Website Migration SEO: What Happens to Your Rankings When You Move, and the Checklist That Keeps the Dip Short

Website migration SEO: what happens to your rankings when you move

A website migration is any change that gives Google new addresses to learn: a rebuild on a new platform, a new domain, a new set of page addresses, or all of them at once. Google ranks addresses, not businesses. What it knew about an old page, the links pointing at it and the searches it answered, reaches the new address only after Google has crawled the old one, followed its redirect and read the new page. Google's own guidance on recrawling says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks; that stretch is the dip.

This post is the owner's version of the migration checklist, for a small business moving its site to Theo or anywhere else: what changes, why the dip happens, what to do before, during and after the switch, a URL map to copy, and what Theo does at each step.

First, check what there is to protect. In Theo's audit of 5,974 small business websites, 48 percent of the 4,027 sites with search data got an estimated zero visitors a month from Google search; The State of Small Business Websites 2026 has the breakdown. A site in that group has no search traffic to lose in a move, and the move is the moment to start earning some.

What website migration means, and the four kinds of move

Migrating a website means moving it from one place to another: a different host, platform, domain, or structure of page addresses. To the owner these are one project; to Google they are different events, and the size of the dip depends on how many of the things it knows about the site change at once. Google's site-move guidance draws the same line between a move that keeps the addresses and a site move with URL changes, which has more steps. Four kinds cover almost every small business case.

• A move off a builder such as Wix or Squarespace is a new platform on the same domain: a rebuild that keeps the name. The website migration hub covers what each platform lets an owner take along; the Wix page explains why a Wix site is rebuilt rather than exported, and the Squarespace page covers pointing a domain instead of transferring it.
• In the same audit, 47 percent of the 272 Wix sites with search data and 49 percent of the 177 Squarespace sites got an estimated zero visitors a month from Google search. Many owners leaving a builder are protecting very little and gaining the chance to earn more.

Why rankings dip after a website migration

Three things change at once during a move: the page addresses, the redirects that join old to new, and the content. Each takes Google time to process, and a fourth applies only when the domain changes too. None of them is Google marking the site down; each is Google catching up with a change, and the catching up has an end.

• Semrush's website migration checklist, as of September 2026, makes the same point from the other direction: the permanent drops it describes come from preventable issues such as missing redirects and crawl blocks nobody noticed, not from the move itself.
• Content is also where a rebuild can gain: a page whose title names the service and the town can rank for searches the old page never answered.

How long website migration takes, and how long the dip lasts

There are two clocks. The first is the move itself: on Theo the first preview is usually ready in minutes, the review takes as many days as the owner wants, and the domain switch lands once the registrar's records update, usually within a few hours. The second is Google's, and it starts when the domain switches. With redirects in place, a dip of a few weeks is common, and then it recovers. The phases below are a typical shape, not a forecast; the timing shifts with the size of the site and with Google's crawl, which its guidance puts at a few days to a few weeks. Read them over 28-day windows, not single days.

1. Roughly the first week: the switch. Google still lists the old addresses, and clicks on them follow the redirects, so traffic looks close to normal; Search Console shows little for the new addresses yet.
2. Roughly weeks two and three: the dip. Google crawls the old addresses, sees the redirects and starts swapping them out; old addresses lose their positions before the new ones earn theirs, so impressions and clicks fall. This is where owners undo good moves; leave it alone.
3. From about week four: the recovery. Most old addresses are out, the new ones are in, and positions stop jumping. Impressions climb back toward the old level, and past it wherever a new page answers a search better than the old one did.
4. Roughly weeks six to twelve: the new baseline. What the site earns now is what the move produced; a page still missing is a redirect or content problem rather than a matter of patience, and the redirect mistakes section below names the usual ones.

• Semrush's checklist also cites a Search Engine Journal study in which sites took about 17 months to regain their traffic after a migration. Read it against the condition above: the few-week dip assumes the redirects are in place, and without them a move can run to months.
• Nobody can promise where a page lands after a move; what can be said is which choices decide the outcome.

How much it costs to migrate a website

The cost depends on who does the rebuild and who does the redirects, the two pieces of work in a migration. An agency quotes a project fee, a freelancer charges by the hour, and a website builder charges its plan price and leaves the redirects and the Search Console work to the owner; quotes vary widely by vendor.

On Theo a move has no price of its own: the first build is free, and afterward the plan is the whole bill. Beyond it, the paid extras are top-up chat credits, a domain name if it is bought inside Theo, and the optional backlink packages in the Boost checklist.

