The Importance of SEO Continuity in Site Migrations

Summary

• Maintaining SEO details and on-page content is essential when transferring to a new website for sites with pre-existing traffic and success.
• One former client made a migration to a new website with a new marketing provider without taking SEO and on-page content into account, and their site performance took a nosedive as a result.
• We administered a site migration for a current client and were able to retain and improve site performance by carefully retaining SEO and on-page power.

Background

We will be discussing the site migration of two clients, one of which we no longer serve. From this point, the former client will be referred to as Company A, and our current client will be referred to as Company B.

Prior to leaving our services, Company A was receiving monthly on-site content. Company B continues to receive bi-monthly on-site content, SEO optimization, and social media posting.

Company A

Company A is a primary and chiropractic care provider offering care in South Texas. During their time receiving our services, Company A received regular site-generated “book an appointment” leads through our work.

Company B

Company B is a beauty and wellness company offering light, in-office procedures in South Texas. The majority of Company B’s clientele are well-off adults looking to improve their appearance or lose weight. This company is highly reliant on phone call leads, which allow for more direct contact with clients.

Situation

Many people who own websites don’t take into account the risks that come with migrating to a new site within the context of SEO. These risks can be especially severe for businesses that rely heavily on website traffic. Improper site migration can lead to a complete loss in site traffic in some cases. This is because Google uses specific on-site details to determine the relevancy of your pages for your targeted keyword searches, and on-page content is a significant factor in rankings.

You can see a reflection of these points in the examples laid out below.

Company A

In late 2023, Company A ended its relationship with Cobalt Digital Marketing and began receiving marketing services from another provider. That provider soon migrated Company A to a new website with all new content and designs. During that site migration, the provider:

• Made no preparations around archiving or maintaining content
• Made no attempt to capture archival SEO data
• Launched the new website without a plan to inform Google of the new pages

Company B

Around the same time, we conducted a site migration for Company B after the company informed us about a drop in phone leads. As a part of that migration, the site design and content were updated and refreshed. During that migration process, we:

• Conducted several careful audits to ensure the migration of archival SEO data before the new site was launched
• Carried out a comprehensive content refresh, maintaining essential optimization
• Set up precise and comprehensive redirects to ensure continuity of Google ranking

Impacts

Following the site migrations, we were able to monitor the ongoing performance of both sites. We determined that Company A saw a sharp decline across the board, while Company B saw a temporary dip in some metrics before rebounding and improving over pre-migration performance.

Company A

• Organic Traffic, meaning the traffic arriving from search engines; organic pages, meaning the total number of pages ranking on Google; and impressions, meaning the number of times a site appears in actual user Google searches, each saw a sharp nosedive after the site migration, as shown in Figure 1.
• The number of organic keywords, meaning the terms that a site ranks for on Google, also took a sharp drop, as shown in Figure 2.
• Non-branded traffic, meaning traffic from search terms that do not involve the company name (such as “McAllen chiropractic care”), likewise saw a significant decline, as shown in Figure 3.

Fig. 1: Company A Site Performance Drops, 10/2020 to 3/2025

Fig. 2: Company A Organic Keywords Drop, 10/2020 to 3/2025

Fig. 3: Company A Non-Branded Traffic Drops, 10/2020 to 3/2025

Company B

• Organic Traffic, meaning the traffic arriving from search engines; organic pages, meaning the total number of pages ranking on Google; and impressions, meaning the number of times a site appears in actual user Google searches, each saw an almost immediate increase, as shown in Figure 4.
• The number of organic keywords, meaning the terms that a site ranks for on Google, plateaued for a short time before a sharp uptick, as shown in Figure 5.
• Non-branded traffic, meaning traffic from search terms that do not involve the company name (such as “McAllen weight loss treatment”), also held flat for a time before sharply increasing, as shown in Figure 6.

Fig. 4: Company B Site Performance Boost, 3/24 to 3/25

Fig. 5: Company B Organic Keyword Boost, 3/24 to 3/25

Fig. 6: Company B Non-Branded Content Boost, 3/24 to 3/25

Analysis and Findings

Many laymen website owners may think that once a website is built, launching it should be fast, easy, and simple. The fact is that this is only true in cases when maintaining site ranking and performance is not a priority. After a site is built but before the migration takes place, a thorough SEO audit needs to be conducted to ensure the functionality of the site at launch, with a particular focus on catching these common issues:

• Changes in URL slugs
• Changes in on-site content
• Changes in metadata, leading to
  • Broken pages
  • Broken backlinks
  • Redirect issues
  • Server loadtime issues

Even a properly audited website faces some risks at launch. Often, sites will experience a temporary drop before recovering. This was seen in a site URL migration we recently undertook for another client, Company C, as seen in Figure 7.

Fig. 7: Company C Site Performance Rebound, 3/24 to 3/25

Insights and Lessons Learned

• Website owners need to be aware of the risks associated with building new websites, changing to a new agency, or migrating their site to a new server.
• Those responsible for managing this significant change to the website need to conduct site audits before the official launch of a new website.
• Those responsible for managing site migrations must also take precautions and make proper preparations to ensure that Google and other search engines are aware of the changes being made.
• Those responsible for managing site migrations must follow best practices for the management of the site transfer to mitigate the risks on behalf of the client.

These elements are standard practice at Cobalt.  While in some cases it may delay the launch by a few weeks, the negative impact of a complete loss of traffic outweighs the annoyance of waiting a few more days or weeks to ensure that the launch is successful. If you are thinking of making a change, give us a call.  If we can’t help you, we’ll try to point you in the right direction.