Website Redesign & Migration · The Migration Playbook
Redesign without losing your rankings.
The most high-stakes project in web development — run on a documented protocol, not best efforts.
Free 30-minute call · scope, risk, and protocol defined before you commit to anything.
What the protocol protects
✓ Your rankings and organic traffic baseline
✓ Every URL — mapped and 301-redirected, no chains
✓ Metadata and schema, replicated then improved
✓ Success verified by 30-day monitoring, not hope
Scope First
Refresh, redesign, or migration? The wrong choice costs more than the project.
Three diagnostic questions decide it: Is the platform still technically capable? Are current rankings worth protecting? Is the problem visual or structural?
Refresh
Visual updates only — colors, fonts, imagery, copy. No structural change. Low search risk.
Redesign
Full visual and structural rebuild. Medium risk: metadata loss, schema removal, performance regression.
Migration
Platform, domain, URL, or hosting change. High risk — and the reason the protocol exists.
Six Migration Types
Different projects. Same four-stage protocol.
Platform
Squarespace, Wix, or custom → WordPress. Risk: URLs and metadata.
Domain
New domain name. The highest-risk type — authority transfer.
HTTP → HTTPS
Risk: duplicate content from unredirected HTTP versions.
URL restructure
New permalink format. Risk: broken links, lost signals.
Redesign in place
Same platform rebuild. Risk: metadata and schema wipe.
Hosting
Server move. Risk: downtime and DNS propagation.
The Protocol
Five stages. No steps skipped at any price point.
01
Audit everything
Eight areas documented before anything changes — URLs, rankings, backlinks, metadata, schema, vitals, links, analytics.
02
Map every URL
Old → new, prioritized by traffic and backlinks. Retired pages redirect to their closest equivalent — never blanket-to-homepage.
03
Test on staging
Eight test categories on a crawler-blocked staging site. Every failure fixed before launch, not after.
04
25 items, all green
The pre-launch checklist decides go-live — not the deadline. Then the 12-step launch day sequence.
05
Monitor 30 days
Traffic vs baseline, rankings, coverage, vitals — success means within 10% of baseline at day 30, confirmed in a day-70 report.
Stage One
Before we change anything, we document everything.
The baseline makes the migration verifiable — and any failure diagnosable.
✓ Full URL inventory with status and indexation
✓ Organic traffic and rankings baseline per URL
✓ Backlink map — top-linked pages prioritized
✓ Metadata export for every page
✓ Schema inventory by type and page
✓ Core Web Vitals baseline
✓ Internal link map with anchors
✓ Analytics events and conversions
Redirects
Every redirect is 301. Every target verified. Every chain eliminated.
Four implementation errors cause migrations to donate search equity to competitors:
✗ 302s instead of 301s — equity doesn’t transfer through temporary redirects
✗ Blanket redirects to the homepage — equity misdirected, visitors dumped
✗ Redirect chains — every extra hop leaks signal and speed
✗ Missing redirects on high-traffic pages — immediate, quantifiable loss
After Launch
The migration isn’t finished when the site goes live
It’s finished when monitoring confirms it worked — traffic within 10% of baseline, no new indexing issues.
Days 1–3
Uptime, SSL, key pages, live redirect spot-checks.
Week 2
Traffic and rankings vs baseline — drops over 20% trigger investigation.
Week 4
Full review: coverage, indexed pages, Core Web Vitals.
Day 70
The migration success report — confirmed, not assumed.
See It In Motion
A launch day with a rollback plan
Sample video — placeholder
Final video: the 12-step launch sequence — pre-launch backup, DNS change, SSL check, live redirect verification, sitemap resubmission, monitoring on. “Launch day is manageable when it follows a protocol.”
Pricing
Transparent pricing. Start today.
Buy now and we’ll begin with your onboarding brief — or start with the free call and decide after. Same price either way.
Starter
Migration Audit
$750
An independent second set of eyes on your migration plan and redirect coverage.
Secure checkout · Stripe · guest-friendly
Most popular
Platform Migration
$2,500
The full protocol: audit, URL map, 301s, staging, launch, 30-day monitoring.
Secure checkout · Stripe · guest-friendly
Full scope
Redesign + Migration
$5,000
The complete migration protocol plus a full design rebuild and GEO implementation.
Secure checkout · Stripe · guest-friendly
Custom
Custom scope
Let’s talk
Bigger build? Multiple services? Something the tiers don’t cover? Tell us the scope — we’ll price it precisely.
Opens a quick quote form
Tell us about your project
Rough scope is fine — a human replies within one business day with a precise quote or a call link.
Questions
Redesign & migration, answered
What counts as a website migration?
Any significant change to platform, domain, URL structure, or hosting that could affect search indexing — six types in all, from a Squarespace-to-WordPress move to a domain change. All six get the same four-stage protocol.
How do I know if I need a refresh, a redesign, or a migration?
Three questions: Is your platform still technically capable (no = migration)? Are your rankings performing (yes = protect the URL structure at all costs)? Is the problem visual or structural? The brief call settles scope before anything is quoted.
Will I lose my Google rankings?
That risk is exactly what the protocol manages: a full pre-migration baseline, every URL mapped and 301-redirected with no chains, metadata and schema replicated, staging-tested before DNS changes, and 30 days of monitored comparison against the baseline.
What if my current developer is doing the migration?
We offer an independent migration audit — a review of the plan’s redirect coverage, metadata and schema risks, and monitoring gaps — so a second set of eyes checks the highest-stakes project in web development.
How long does it take?
A platform migration with redesign typically runs about 40 days to launch, then 30 days of monitoring to the day-70 success report. Simpler scopes (hosting moves) are much faster; domain migrations need the longest monitoring attention.
Understand the scope, the risk, and the protocol — before you commit to anything.
The free migration brief call defines what your project involves and what must be protected. No commitment, no guesswork — just a clear picture before it starts.
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