Before the move: the pre-migration checklist

Most of what decides the dip is settled before the domain switches. The items below are the owner's part, each with when it happens, who does it and what the screen shows; Theo's part comes later in the post. Two things are left off on purpose: nothing has to be exported from the old platform, because Theo rebuilds from the live address, and nobody writes redirect rules by hand.

Build and test the new site before the domain switches

The build happens on a preview the owner refines in chat while the old site keeps serving visitors. The checks below are the ones that protect rankings, each with a rough time for a site of ten to twenty pages.

1. Walk the URL inventory against the preview (about an hour). Each address on it that earned traffic or carries a link needs a page on the new site with the same subject; a page being merged gets a note on the map.
2. Keep the titles and headings that ranked (30 minutes). Ask in chat to keep a page's title where it worked and to improve the text under it rather than replace it.
3. Check the details customers rely on (15 minutes): phone number, address, hours, service areas and the names of services, on every page that shows them.
4. Click every menu item and in-copy link (30 minutes). Internal links tell Google which pages matter; a page nothing links to is crawled later.
5. Send a test through every form and click every booking, ordering and store link (15 minutes).
6. Open the preview on a phone (10 minutes). The header, the call button and the first screen of each main page are what most visitors see.
7. Analytics and Search Console are not part of the preview; they connect only once the domain is active, so they come on migration day.

URL mapping: the redirect map, with an example to copy

URL mapping is the list of the old addresses that matter and the new address each should land on. It decides whether a migration keeps its rankings, and the shape is simple: one row per old address, the new address, the status code, and a note; Semrush's checklist uses the same first three columns.

Three rules build it. The status code is 301, permanent, for every row that moves; a 302 tells Google the page is coming back. Old addresses that never earned a visit or a link do not need a row; on a Theo move, the old addresses that still get traffic or carry links are the ones redirected once Search Console is connected. And Google's site-move guidance says to keep the redirects in place for at least a year; there is no reason to take them down after that either, since links from other sites keep pointing at the old addresses for years. The example below is a plumbing company moving from a services page and a few scattered service pages to a rebuild with one page per service and one per town, which is the shape a Theo build gives a trade.

Migration day: the order to do things in, with timings

The switch itself is one afternoon. Each step confirms the one before it, and the two Google connections come after the domain is live, not before.

1. Tell whoever answers the phone that the site is changing (five minutes), so a customer who mentions it gets a straight answer.
2. Connect the domain (about 20 minutes at the registrar). Theo's domain connection steps cover the root and the www version, forwarding and parking off, and email records left alone so mail keeps arriving; on Wix, point the domain at Theo when the new site is ready; unassigning it inside Wix is only for a Wix store whose checkout uses the domain.
3. Wait for the registrar's records to update (usually within a few hours); the old site stays live until then. When the bare domain and the www version both load the new site in a private browser window, the switch is done.
4. Confirm HTTPS and the first three pages on a phone (10 minutes): the padlock in the address bar, then the homepage, the main service page and the contact page.
5. Connect Google Analytics and Search Console (about 15 minutes); both connect only once the domain is active. A Domain property covers the bare domain, www, http and https together.
6. Redirects go in. Once Search Console is connected, Theo redirects the old addresses that still get traffic or carry links to the matching new pages; open each row of the map in a browser and confirm where it lands (20 minutes for a small site).
7. Submit the pages (same day). On Starter and Pro, Theo submits the new pages to Google through Search Console; the Sitemaps report shows the sitemap with a Success status once Google has read it.
8. If the domain changed, run the change of address (10 minutes). Google's site-move guidance names this step for a domain change; it sits in Search Console under Settings and needs both domains verified, with the old one already redirecting to the new one. Theo's redirects cover the old paths on the domain it serves, so when the domain changes the old domain has to keep pointing at a host or registrar that redirects each address to the new domain, and the owner keeps that running for at least a year.
9. Over the following days, update the Google Business Profile website field, directories, social profiles, email signatures and running ads.

After the move: what to watch in Search Console, and how often

Search Console is the place to watch the dip as it happens, and it is free. The checks below say what to open, what to compare against and how often; if the domain changed, run them on both properties.

