How to migrate without losing Google rankings
Ranking loss on migration is not bad luck — it's skipped steps. Here's the exact playbook we've used on 500+ migrations to keep organic traffic flat or growing through cutover.
The 10‑step playbook
Run these in order. Every step gates the next one. No cutover happens until step 8 passes.
- 1Baseline every ranking, top page, and backlink 30 days before cutover.
- 2Full crawl of the old site — export every 200, 301, and 404.
- 3Build a 1:1 URL redirect map. Every old URL either 301s or is explicitly retired.
- 4Rebuild the new site on a password‑protected staging URL with noindex.
- 5Port structured data, canonicals, hreflang, and meta parity template‑by‑template.
- 6Crawl staging as Googlebot. Match the old site's status‑code profile within 2%.
- 7Load‑test the new host at 3× peak traffic. TTFB must beat the old site.
- 8Freeze content 48h before cutover. Sync one final diff. Flip DNS in the low‑traffic window.
- 9Submit new sitemap in Search Console. File a Change of Address if the domain moved.
- 10Monitor rankings, crawl errors, and Core Web Vitals daily for 30 days. Hotfix on sight.
The two mistakes that cause 90% of drops
First: partial redirect maps. Teams redirect the top 100 URLs and let the long tail 404. The long tail is 40% of your organic traffic — losing it looks like a Google penalty but isn't.
Second: canonical mismatch. The new CMS auto‑generates canonicals that don't match the redirected URL. Google sees two URLs claiming to be canonical and picks the wrong one.
What 'success' looks like on day 30
Organic sessions within ±5% of baseline. Indexed pages within 2% of pre‑migration. Zero 'Redirect error' entries in GSC. Core Web Vitals green on 75%+ of URLs. If any of those slip, you have a fix list — not a disaster.
Daniel has led 300+ production migrations across WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, and enterprise HubSpot stacks. He writes the runbooks the rest of the team ships against.
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