How much does a website migration cost?
We quote site migrations as a fixed fee, and the price is driven by three things: how many URLs need to move, how complex the old and new platforms are, and whether we're also building the new site.
URL count is bigger than most people expect. It's not just the pages in your current menu. It includes old blog posts, retired product pages that still have backlinks, filtered category URLs and PDFs. An ecommerce store with variants and collections can have many times more URLs than its sitemap shows, and each one needs a decision.
The cheapest migration is the one where SEO is in the room before the design is approved. Retrofitting redirects, restoring trimmed content and rebuilding tracking after launch always costs more than planning it, and you pay for the lost traffic on top.
If you're early in a rebuild, pair the migration scope with the website build itself, or start with a technical SEO audit so we can count what you actually have.
How long does it take for traffic to recover after a site migration?
For a small to medium site done properly, Google says most pages typically move in its index within a few weeks, and larger sites take longer, so a short dip followed by recovery is normal.
Google ties the speed mostly to how many URLs are involved and how fast your server responds. Submitting an updated sitemap helps it find the new URLs sooner. Some ranking movement while Google recrawls is expected and settles over time.
What isn't normal is a drop that keeps going. In my experience a long recovery almost always traces back to something fixable: a block of URLs with no redirects, pages whose content got cut in the redesign, a leftover noindex, or redirect chains.
So don't just wait it out. We compare page groups against the pre-launch baseline every week in Search Console: products, categories, blog, location pages. If one group is recovering and another isn't, that group points straight at the problem. Fixing it in week two is far cheaper than discovering it in month four.
Sources: Site Moves and Migrations (Google Search Central)
Should I redesign and migrate my website at the same time?
If rankings matter to your business, it's safer not to: Google's own guidance is to change one thing at a time, for example move the domain first and change the layout afterward.
The reason is diagnosis. If you change platform, URLs, design and content in one launch and traffic drops, you can't tell which change caused it. You also can't tell if one part hurt you while another helped and the two cancelled out.
Budgets don't always allow two projects, and I get that. When we have to do both together, we keep as much constant as possible at launch: the same URLs, the same page content and headings, the same titles and structured data. The new design goes on top. Content rewrites and URL cleanup come in a second phase once the numbers are stable.
That's also why we treat content cuts in a redesign as an SEO decision, not a design one. A page that ranked because it answered a question in depth will lose that ranking if it ships as a headline and a stock photo. See how we approach this in our SEO services.
Sources: Site Moves and Migrations: change only one thing at a time (Google Search Central)
Can I keep my URLs the same when I change platforms?
Often yes, and keeping your existing URLs is the single biggest way to reduce migration risk, because pages that don't change address don't need redirects at all.
It depends on the destination. Static sites, headless builds and most custom CMS setups let you define any path you want, so you can match the old structure exactly. Some hosted platforms are stricter. Shopify, for example, uses fixed path prefixes for products, collections, pages and blog posts, so moving a store onto it means redirects for most product and category URLs no matter what. Shopify has a built-in redirect tool for this.
Watch the small changes too. Adding or removing a trailing slash, switching to lowercase, or dropping a file extension like .html all change the URL as far as search engines are concerned. Pick one format and redirect the other.
When we moved this site from WordPress to static hosting, we mapped every existing post and page path before writing any templates. If you're heading to Shopify, we plan the redirect map around its URL rules from day one.
Sources: URL redirects (Shopify Help Center)
Will a website migration affect AI Overviews and ChatGPT citations?
Yes: AI search features cite specific pages, so a migration that breaks or drops those URLs can cost you citations as well as rankings.
Google's AI features draw on pages that are indexed and eligible to appear in Search, so the normal migration rules apply. Pages that 404, get noindexed or lose their content can fall out of AI Overviews along with the blue links. Assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity also link to exact URLs, which is one more reason every page with value needs a one-to-one redirect instead of being quietly retired.
Structure matters more than people think. I've said for a while that LLMs summarize rather than index: they reward a clear heading, a short direct answer, then depth. Redesigns often flatten that into marketing copy and accordions full of vague text. Keep your question-and-answer structure, your headings and your structured data intact through the move.
Before launch, list the pages that currently earn citations or AI Overview visibility and treat them like your top revenue pages. Our AI search optimization work starts from that list.
Sources: AI features and your website (Google Search Central)
What happens to my Google Ads when my website moves?
Your ads keep running and keep spending through the move, which is exactly the risk: if final URLs, conversion tags or the click ID break on launch day, you pay for traffic while your bidding learns from silence.
The common failures are predictable. Ads point at old URLs that now redirect, sometimes through a chain. A redirect drops the gclid parameter that Google Ads auto-tagging adds to each click, so conversions can't be matched back to ads. The thank-you page moved and the conversion tag didn't come with it. Merchant Center flags product links on the new domain until the site is verified and claimed.
On launch day we run the same gates I use on any new site. Submit the form or place a test order once, then watch the conversion arrive in Google Ads and analytics in the same session. Only then do we let budgets run normally.
Within the first day, update final URLs, sitelinks and feed links to the new addresses rather than relying on redirects. A conversion tracking audit right after launch catches the rest.
Sources: About auto-tagging (Google Ads Help), Destination requirements (Google Ads policy)
