Migration inventory and URL mapping
Combine crawls, historical search landing pages and existing sitemaps to identify which URLs need a direct successor, redirect, consolidation or deliberate retirement.
SEO risk control for high-stakes site changes
Migrate the website. Keep the decisions that made it discoverable.
Moving domains, platforms or URL structures is a commercial project as much as a development project. Every redirect, canonical, template and internal link deserves an explicit decision before launch.
WHAT THE WORK COVERS
01INVENTORY
02MAPPING
03CUTOVER
Structure before scale. Evidence before promises.The real question: Search-led migration scoping, URL mapping and technical cutover assurance.
Where we focus
A migration is a set of decisions about existing URLs.
A successful migration cannot be judged by whether a new homepage loads. Existing commercial URLs, redirects, canonical destinations and crawlable templates all need to survive the move.
Staging and release QA
Check canonical targets, robots instructions, sitemaps, metadata, structured data, internal links and representative templates in the destination environment.
Cutover and recovery support
Track redirect status, important URL indexing and traffic signals after launch. Triage gaps against the agreed migration baseline and escalation matrix.
The buyer
Keep the commercial landing pages in view.
Technical directors, website owners, digital leads and agencies overseeing significant site or platform changes.
What the engagement should deliver
A documented migration map, prelaunch acceptance criteria and time-bound post-launch QA.
No promise of zero traffic fluctuation, zero downtime, or a guaranteed search ranking after cutover.
Before the cutover
The forgotten URL may be the one bringing in business.
A rebuilt site can look excellent while a formerly valuable service page now redirects to an irrelevant category or returns a 404. Search visits may fluctuate even during a carefully executed move. Preventable problems begin when nobody maps commercially important URLs, validates final HTTP responses or checks that staging restrictions have disappeared.
A useful acceptance register has three stages
- Before: reconcile a full source URL inventory with important organic landing pages, backlinks and existing sitemaps.
- During: record a relevant destination, expected response code and responsible person for each priority URL.
- After: run new crawls and inspect redirects, indexability, final HTML and critical templates against the baseline.
When an old page has a real successor, a server-side permanent redirect such as 301 or 308 is normally appropriate; an irrelevant homepage redirect is not. Google recommends avoiding chains and retaining move redirects for at least a year where possible. See its site-move documentation.
Try the redirect-map validator for obvious draft loops or chains. It analyses your pasted map locally; it does not fetch URLs or replace an HTTP crawl.
Clear next step
Tell us which URLs the move cannot afford to lose.
Share your site and the operational constraints. We can discuss a useful first assessment before suggesting an ongoing commitment.
Request a migration risk review