Why Migrations Go Wrong
The most common migration mistakes: forgetting to redirect old URLs to new ones (or using the wrong redirect type), not updating internal links to point to new URLs, losing metadata and schema markup in the new template, and launching without first verifying Google can crawl the new site.
I managed a recovery for a UAE e-commerce site that lost 70% of its organic traffic after a platform migration. The root cause: 2,000+ product pages had been given new URLs without redirects, and the crawl budget was being wasted on 404 pages. Recovery took six months.
The Migration Checklist
My migration process covers: pre-launch URL mapping (every old URL to its new equivalent), redirect implementation and testing, metadata migration verification, crawl testing of the new site before launch, Search Console property setup for the new domain, and a monitoring plan for the first 30 days post-launch.
For large sites (10,000+ pages), I also implement staging environment SEO checks, XML sitemap validation, and log file analysis to confirm Google is crawling the right URLs after launch.
Post-Migration Recovery
Even well-executed migrations cause a temporary ranking dip of 10 to 20% as Google reprocesses signals. This usually recovers within 4 to 8 weeks. Anything beyond 20% drop that persists beyond 8 weeks indicates a technical problem that needs diagnosis.
For one SaaS client migrating from an old domain to a new branded domain, I built a migration plan that resulted in ranking recovery to pre-migration levels within six weeks, with subsequent growth as the new domain accumulated its own authority.