Platform migration
Migrations do not lose rankings. Lost URLs do.
Rankings attach to URLs, not to websites. Change the platform and every address changes with it, and unless something tells Google where each one went, a page that ranked is simply a page that no longer exists. Everything else about a migration is logistics.
So the work is a crawl, a redirect map and a rebuild, in that order — and there are only two places this ends.
Where you land
Two destinations, and no third to weigh up
If you sell products
Shopify. It handles payments, tax and fraud better than anything worth building from scratch, and the budget is better spent on the storefront than on rebuilding a checkout that already exists.
Shopify design and development, $5,000 to $15,000.
If you do not
A custom site built in Next.js and hosted here. Fast by default, no plugin layer to maintain, no theme to fight, and nothing that needs updating on a Sunday because a security notice went out.
Web design, $2,500 to $15,000. Anything with custom functionality becomes development work.
Neither destination is WordPress or WooCommerce. Both were offered here once and are not any more, and the pages that offered them were retired rather than quietly left up. If WordPress is what you want, somebody who works in it daily will serve you better than somebody who does not. Moving off WordPress or off WooCommerce is a different question, and both have a page below.
What actually breaks
Four things that go missing, in the order they go
Every URL that changed
This is the whole job. A page that ranked at /services/drain-cleaning and now lives at /pages/drain-cleaning is, to Google, a page that was deleted and a different page that was created. One redirect per old URL, mapped before launch rather than discovered afterwards from a 404 report.
The pages you forgot existed
Old blog posts, a landing page from a campaign three years ago, the PDF somebody still links to. These are usually where the surviving backlinks are, and they are the first thing missed because nobody remembers them. They come out of the crawl, not out of your memory.
Anything hard-coded into a template
Phone numbers, addresses, tracking IDs and structured data are often buried in a theme rather than in a settings page. They move with the content or they quietly do not, and the second one is usually found when a month of conversion data turns out to be missing.
The month after launch
Google reprocesses redirects over weeks, not hours, so some movement is normal and some is a fault. Telling those apart means watching Search Console daily for the first month, which is part of the work rather than an upsell after it.
Where you are coming from
15 platforms with a page of their own
Each one covers what that platform is good at, the specific things that break on the way out of it, and what the move involves. If yours is not here the work is the same — it is always a crawl, a redirect map and a rebuild.
Stores
Platforms built for selling. These move to Shopify, unless the store turned out not to need a store at all.
Websites
Content and brochure platforms. These almost always move to a custom site.
Either
Builders people use both ways. Where you land depends on whether you are actually selling.
What the work is
Measured, not remembered
Almost every migration horror story starts with somebody listing the pages from memory. The list comes out of a crawl instead, which is the difference between a redirect map that is complete and one that looks complete.
- A full crawl of the existing site before anything moves, so the URL list is measured rather than remembered
- A one-to-one redirect map, reviewed against that crawl and tested before DNS changes
- Content, products, images and metadata moved with their structure intact
- The new site built and checked on a staging URL while the current one keeps running
- Analytics, tracking and structured data carried across and verified on the new site
- Search Console watched daily for the first month, with what changed reported plainly
Before you move anything
The questions worth settling first
One of two places. If you sell products, Shopify — it handles payments, tax and fraud better than anything worth building from scratch, and the money is better spent on the storefront than on rebuilding a checkout. If you do not, a custom site built in Next.js and hosted here, which is fast by default and has no plugin layer to maintain. There is no third option to weigh up, which makes this conversation short.
No, not any more, and the pages offering it were retired rather than left up. It is a capable CMS and it is not what is built here. If WordPress is what you want, the honest answer is that somebody who works in it every day will serve you better than somebody who does not.
Rankings attach to URLs, so what causes losses is URLs changing without a redirect telling Google where they went. That is preventable and it is most of what this service is. Expect some movement in the first two to four weeks while Google reprocesses the redirects and recrawls the new URLs; expect it to settle. Anybody promising zero movement has either not done many migrations or is not telling you about them.
Yes. The new site is built and tested on a staging URL while the old one keeps serving visitors and taking orders. Nothing points at the new site until you have clicked around it yourself and the redirect map has been tested. The switch itself is a DNS change, and it is the shortest part of the project.
The same as the build it produces, because that is what it is: a new site with a redirect map attached. A website move sits in the $2,500 to $15,000 web design range; a store move sits in the $5,000 to $15,000 Shopify range; anything with custom functionality is development work and is priced as such. What moves the number is how many URLs and products are involved and how much of the old site's structure is worth keeping — which is why nothing is quoted before the crawl.
A straightforward website is usually three to six weeks and a store with a real catalogue is six to twelve. The variable is rarely the technical work. It is how quickly decisions get made about what to keep, what to rewrite and what to finally delete, and a migration is the one moment when deleting things is easy.
Almost certainly. The listed platforms are the ones common enough to be worth their own page; the work is the same regardless of what you are on, because it always comes down to a crawl, a redirect map and a rebuild. If your data can be exported, or the site can be crawled, it can be moved.
Start with the crawl
Send the domain and you will get back what is actually on the site, how many URLs have to be redirected, and a straight answer on what the move would involve — including whether it is worth doing at all.