Migrations Do Not Lose Rankings at Launch. They Lose Them in the Redirect Map
A redesign that goes live on time and looks better than the old one can still cost you a year of search visibility, and the cause is almost never the design. It is the URLs nobody mapped, the pages nobody read before deleting, and the redirects written the week after launch instead of the month before. We know because we migrated this site, and we published what the audit found.
No credit card required · 30-minute call · No obligation to sign up
Six steps, and four of them are before launch
Almost every migration that loses traffic did the same thing: it treated SEO as a launch-week task. Four of these six steps are only possible while the old site is still live, and once it is gone they cannot be done at all.
- 1. Record what you have — before anythingEvery ranking URL, read and stored · only possible now
- 2. Decide the destination for each URLOne by one · a hub for everything is a soft 404
- 3. Build the redirect map — before launchWritten and tested against the old site while it exists
- 4. Match content, not just addressesA redirect to a page about something else is not a redirect
- 5. Launch, then verify within hoursStatus codes, canonicals, index coverage, live crawl
- 6. Watch for a quarterRecovery is not linear · and the drop is not always day one
Steps one and two are the ones skipped, and they are the only two that are impossible to do afterwards. Once the old site is down you cannot read what was on it, and reconstructing a redirect map from a crawl of the new site is guesswork about pages that no longer exist. This is why a migration audit is the cheapest SEO work anybody ever buys and the most frequently declined.
We found the same mistake on all 24 pages, and it was ours
This site replaced one carrying 50,541 search impressions across 24 ranking pages. Two London URLs alone accounted for 35,001 of them — 68% of the entire property’s visibility. That is not a redesign with an SEO consideration attached; it is a migration where a single unmapped URL is a measurable loss.
The audit found something worse than a technical fault. Sitewide click-through was 0.13%: the pages ranked and nobody clicked them. The reason was identical on every one of them — not one of the 24 had a meta description. Google had been writing every snippet in the results itself, for about a year. The fix cost less than a day and had been available the whole time.
The redirect map is the part nobody enjoys and the part that decides the outcome. Twenty-four URLs is a small map, and eighteen of them had no obvious destination in the new structure. Pointing those at a generic services hub would have been read as a soft 404 — equity preserved, ranking lost — so several are still marked interim in the config, waiting for their real child page rather than being quietly dumped somewhere convenient.
The reason this is published rather than summarised is that an agency showing you its own worst finding is easier to check than one showing you its best client. The figures come from a Search Console property we own and can open in front of you, and the verification is simple: search site:ghalibashrafi.com and read the snippets on the old pages. Google wrote every one of them, because there were no descriptions to use.
- ✓50,541 impressions protected — Across 24 ranking pages, with two London URLs carrying 68% of the total between them.
- ✓0 URLs left to 404 at launch — Every one of the 24 mapped before the old site came down, not after.
- ✓24/24 had no meta description — The audit’s worst finding was about us. Sitewide click-through was 0.13%.
- ✓18 had no obvious destination — Marked interim rather than pointed at a hub, because a hub redirect reads as a soft 404.
- ✓60+ injected URLs found — The old property had been compromised. Search Console showed paths that were never pages here.
Eighteen of our own twenty-four URLs had nowhere obvious to go. We marked them interim rather than pointing them at a hub, because a redirect into a page about something else is not a redirect, it is a soft 404 with extra steps.
What a migration actually requires
Six pieces of work. The first four happen while the old site is still live, which is why the timing matters more than the effort.
Pre-Migration Inventory
Every ranking URL fetched and stored — titles, headings, opening copy, schema, word counts, and what each one ranks for. You cannot preserve what you have not read, and rebuilding from memory is how content silently disappears.
URL Mapping, One by One
A destination decided per URL against what the page was actually about. Where no equivalent exists we say so and mark it, rather than pointing everything at a hub and calling the map complete.
Redirect Implementation & Testing
Written and tested against the live old site before it comes down. Single-hop, correct status codes, no chains — and verified rather than assumed, because a redirect that works locally and not in production is the classic launch-day discovery.
Launch-Day Verification
Status codes, canonicals, robots rules, index coverage and a live crawl within hours of go-live. Most migration disasters are recoverable if they are caught the same day and expensive if they are caught the same quarter.
Post-Launch Monitoring
A quarter of watching, because recovery is not linear and the drop does not always arrive on day one. Index coverage, rankings by URL, and the redirects still being followed rather than quietly dropped.
Rollback Planning
What happens if it goes wrong, decided before it can. This is the one discipline where a mistake removes a site from the index in an afternoon, and the correct level of caution is higher than most projects budget for.
Not all migrations carry the same risk
The word covers several different events with quite different failure modes. Knowing which one you are doing decides how much of the above applies.
Redesign, same URLs
The lowest-risk version and still not risk-free. Content changes, internal links move, and pages that ranked on depth can lose it to a cleaner layout that says less.
Replatform — new CMS
Where URL structure usually changes whether anyone intended it or not, because the new platform has opinions. This is the commonest case and the commonest loss.
Domain change
The highest-stakes version. Everything moves at once, Search Console needs the change-of-address signal, and there is no partial rollback.
HTTP to HTTPS
Well-understood and still routinely done badly — mixed content, canonicals left on the old scheme, and redirect chains that add a hop to every request.
Consolidation
Two sites becoming one. The hard part is deciding which of two pages about the same thing survives, and doing it before rather than after both are live.
Internationalisation
Adding country versions to an existing site. hreflang is unforgiving: one wrong entry and Google discards the whole set rather than the faulty line.
When to call us and when it is too late
Migration work has a window, and it is worth being blunt about where in that window the value sits.
Before the design is signed off
The cheapest and most useful moment. URL structure, content inventory and the redirect strategy can be decided while they are still decisions rather than constraints.
