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Migration & Relaunch

Website Migration

A website migration moves a site to a new platform, domain, structure, or infrastructure.

A website migration requires more than moving content or infrastructure from one environment to another. Existing pages, URLs, integrations, and SEO signals should be inventoried and mapped carefully before launch, with thorough testing to identify issues early. After go-live, ongoing monitoring helps detect content gaps, broken redirects, ranking losses, and operational problems. The concept is closely related to CMS Migration and SEO Migration.

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CMS Migration

SEO Migration

Redirect Mapping

Cutover

Website Relaunch

FAQ

Website Migration

What determines the effort of a website migration?
Mainly the volume and structure of content, the number of integrations, and the quality of existing data. Large amounts of legacy content without clear structure require manual rework, while cleanly structured content can more often be transferred automatically. Requirements for SEO preservation and multilingual setups also raise the effort.
What belongs in a clean cutover during a migration?
A clean cutover is planned, tested, and reversible. It includes a low-traffic time window, frozen content, activated redirects, and a fallback plan. After the switch, status codes, indexability, and key functions are checked before the migration counts as complete. Clear ownership of the switch avoids delays if something goes wrong.
Which mistakes happen most often in a website migration?
Frequent ones are missing redirects, forgotten content, accidental indexing blocks carried over from the staging environment, and no monitoring after go-live. These errors mostly stem from an incomplete inventory. A checklist with a before-and-after comparison of URLs and metadata catches most of them.
Which phases does a website migration typically include?
Typical phases are inventory, mapping of content and URLs, build, testing, cutover, and monitoring afterward. The inventory determines scope and effort, showing which content is migrated, revised, or dropped. The cutover is only the visible part of the work. Post-launch monitoring belongs to the project, not to aftercare.
Why does a website migration put search visibility at risk?
When URLs, redirects, or metadata disappear, search engines lose the link between old and new pages. Rankings can then drop until the structure is reassessed. A complete redirect mapping and checks of titles, canonicals, and internal links reduce the risk, but cannot rule it out.
How do website migration and website relaunch differ?
A migration moves what exists onto new technology, while a relaunch also renews strategy, design, and content. The two can coincide, but the risks differ. In a migration the priority is preserving URLs and rankings, while a relaunch adds changes to structure and messaging.