SEO REPAIR: MIGRATION AND HOSTING MOVES
Rankings Dropped After a Website Migration or Host Change? Here Is What Broke
A move to a new host, platform or domain should be invisible to Google. If your rankings fell the week you moved, something did not come with you. Most of it can be found and put back.
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You moved your website. Maybe it went to a new host, from Wix or Squarespace to WordPress, from one domain to another, or from http to https. The site looks the same. But the phone slowed down and your rankings fell. This page diagnoses rankings lost in a move. Start with a free website analysis and we will show you exactly what did not make the trip.
A migration done right does not move the needle at all. Google sees the same pages at the same addresses with the same titles and links. When rankings drop, the move changed something Google was counting on. Our SEO repair work is mostly finding those changes and reversing them, in the right order.
Watch: So Who Owns your Domain?
CONFIRM THE PROBLEM
Why did my rankings drop after I moved my website?
A migration drop has a date on it. Rankings hold steady for months, then step down within days of the move. The pattern matches the day your DNS changed, the new platform went live, or the new domain took over.
Beth puts it this way. Google already has an opinion about your website. A move asks Google to form that opinion again. If the pages, addresses and links it finds are different, the old opinion does not carry over.
A plain host change should not matter at all. When it kills rankings, something else changed at the same time: the domain setup, the redirects, the SSL certificate or a setting the new host turned on by default.
To confirm it, open Google Search Console and compare the 3 months before the move to the weeks after. Then run your domain through our traffic drop analyzer to see when the decline began and which pages lost the most. If the drop started months before the move, the move is not your first problem.
WHAT A MOVE MUST PRESERVE
What should a website migration keep the same?
Everything Google used to rank you needs to arrive at the new address intact. Here is the list we work from on every move we do in-house.
- URLs. Every page keeps its exact address, or gets a 301 redirect to its one matching new page. When we moved our own site to a new domain, we accounted for every page before the switch.
- Title tags and headings. Each title names the service and the city, and the H1 and H2 tags stay on the terms buyers type. We have watched a site go to near zero after a move because the title on its best page became a generic phrase and the page was never redirected.
- Internal links and navigation. The menu, dropdowns and related links tell Google which pages support each other. They need to survive the move.
- One version of the domain. www, non-www, http and https are 4 different addresses to Google. Pick 1 and send the other 3 to it.
- DNS and SSL done in the right order. The certificate is installed and tested before the DNS change, so Google never sees a security warning.
- Search Console. The new address is verified before the move, a domain change gets the change of address request, and the old property stays open.
THE REAL CAUSES
How does a host or platform change silently break SEO?
- www set up as a redirect instead of a CNAME. Beth sees more messes here than she can count. Done wrong, you get a redirect loop or a split link profile, with half your links on each version and neither getting full credit.
- http never redirected to https. Google does not treat http and https as the same site on its own. A link you earned years ago on a major news site points to http. If http does not redirect, that credit leaks away. We found exactly this on a client site, fixed the redirect, and got a solid bump.
- The old site and new site both live. After a host change, the old server keeps answering for a while. Now Google sees 2 copies of every page.
- Platform URLs changed. Wix, Squarespace and Shopify each build addresses their own way. A move to WordPress with default permalinks changes every URL at once.
- Move on top of move. When a site goes from point A to B to C over the years, each move leaks value. Beth calls it diluting and diluting.
- The search engine block was left on. Nobody unchecked the discourage search engines box after the build.
If your site is missing from Google entirely, not just lower, start with our page on a website not showing up on Google. If the move came with a new design, the damage may be in the design, and our page on website traffic dropped after redesign covers that side.
Check it yourself
Check it yourself in 20 minutes
PLATFORM MOVES
Did switching from Wix, Squarespace or Shopify hurt my rankings?
Moving to WordPress is the right direction. Beth has said it in class since 2003: if you are serious about traffic from Google, WordPress is the platform that lets you build the structure Google rewards. Wix and Squarespace cannot build that hierarchy.
But the move has to be handled like any other migration. People drop a platform and lose rankings because they rebuilt from scratch and never mapped the old URLs.
Here is a real example from our own files. An online store we had built drew about 30,000 visitors a month. The owner moved it to Shopify, and the flip was not done right. Traffic fell by about 90%. A good SEO person could fix it only so far. So we exported the whole store out of Shopify and put it back in WordPress. Within the first 2 weeks, traffic rose by about 30%.
Two warnings. First, GoDaddy and some other hosts sell a version of wordpress.com, not the wordpress.org software. You cannot easily export a wordpress.com site, so a move off it may mean a rebuild. Ask which version you are on. Second, timing matters. If you are in your busy season, Beth does not advocate changing platforms now. Plan it for January 2, or the start of your slowest month.
Our WordPress web design team does platform moves with a page-by-page map, and our WordPress hosting comes set up for the wordpress.org version with the tools we use on our own clients.
CHECK IT YOURSELF
How do I check what broke in the move in 20 minutes?