Build in progress, old site live
Still fully workable, and the most common point of contact. Everything on this page is possible as long as the old site is up.
Launch week
Tight but recoverable. The inventory has to be taken immediately, because it stops being possible the moment the old site comes down.
Just launched, traffic is falling
Recoverable and more expensive. The map has to be reconstructed from Search Console and archives rather than from the site, and some pages will not be recoverable at all.
Migrated months ago
Honest answer: partial. What is still in Search Console can be mapped and redirected, and it often works. What was never recorded and is no longer in the index is gone.
Old site already deleted
This is the one case where we will tell you the window has closed on part of it. Archives sometimes help. Frequently they do not.
What clients say
Named clients, named companies — published with their permission.
“We’d been burned by two agencies before Ghalib Ashrafi. First proper technical audit we’d ever had — and rankings actually moved within two months.”
“We’re very thankful to Ghalib and his team for building a fully-functioning website for our business.”
“Working with Ghalib has been an outstanding decision for our company.”
“It was a pleasure working with Ghalib and his team.”
More of them, in full, on our reviews page.
— Our Proprietary Methodology —
The Visibility Framework™, applied to a migration
The method is the same one every engagement here runs on, compressed into a deadline. On a migration, step one has an expiry date: it can only be done while the old site is still live.
Visibility Score™
We record every ranking URL on the existing site — what it is, what it ranks for, and what is on it — from your Search Console and from the pages themselves, before anything is changed or taken down.
Custom Strategy
A keyword and content roadmap scoped to your niche and budget — which pages to fix, which to build, and which terms are worth the money here.
Execution
Senior strategists implement technical fixes, content and links as one roadmap — no juniors, no outsourcing, no handoffs between departments.
Track & Improve™
Monthly reporting and continuous optimization — we re-test what’s working, cut what isn’t, and adjust as the market moves.
Honest, No-Nonsense Commitment
No one controls Google or AI search — so we'll never guarantee a #1 ranking. What we do guarantee: if your visibility score doesn't improve within 90 days, we keep working at no extra cost until it does.
Migration pricing
Most migrations are quoted as a fixed project after the audit. Where a client wants the work to continue afterwards — and after a migration is a good moment to — it moves onto the same retainers as everything else here. Prices below are USD; UK clients are quoted in GBP and Pakistani clients in PKR.
Starter
Small sites, few ranking URLs, structure largely unchanged.
- URL inventory & redirect map
- Launch-day verification
- Post-launch monitoring
Growth
Replatforms and redesigns where the URL structure changes.
- Everything in Starter, deeper execution
- Content inventory & parity checks
- Rollback plan and staged launch
- A quarter of monitoring
Enterprise
Domain changes, consolidations and multi-market moves.
- Dedicated senior strategist
- hreflang & multi-market indexation
- Consolidation and cannibalisation decisions
- Custom reporting through the recovery period
A migration is usually scoped as a project rather than a retainer, because it has a start and an end. The figure depends on how many ranking URLs exist and how far the new structure departs from the old one — both knowable from a free audit and neither from a discovery call.
What you’re actually committing to
Most agencies keep this in a contract you only see after the sales call. We would rather you knew now, because it is the question everyone asks second — right after the price.
- A 3-month initial term, then month to monthLong enough for the 90-day guarantee above to mean something, short enough that you are not trapped if it doesn’t work out. The wider industry standard is 6 to 12 months.
- 30 days’ notice to stopNo exit fee and no buy-out of the months you haven’t used. You leave when you decide to, not when the contract lets you.
- No setup or onboarding feeThe audit is free, and month one costs exactly what month two costs. Nothing is front-loaded.
- You own everythingAnalytics, Search Console, content, accounts and any tooling set up for you — all in your name from day one, and all still yours if we part ways.
- One fixed monthly feeAnything outside the agreed scope is quoted and approved by you before it starts. It never appears on an invoice as a surprise.
- Reporting written to be readWhat changed, what it moved and what is next — in plain English, at the cadence set out in your plan, not a 40-page export nobody opens.
These are the terms as they appear in the agreement itself — nothing here is softened for the website. The full wording lives in our terms and conditions, and you get the agreement to read before anything is signed or invoiced.
What we will say that nobody wants to hear
We will tell you to delay a launch. Not often, and not lightly, but a migration that goes live without a tested redirect map is the one decision on this page that cannot be edited afterwards, and a fortnight is cheaper than a quarter of lost visibility.
We will refuse to point everything at the homepage. It is the fastest way to produce a map that looks complete, and Google reads a mass redirect into an unrelated page as a soft 404 — the link equity survives and the ranking does not. Where a page has no real destination we will say so and mark it, exactly as we did with eighteen of our own twenty-four.
And we will tell you when part of the window has closed. If the old site is already down and nothing was recorded, some of it is recoverable from Search Console and archives and some of it is not. Saying that in month one is more useful than discovering it in month six.
What we will not do is promise no ranking movement. Every migration moves something; the measurable goal is that nothing is lost that was mapped, and that what does move recovers within the quarter.
- Inventory before anything else. It is the only step that becomes impossible once the old site is down.
- No blanket homepage redirects. A redirect into an unrelated page is a soft 404. We mark unmapped URLs instead.
- Tested against the live old site. Redirects verified before launch, not written the week after it.
- A rollback plan exists first. This is the one discipline where a mistake can deindex a site in an afternoon.
- We will tell you to delay. Rarely, and only when launching would cost more than waiting.
Migration questions, answered
Related SEO pages
Same service, different angle — by market, by discipline and by platform.
Rebuilding? Do the inventory before the old site comes down.
Free 30-minute audit · No obligation · Response within 24 hours
Get in touch with Ghalib Ashrafi HQ
We're here to help you grow your business. Reach out today.