant location: A host with slow response times or servers far from your primary audience can hurt page load speed, which Google treats as a ranking factor. In other words, a poor hosting provider can slow your SEO.
Need reliable hosting that won’t harm your SEO? AccuWeb Hosting offers fast servers, zero-downtime migration, and free SSL — ideal for SEO-safe moves.
Domain Name-Related SEO Mistakes
1. Skipping 301 redirects: If you change your domain and don’t set up permanent (301) redirects from the old pages to the new ones, search engines will encounter 404 errors and drop your rankings. Every old URL should redirect to the corresponding page on the new domain.
2. Not using Google’s Change of Address: After moving domains, set up the new domain in Google Search Console and use the Change of Address tool.
- Add and verify both the old and new domains in Google Search Console.
- In Settings, select “Change of Address” for the old domain.
- Choose your new domain from the dropdown list.
- Make sure 301 redirects are set up from the old domain to the new one.
- Click Submit to notify Google of the domain change.
This tells Google you’ve switched sites and helps transfer your SEO signals. Also, update any hard-coded URLs (in sitemaps, analytics, or social profiles) to the new domain.
If you skip this step, Google may keep indexing the old domain or lose track of your site’s authority, hurting your SEO.
3. Using relative instead of absolute redirects: Some tools only create relative redirects (like “/new-page” instead of “https://newsite.com/new-page”), which won’t work for a domain change. Always use absolute URLs for your redirects.
In practice, this means the redirect plugin or code must point from http://oldsite.com/page directly to https://newsite.com/page. This way, all of your old pages correctly land on the new site without error.
4. Neglecting external links and renewals: Remember that links from other sites and profiles still point to your old domain. You can’t update all of them, but do update key places (like your Google Business Profile, social accounts, email footer, etc.) with the new domain.
Also, don’t let the old domain expire during migration – it can reset your SEO gains. Keep the old domain active (with redirects) at least until Google reindexes the new one.
Website Platform or CMS-Related SEO Mistakes
1. Losing metadata and SEO settings: When moving to a new CMS (e.g., Shopify → WordPress), it’s easy to forget SEO details. Search engines lose critical context if title tags, meta descriptions, image alt text, or schema markup don’t carry over.
Always export or copy these elements from the old site and ensure the new site has them in place. For example, install any SEO plugin (like Yoast or RankMath) on the latest CMS and re-enter your old metadata so you keep your search rankings intact.
2. Ignoring URL structure changes: CMS platforms often use different URL formats (for example, WordPress uses /category/ or /tag/ in blog URLs). If you switch platforms without planning, your page URLs may change, leading to broken links.
3. Skipping backups and testing: Always export your metadata and plugin settings before switching CMS platforms. Mistakes like faulty scripts or plugin conflicts can wipe out content.
Test the new site thoroughly on a staging environment—broken links, forms, or missing SEO elements can hurt both user experience and rankings.
Take your time: migrate content carefully and QA everything before going live.
- Overlooking mobile and performance: Check your site’s speed and mobile-friendliness after switching your CMS. Google uses mobile-first indexing, so a slow or non-responsive site can hurt rankings.
- Overlooking key configurations: If you forget to copy over important files like .htaccess or robots.txt, the new site may block crawlers or break redirects.
Use tools like Google PageSpeed to test performance. Ensure the design works well on phones before going live.
HTTPS Migration-Related SEO Mistakes
1. No or wrong redirects: Simply turning on HTTPS isn’t enough—you must redirect every HTTP URL to its HTTPS version. Google will treat HTTP and HTTPS pages as duplicates if you don’t.
2. Mixed content issues: After enabling HTTPS, ensure all elements on your pages (images, scripts, CSS) use HTTPS links. If some files still load over HTTP, browsers may block them or mark the page as insecure.
3. Not updating site settings: Treat the HTTPS site like a new property. Add the HTTPS version of your site to Google Search Console and submit a fresh sitemap with HTTPS URLs. Update your canonical URLs to HTTPS as well.
4. Forgetting SSL maintenance: Remember that SSL certificates expire. If your certificate lapses after migration, browsers and Google will see your site as insecure and may degrade its ranking.
After the migration, ensure your SSL certificate (for HTTPS) works properly. Also, check that your SEO tools or plugins (like those handling alt text, meta descriptions, or sitemaps) are still active. Don’t forget to confirm that your Google Analytics or other tracking codes are in place.
Choose a host like AccuWeb with automatic SSL renewal or monitor the expiration date so your secure setup never breaks. Keeping HTTPS running smoothly is key to maintaining your SEO.
Website Redesign-Related SEO Mistakes
1. Revamping Content Too Much: It’s tempting to rewrite text or remove pages during a website redesign. However, significant content changes can confuse Google, which has already indexed your previous content.
This could temporarily lower rankings, as Google needs time to reassess and re-index the new content.
The rule of thumb is to only update content necessary and retain core keywords. If your redesign changes how the site looks, avoid rewriting headlines or keyword-rich paragraphs simultaneously.
2. Dropping meta tags or headers: Don’t lose SEO tags when redesigning. Ensure each page keeps its original title tag, meta description, and H1. Compare old and new versions before launch to maintain rankings and search visibility.
Note: During a website redesign, it’s important to revisit key SEO practices already discussed above.
Site Structure or URL -Related SEO Mistakes
1. Unplanned URL changes: Unplanned URL changes, such as renaming folders or altering page slugs without a strategy, can harm your SEO by triggering 404 errors. If you need to change URLs for a cleaner structure, create a URL map and implement 301 redirects to each new address. This ensures you preserve link equity and avoid frustrating users.
2. Broken internal links: After a migration, internal links (in menus, footers, and content) often point to old URLs. Broken links harm crawlability and user experience. Google’s crawl budget is limited, so any broken internal link wastes effort. To avoid this, perform a full site crawl and fix any broken links.
Suggested Article: How to optimize your crawl budget?
3. Redirect chains and loops: Every redirect in a chain reduces link equity. The graphic above shows that a 301 redirect passes only about 85% of its original value.
If Page A redirects to B and B redirects to C, Google keeps dropping more equity at each step. To prevent this loss, point old URLs directly to the final new URLs (one redirect).
Also, watch out for redirect loops (A→B→A), which can trap crawlers. Simple, one-step redirects best protect your SEO.
Next, Focus on Post-Migration Tasks
After migration, don’t forget to submit a new XML sitemap to Google Search Console. This is essential to ensure your updated pages are indexed properly and quickly. Also, monitor your site’s performance closely for crawl errors and indexing issues, and verify that canonical tags have been updated to reflect new URLs.
Finally, reinstall tracking pixels like Google Analytics to continue accurate data collection. Small but important mistakes, like these, can significantly affect your SEO and site visibility post-migration.
After launching the migrated site, monitor performance in Google Search Console and Google Analytics daily for the first few weeks.
A successful SEO website migration requires planning, testing, and monitoring at every stage. When done right, it helps retain rankings and visibility across search engines.
