Website Redesign and Migration: CMS Change, SEO Preservation
A client came to us 6 weeks after a self-attempted redesign: 'We moved from WordPress to Tilda, traffic dropped by 70%.' I opened Google Search Console — 847 pages returned 404, the URL structure had completely changed, not a single 301 redirect was in place. Yandex hadn't reindexed the new site yet, positions collapsed. Recovery took 4 months and resulted in significant revenue loss for the quarter. Our experience — over 7 years and 80+ successful migrations, we guarantee position retention with the right approach.
Why Do Migrations Break SEO?
Search engines have indexed specific URLs. If /catalog/shoes/nike-air-max-270 turned into /products/nike-air-max-270 without a 301 redirect — all the link equity, traffic, and rankings go nowhere. Google says 301 passes ~99% of PageRank, but in practice positions recover over 2–8 weeks, not instantly.
Commonly, SEO gets broken not out of malice, but because a developer doesn't view the URL structure as a public API. Here are typical breakages:
| Problem | Cause | Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Duplicate content | New site opened parallel to old | Disable indexing of dev version, set canonical |
| Loss of metadata | Title and description left in old CMS | Export via API, mass import with verification |
| Canonical changes | Pagination and filters reset | Lock before development, implement in template |
| Speed drop | Heavy sections, unoptimized images | Optimize LCP, CLS, TTFB before launch |
How to Recover Traffic After a Failed Migration?
If traffic dropped, act immediately:
- Crawl the new site for 404s and compare with the pre-migration URL list.
- Create redirects for all lost pages with traffic >0.
- Check structured data and meta tags on a test sample.
- Daily monitor Coverage in Search Console and positions for top 50 queries.
- If after 2 weeks traffic does not recover — deep audit of redirects (transitivity, chains, loops).
In our practice, a large e-commerce site lost 50% of traffic when moving from Bitrix to React + Strapi. We restored 95% of redirects in three days, and within 3 weeks traffic returned to 90% of original.
What Does a Pre-Migration Audit Include?
Before starting development on the new site:
- Full crawl of current site via Screaming Frog or Sitebulb. Get list of all indexable URLs with traffic from Google Search Console.
- Export all pages with organic traffic >0 over the last 6 months — these are priority for redirects.
- Record all external backlinks to specific pages — Ahrefs, Semrush.
- Snapshot current positions for key queries — baseline for post-migration comparison.
- Save Core Web Vitals from Search Console for the previous 90 days.
Table for recording:
| Audit Stage | Tool | Criticality |
|---|---|---|
| URL collection | Screaming Frog + GSC | High |
| Page traffic | Google Analytics / Search Console | High |
| External links | Ahrefs / Majestic | Medium |
| Positions | Yandex Wordstat / Serpstat | Medium |
| Core Web Vitals | GSC CrUX | High |
Contact us for a detailed pre-migration audit — we will help identify all risks and create an action plan.
URL Mapping and Redirects
For projects with 200+ pages, we create a mapping table: old URL → new URL → status (301, merged with another page, deleted). Each row is verified: does the content actually migrate here?
In Laravel, redirects are handled via configuration file and middleware, not .htaccess — faster and more manageable. For WordPress → Next.js: redirects are set in next.config.js (static) and at the Nginx/CDN level for dynamic ones. Old .htaccess on shared hosting with 500+ lines of redirects is a special hell. Each redirect is checked sequentially, performance suffers. We move to Nginx map directive or Redis cache for dynamic lookup. More at Wikipedia: HTTP 301.
How to Migrate Content from Different CMSs?
WordPress → Headless CMS (Contentful, Strapi, Sanity):
WordPress REST API or WP All Export to export posts, meta fields, media files. Migration script in Node.js: parse export, transform structure, upload via CMS API. Media files are reuploaded to new storage, links updated in content. Typical problem — shortcodes in WordPress content ([gallery id="123"]): need parser and transformation to new format.
1C-Bitrix → modern stack: Bitrix stores content in non-standard tables with IBLOCK_ELEMENT_PROPERTY. Direct SQL export via phpMyAdmin or Bitrix API. Transformation is the longest part due to specific Bitrix data structure.
Heavy WYSIWYG → structured content: Years of editing in FCKEditor/TinyMCE leave inline styles, non-standard tags, broken attributes. HTML sanitize + transformation to Markdown or Portable Text (Sanity) with manual check of problematic pages.
| CMS | Migration Tools | Complexity | Risks |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | WP All Export, WP-CLI, REST API | Medium | Shortcodes, meta fields |
| 1C-Bitrix | Bitrix API, SQL export | High | Complex structure, infoblock properties |
| Joomla | J2XML, direct DB export | High | Outdated extensions |
| Tilda/Readymag | API export (limited) | Medium | No full content access |
How to Preserve Technical SEO Elements During Migration?
Structured data (Schema.org) — if the old site had Product, Article, BreadcrumbList markup, they must be on the new site too. Google Search Console → Enhancement reports will show loss of rich snippets.
Sitemap XML: generated automatically, submitted to GSC a day after launch. Old sitemap remains until full reindexing.
hreflang for multilingual sites: if tags are lost during migration, conflicts between language versions in search results will start within weeks.
Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags — often forgotten when changing template, pages stop displaying correctly when shared on social networks.
Launch and First Weeks Monitoring
DNS propagation: DNS switching takes up to 48 hours, plan launch with buffer. Cloudflare as DNS provider — propagation takes minutes, not hours.
After launch, monitor daily: Search Console → Coverage (indexing errors), Analytics → organic traffic, year-over-year comparison, crawl site for 404 errors.
First 2 weeks are critical. If traffic drops more than 30% — immediate audit of redirects and comparison with pre-migration crawl.
Launch checklist (spoiler)
- [ ] All 301 redirects work and do not form chains
- [ ] Sitemap submitted to GSC and Yandex.Webmaster
- [ ] Canonical tags set on all pages
- [ ] Open Graph / Twitter Card display checked
- [ ] robots.txt and noindex meta tags adjusted
- [ ] Core Web Vitals in green zone (LCP <2.5s, CLS <0.1, INP <200ms)
What the Service Includes
Results you receive:
- Migration plan with URL mapping and redirects in Excel/Google Sheets format.
- Configured 301 redirects at server level (Nginx/Cloudflare/Vercel).
- Migrated content with integrity check: images, meta fields, links.
- Structured data (Schema.org) on the new site, identical to old or improved.
- SEO report: position trend at 1, 3, and 6 weeks after launch.
- Coverage monitoring in Search Console with error notifications.
- Guaranteed position retention: if traffic drops more than 15% within the first month — free audit and correction.
Timelines and Estimates
- Redesign with migration for a small site (up to 100 pages): 4–8 weeks.
- E-commerce migration with 500+ product pages: 8–16 weeks.
- Only technical migration part (redirects, metadata) without redesign: 1–3 weeks.
Cost is calculated individually based on scope.
Get a consultation for your project — we will respond within a day. Order a pre-migration audit of your site and receive a detailed proposal with a redirect plan. Contact us to discuss details.