1. Weekly for six weeks: the Performance report, last 28 days, with the Compare tab set against the baseline export. Expect the dip inside the first few weeks; on Starter and Pro, Theo's weekly report lists what was published and fixed in the same weeks.
2. Weekly for six weeks: the Pages report under Indexing. New addresses should move to Indexed; old addresses should appear as Page with redirect, which is the move working.
3. Weekly: the Not found (404) line in the same report. An old address there that earned traffic or carries a link needs a redirect; one that never earned anything can stay.
4. At week four: the baseline queries. One that dropped and came back on a new address is the swap finishing; one still gone points at a page whose content or title changed too much.
5. If the domain changed, weekly for three months: the old property, whose clicks should fall toward zero as the new property's rise.
6. Monthly after that: the 28-day comparison against the same month before the move, until the site is clearly past its old level.

• During the dip, do not remove the redirects, change the new addresses again or switch the domain back. Each restarts Google's clock.
• A new page sitting at Discovered, currently not indexed after a few weeks has a fix of its own; how to get Google to index my site walks through it with what the Search Console screen shows at each step.

Website migration checklist: 24 items, before, during and after

The whole post in one list, grouped by when each item happens. Who does it assumes a move to Theo; elsewhere the Theo items fall to the owner or whoever the owner hires.

Redirect mistakes that turn a dip into a loss

The redirects are where most migrations go wrong, and every mistake below has the same signature in Search Console: old addresses that stop earning without the new ones picking up.

How Theo handles a website migration

These are the steps Theo takes on a move, and they are the ones that keep the dip short. Nothing changes on the live site until the owner switches the domain, and the move is not a line on the bill.

1. Enter the current address. Theo reads the existing site, matches its look and brings the pages, photos and wording across; the first preview is usually ready in minutes, and the first build is free.
2. Review the preview and ask for changes in chat, in plain English; the old site keeps serving visitors meanwhile, so there is no gap and no rush.
3. Connect the domain when the site is ready, root and www together, following Theo's steps; the old site stays live until the registrar's records update, usually within a few hours.
4. With the domain active, the owner connects Google Analytics and Search Console; on Starter and Pro, Theo then submits the new pages to Google through Search Console.
5. Once Search Console is connected, the old addresses that still get traffic or carry links are redirected one to one to the matching new pages on the domain Theo serves; the rest are left to drop out.
6. If the domain changed too, the owner runs the change of address step in Search Console, which tells Google the whole site has moved; the old domain stays pointed at a host or registrar that redirects each address to the new domain, and the owner keeps that running for at least a year.
7. Then, on Starter and Pro, the ongoing work starts: with the domain and both Google connections in place, the Growth Engine switches on, with technical fixes, page speed, new pages and posts each week, and a weekly report. It uses no chat credits.

• The store, if there is one, does not move. A Shopify or Wix store connects directly on every plan, with checkout completing on the store.
• An Etsy shop keeps its checkout too: Theo reads its listings and turns them into product pages on the new site, and each one links back to the listing. A WooCommerce or Square Online store keeps its checkout as well, and the new site links to its real products.

What a move looked like for one customer site

One customer site, named with its owner's permission, shows the shape a move can take when the pages keep coming after it. Buy My Lunch takes school lunch orders online and came over to Theo in June 2026. By its own Search Console data through September 27, 2026, Google search sent it 929 clicks in the most recent 90 days against 131 in the 90 days before; search impressions were 61,700 against 7,500 across the same two periods; and the average position moved from 13 to 8 as the growth work published pages.

Two things to take from it. The windows are 90 days, not seven; a dip of a few weeks sits inside them, and what matters is where the window ends. And the move did not produce those numbers by itself; the position moved as the growth work published pages afterward. That is a single site, and no one can promise a ranking after a move. Owners who want to see more can ask the team for live customer sites in their industry; the team shares the ones whose owners have agreed.

When the dip is something else: a decision rule

A dip with the shape above needs patience. The rule for telling patience from a problem is the calendar plus the Pages report: before week four, with the new addresses moving to Indexed and the old ones showing Page with redirect, wait; after week four, with clicks still well under the baseline, look for one of three patterns.

Whichever of the three patterns below turns up, owners on Theo raise it in chat; Theo checks the redirects, on Starter and Pro submits the pages, and fixes what it finds. What it commits to is the work and, on Starter and Pro, a weekly report of what was done, not a position.

• New pages listed under Excluded by noindex tag, which the redirect mistakes table above covers, or stuck at Discovered, currently not indexed, which how to get Google to index my site walks through.
• Old addresses under Not found (404) that earned traffic or carry links. They need a row on the redirect map; on a Theo move, raise it in chat and the redirect goes in.
• A query that brought calls before the move and now brings none, with its page merged into another; the merged page needs the old page's subject and title back, or the old page returns as its own page.

Frequently asked questions