When should I hire an SEO consultant for a website migration?

Before your developer starts, not after launch. The most expensive migration mistakes happen during planning — wrong URL structure, missing redirect maps, no baseline data. An SEO consultant's role in a migration is to produce the brief your developer executes against. By the time the site is live, the critical decisions have already been made.

What does SEO migration support include?

A full site crawl and GSC export, complete redirect map (old URL to new URL for every indexed page), a written developer brief with SEO requirements, launch-day verification of redirects and indexation, and 30 days of post-launch GSC monitoring with a final traffic comparison report.

How much does SEO migration support cost?

Pricing is project-based and depends on site size. Small business sites up to 50 pages start at $750. Sites up to 200 pages start at $1,200. Larger sites are quoted individually. All engagements are fixed price with no ongoing retainer required.

SEO Migration Support · Fixed Project Price · No Retainer

Migrate your website without losing your rankings.

The average website migration takes 523 days to fully recover organic traffic — and 17% of sites never fully recover. The difference is almost always planning. This service puts an SEO specialist in your corner before your developer touches anything.

523

Average days to recover traffic after a migration

17%

Sites that don't recover within 1,000 days

$750

Starting price for sites up to 50 pages

Get a Project Quote → Read the migration guide →

What's included

Everything your developer needs. Everything GSC needs to show.

Pre-migration SEO audit

Full crawl of your current site, GSC 12-month export, identification of your highest-value pages, backlink profile review, and documentation of your current title tags, meta descriptions, and schema markup. The complete before-state baseline.

Complete redirect map

Every indexed URL on your old site mapped to the correct destination on the new site. Delivered as a spreadsheet your developer can implement directly. No homepage catches — every URL goes to a topically relevant equivalent page.

Developer SEO brief

A written document covering all SEO requirements your developer needs: redirect implementation, title tag and meta description preservation, schema markup requirements, robots.txt and sitemap configuration, staging noindex requirements, and GA4/GSC setup for launch day.

Launch-day verification

On launch day, I verify that redirects are live and returning correct status codes, the staging noindex has been removed, the XML sitemap is submitted to GSC, GA4 tracking is firing correctly, and no critical pages are returning errors.

30-day GSC monitoring

Daily GSC checks for the first two weeks, then weekly through day 30. Immediate alerts if crawl errors spike, redirects break, or significant ranking drops indicate a problem that needs quick diagnosis and action.

30-day traffic comparison report

At day 30, a written report comparing pre-migration and post-migration performance — clicks, impressions, rankings by page — with an assessment of trajectory and any remaining action items.

Pricing

Fixed project pricing. No retainer required.

Priced by site size — the complexity of redirect mapping and launch verification scales with the number of indexed URLs. All engagements include the full scope above.

Small

$750

Up to 50 pages

Full pre-migration audit
Redirect map (up to 50 URLs)
Developer SEO brief
Launch-day verification
30-day GSC monitoring
30-day comparison report

Medium

$1,200

Up to 200 pages

Full pre-migration audit
Redirect map (up to 200 URLs)
Developer SEO brief
Launch-day verification
30-day GSC monitoring
30-day comparison report

Large

Custom

200+ pages

Full scope above
Redirect map (all URLs)
Extended monitoring period
Quoted based on crawl size

No ongoing retainer required.

This is a fixed-scope project engagement — you pay for the migration support, not a monthly subscription. If you want ongoing SEO after the migration, that's a separate conversation. Many clients use this service as a standalone engagement with their own developer and don't need ongoing support. The goal is a clean migration, not a dependency.

How it works

Structured around your developer's timeline.

Kickoff and site crawl — before development starts

As soon as you decide to migrate, before your developer has started, we run a full crawl of your current site and pull your GSC data. This produces the before-state baseline everything else is built from. Timing: as early as possible — ideally 2–4 weeks before your developer starts.

Redirect map and developer brief — delivered within 5 business days

You receive the complete redirect map and a written developer brief covering every SEO requirement for the build. Your developer implements the redirects and follows the brief during development. You don't need to translate anything — the brief is written to be handed directly to a developer.

Pre-launch verification — before go-live

Before the site goes live, I verify that redirects are implemented correctly, staging noindex is configured, and tracking is ready. Any issues found here are fixed before launch — not after Google has crawled a broken state.

Launch-day and 30-day monitoring

On launch day, immediate verification that everything is live correctly. Then 30 days of GSC monitoring — daily for the first two weeks, weekly after that. If something breaks, you hear from me, not from a traffic drop three weeks later.

Common questions

FAQ

When should I bring you in? +

Before your developer starts — ideally 2–4 weeks before development begins. The pre-migration audit and redirect map need to be complete before any development work starts. If your developer has already started, reach out immediately — there's usually still time to prevent the most costly mistakes before launch.

My developer says they'll handle the SEO — do I still need this? +

Most developers are skilled at building — they're not SEO specialists. "Handling the SEO" typically means installing an SEO plugin and filling in basic metadata. It rarely means a full redirect map, GSC baseline export, schema markup preservation, or 30-day post-launch monitoring. These are different disciplines. The brief this service produces gives your developer exactly what they need to execute correctly — it's not a replacement for their work, it's the SEO layer that sits on top of it.

Do I need to be on any specific platform? +

No. The SEO migration process is the same regardless of which platforms you're moving between — Squarespace to WordPress, Wix to Webflow, custom CMS to anything. The redirect mapping, developer brief, and monitoring work applies across all platform combinations.

What if problems show up after launch? +

That's what the 30-day monitoring is for. If GSC shows a spike in crawl errors, redirect failures, or significant ranking drops, you hear from me with a specific diagnosis and recommended fix — not a report three weeks later. Most post-launch issues are fixable if caught within the first two weeks.

Can I add ongoing SEO after the migration? +

Yes. Many clients use the migration as a starting point for ongoing SEO work — the site is clean, the baseline is documented, and we have a clear picture of what rankings look like post-migration. Ongoing retainers start at $750/month. The migration project fee is not a credit toward ongoing work — they're separate engagements.