You need a browser, Search Console and this list.
- Test all 4 versions of your domain. Type it with www, without www, with http and with https. All 4 should land on 1 secure address with no warning and no loop.
- Check the old addresses. Pull your top pages from the Search Console Performance report, dated before the move. Paste each into a browser. Each should land on its matching page, not a 404 and not the homepage.
- Open the Pages report in Search Console. Look for a jump in Not found (404), Page with redirect, or Excluded by noindex since the move date.
- Read your title tags. Hover over the browser tab on your 5 most important pages. Each should still name the service and city, not just your business name.
- Check the search engine setting. In WordPress, open Settings, then Reading. The box that discourages search engines must be unchecked.
- Look at the old server. Ask your old host whether the site is still live there.
- Find out who controls the domain. If your old host or designer owns the domain, every DNS fix on this list runs through them.
Our free SEO audit tool will crawl the rest of the site for missing titles, broken links and redirect chains you cannot check by hand.
THE ROLLBACK DECISION
Should I move my website back to the old host or platform?
Sometimes, yes. When rankings fall off a cliff right after a move, Beth teaches that the fastest fix is often to put the old site back while you figure out what went wrong. A move done right does not nose dive, so a nose dive means the move was not done right.
The rollback only works if you have something to roll back to. Most hosting companies back your site up for their own disaster recovery, not for your mistakes, and getting that copy can cost you. A backup plugin that stores a full copy off site gives you the option. We use one on every site we host so we can roll a site forward or backward.
Here is how we decide:
- Roll back when the old site still exists, the drop is steep, and the new site has many broken addresses. Fixing forward would take longer than standing the old site up.
- Fix forward when the old site is gone, the drop is moderate, or the problems are a short list of redirects and settings.
Either way, do it with a plan and a date, not in a panic.
THE FIX
How do you fix rankings after a bad migration?
We repair a broken move in a set order. Domain and DNS first, because nothing else works until Google can reach 1 clean version of the site.
- Button up the domain. Set www as a CNAME to the root and 301 the other version. Redirect http to https. Make the version that holds most of your links the primary. Pick a story and stick with it.
- Shut down the old copy. The old server either goes dark or redirects every page to the new site.
- Build the redirect map. List every old URL with rankings, traffic or links and map each to its one matching new page. Where the old URL still fits, keep it. A matched address beats a redirect.
- Flatten redirect chains. Every old address points straight to the final page, not through the middle steps.
- Restore titles, headings and links. Put back what the move stripped.
- Fix Search Console. Verify the new property, submit the change of address if the domain changed, and watch the Pages report weekly.
- Leave it alone. Once the move is clean, stop changing URLs. Beth’s rule is simple: if it is not broke, do not fix it.
When a designer did the move, the fix usually runs deeper than redirects. Our page on a web designer does not know SEO shows how to audit their work point by point.
WHY VERTICAL WEB
Who can fix a migration that killed my rankings?
Here is the honest case for us.
- We teach it. Beth Guide has taught SEO since 2003 for the SBA, the University of Houston SBDC, Lone Star College and HCC. The domain, DNS and redirect checks on this page come straight from those classes.
- One in-house team since 1998. Design, hosting and SEO sit under one roof, so the DNS change, SSL, redirects and content happen in the right order. Nothing falls between vendors.
- We keep clients. Our original 1998 client is still with us today.
- We tell you what not to buy. If the fix is a DNS record and 40 redirects, we will not sell you a new website. If the real problem is a platform that cannot be fixed, we will say that too.
Request your free website analysis and we will show you what did not make the trip, what it is costing you, and the order we would fix it in.
Questions
Rankings dropped after website migration or host change: common questions
A clean host change should not change your rankings at all. The files move and nothing else does. Rankings drop when the move also changes the domain setup, the redirects, the SSL certificate or a WordPress setting. Those are the places to look first.
Not when every http address redirects to its https match. Rankings slip when http and https both stay live, or when old links point to http and nothing sends them on. Google does not treat the 2 versions as the same site on its own.
To Google they are 2 different addresses. If both answer without a redirect, your links and rankings get split between them. Pick 1 version, point the other at it, and use that version everywhere you write your address.
It can for a short time if the URLs, titles and pages are not mapped from the old site to the new one. Done with a page-by-page map and redirects, the move usually holds, and the better structure WordPress allows tends to help over time.
If rankings fell hard right after the move and you still have a full copy of the old site, rolling back is often the fastest way to stop the loss. Then redo the move with a map, tested redirects and the DNS and SSL steps in the right order.
It depends on how fast the broken pieces are found and how long the broken version stayed live. We watch Search Console week by week for fewer 404 errors, more pages indexed and old terms returning. There is no honest single number.
Keep reading
Other ways a site gets broken, and how we repair each one
Not sure which one is your problem?
Request the free website analysis and we will tell you what is actually wrong, in plain English, before anyone touches your site.
Galleria 713-703-3030 | Kingwood 281-852-8253 | info@verticalweb.com