--- title: "SEO migration" description: "SEO migration support from ShoutRank: redirects, parity, and indexation when a site moves platform or domain." canonical: https://shoutrank.com/seo-migration markdown: https://shoutrank.com/seo-migration.md --- # SEO migration SEO migration support from ShoutRank: redirects, parity, and indexation when a site moves platform or domain. An SEO migration keeps the demand you already earn while the site changes platform, design, or domain. Most of the damage happens in the mapping: a redirect to the homepage, a template that drops the title, a staging flag left on production. We work beside the team doing the replatform. We do not rebuild the site. We say what search needs from the new one, and we check it. ShoutRank does not guarantee a ranking or a citation. ## The problem ### The redirect map is a spreadsheet of guesses. Old URLs point at the homepage or at a soft 404 because nobody matched them to a real successor. ### The new templates are thinner. The design launch drops content, internal links, or the canonical the old URL had earned. ### Launch day has no fetch. The site goes out. The first SEO check is a traffic chart the following month. ## How ShoutRank approaches it We inventory the URLs that earn impressions and the templates behind them. Those get a one-to-one successor or an explicit decision to retire them. Parity is checked on HTML: status, title, canonical, indexability, and the main internal links. After launch we fetch again. ## What the work includes ### URL inventory The URLs that matter, with impressions, not every parameter variant. ### Redirect map Old URL, new URL, and the reason. Homepage redirects are called out. ### Parity list What the new template must still emit. ### Launch checks A fetch of the priority URLs the day of the move and the days after. ## Process ### Discovery Find out the launch date and who can change redirects. ### Audit Export the URLs that have impressions or links. Ignore the long tail of junk until the head is safe. ### Strategy Map each important URL to a successor or a deliberate 410. ### Implementation Review staging HTML against the parity list. ### Monitoring Watch coverage and the priority URLs daily in the first stretch after launch. ### Optimization Fix the redirects that landed on the wrong successor. ### Reporting What moved, what broke, and what recovered. ## Why ShoutRank ### We care about the successor, not the slogan A redesign can look better and still throw away the URL that ranked. The map is the job. ### Checks are fetches After launch we request the URL. We do not wait for a crawl tool’s weekly update to notice a sitewide noindex. ### Scoped to the move A migration is a project with an end. It does not have to become a retainer unless you want the seat afterward. ## How success is measured Share of priority URLs that resolve to the intended successor. Index coverage of those successors in the weeks after launch. Impressions on the same query set, compared with the month before the move. A dip can be real. We will not hide it. A named client result is published when that client clears the figure. Until then the report is the measurement. ## Questions ### When should SEO join a redesign? When the URL model is still changeable. After the templates are frozen, we can still write the redirect map, but we can no longer ask for a field the design deleted. ### Do you manage the launch? No. Your developers or agency ship. We review the map and the HTML, and we are available on launch day for the fetches. ### What if we are changing domain? The same map, with more weight on the redirects and on re-verifying the property in Search Console. We still do not promise the new domain will inherit every ranking. ## Related - [Technical SEO](https://shoutrank.com/technical-seo): The rules the new templates have to keep. - [Platforms](https://shoutrank.com/platforms): If the move is onto a system we already have a page for. - [Enterprise SEO](https://shoutrank.com/enterprise-seo): When several teams are launching the new site.