Refract Group2026
Glossary
Website migration
A website migration is a move that changes a site’s platform, domain or URLs, planned so that people and search engines reach the right new page from every old address. Its core is a redirect map that pairs each old URL with its replacement.
- Export old URLsSitemap, logs, Search Console
- Map each to its matchOne row per old address
- Each redirect a 301?Fix before launch
- Launch and resubmitNew sitemap in Search Console
- Watch for 404sFor weeks after launch
Website migration in detail
- Also called
- Site migration, Site move, Replatforming, SEO migration
- Topic
- Website
- Updated
What it is
A migration is any change to where a site’s pages live or how they are served: moving from WordPress to Webflow, rebuilding in Next.js, merging two domains, or restructuring the site so that addresses change. A move to a new host can keep every URL as it was. Most migrations change at least some, and those are the ones that need planning.
Most of the work happens in a spreadsheet. List every old URL that matters, from the sitemap, analytics, server logs and Search Console. Pair each with the new page that carries the same content. Each pair becomes a permanent redirect, a 301 or a 308, which tells browsers and Google that the page has moved for good and the new address should take its place in results. Pages with no successor are left to return a 404.
Why it matters
Old addresses carry what the site has earned: links from other sites, bookmarks, search positions, and links in sales decks and email signatures. Without redirects they all break on launch day, and search traffic falls away while Google works out where everything went. Even a well-run move takes time to settle. Google says visibility in search may fluctuate during a move, and that most pages of a small or medium-sized site take a few weeks to move across, with larger sites taking longer.
How we do it
For any move, we inventory the URLs that bring in visitors, plan the redirects and check canonicals, indexability, content and internal links, then monitor after launch. Nobody can promise every ranking holds.
After we rebuilt our own site, Search Console was still reporting old addresses as not found. We checked each against the live site. Ten had a current page with matching content: /portfolio now goes to /work, /manifesto to /about, and each old project page to the case study that replaced it. Each is listed one by one as a 301, with no catch-all rule, and keeps its query string. Retired projects still return a 404. We tested 100 variants of the old addresses on the production server and kept them out of the sitemap.
An example
Say a company moves its blog from WordPress, where posts sit at addresses like /2023/04/post-name, to Webflow, where they sit under /blog/post-name. If every slug survives the move, a single pattern rule can cover them all, so the team checks the slugs first. Forty were shortened during the rebuild and get rows of their own. Everything goes into one master CSV, because importing a file of redirects into Webflow replaces the ones already there.
Common mistakes
- Sending every old URL to the homepage. Google advises against redirecting many old addresses to one unrelated page, and someone looking for one article gains nothing from landing there.
- Taking the redirects down too soon. Google says to keep them for as long as possible, generally at least a year, because old links and bookmarks keep arriving long after launch.
- Mapping only what is in the sitemap. Old campaign pages, PDFs and addresses that other sites link to are often missing from it, so check analytics, server logs and inbound links as well.
Website migration vs website redesign
A website redesign changes what a site’s pages say and how they look, and a website migration changes where they live, by moving the platform, the domain or the URLs; one project can be either or both.
| Website migration | Website redesign | |
|---|---|---|
| Changes | Platform, domain or URLs | Structure, words and design |
| Main risk | Broken links and lost search traffic | Pages that explain the offer less well |
| Key document | The redirect map | The sitemap and page designs |
| Can happen alone | Yes, with the design untouched | Yes, on the same platform and URLs |
Questions
What people ask about website migration.
Google says most pages of a small or medium-sized site take a few weeks to move across in search, larger sites take longer, and visibility may fluctuate in that time. During a website migration, keep the redirects in place, submit the new sitemap and watch Search Console for old addresses that return errors.
Use a permanent redirect, a 301 or a 308, for every page in a website migration that has moved for good. Google treats a permanent redirect as a signal that the new address should be the one shown in results. A temporary redirect such as a 302 is not treated that way, so the old address is more likely to stay in results.
It can, and a website migration always carries some risk. Search engines rank pages and their addresses, and the platform underneath matters less than whether those move across cleanly. If every valuable URL redirects to a page with the same content, and titles, canonical tags and internal links come across too, most positions recover. Nobody can promise that every one holds.
Where this shows up in our work
Related terms
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