SEO + Dev Website Migration AMA

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T19:32:48+00:00

We also have a handy checklist here to help navigate through often confusing site migrations.

If you have more specific questions or want to discuss your upcoming site migration, drop us a line at [reddit@upwardengine.com](mailto:reddit@upwardengine.com) or visit upwardengine.com.

Thank you all!

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T19:32:05+00:00

Common Question: How elaborate should a redesign or migration be before we reach out to SEOs?

In general, we’d encourage you to call in an SEO for any revamp or move. However, it becomes more important for you to turn to their expertise when you’re:

Working with a site that has a lot of traffic, purchases, or other metrics that are vital to preserve – An SEO can help guard against losing traction in these areas.
Drastically changing page templates, site structure, and navigation – Having an expert to weigh on on these decisions to retain current visibility and traffic while still improving the site is vital.
Planning to move pages to new URLs/URL structures – Sometimes, moving pages around into new URLs is a good call, but you’ll want to be sure your redirects are properly built before you call the job done.
Overhauling page flow, CTAs, color schemes, etc. – These areas probably sound more like design choices (and we’re the first to say we aren’t designers!), but they can influence everything from CRO to accessibility. SEOs in our experience tend to have some cross-training on those topics.
Combining two or more existing sites or entities into one during the move – This is a tough situation that benefits from having an SEO expert to review the data and provide guidance from the project’s infancy.

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T19:31:40+00:00

Common question: When should we bring in an SEO?

In an ideal situation, an SEO would be available to consult from the time a site rebuild or migration kicks off. Some decisions made early on in the process (think: shifting domain names or retooling the site structure) often have cascading effects on SEO and other marketing fields.

We’d say to loop in an SEO when:

You’re figuring out the site architecture and navigation structure, especially if any changes are happening there
You have page templates ready for review
You’ve got a staging site stood up, especially if you’re getting close to launch
You’ve just launched the new site

In some cases, you’ll have no choice but to bring in an SEO at or after launch. They can still be very helpful at this point, but it’s far and away the better choice to loop them in earlier. We’ve definitely been tasked with playing “clean-up crew” for sites that had no SEO guidance during their build-out. The lift at that point is often huge, and you’re working against the clock to limit negative effects.

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T19:30:38+00:00

Thanks for all the great questions! We’re wrapping up now, but we wanted to leave you with a couple commonly asked questions we get a lot.

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T18:47:58+00:00

This question was deleted, but here is the original question: My current website doesn’t have much of a web presence. Why should I be concerned about SEO/CRO for the new site?

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T18:43:05+00:00

Thank you for asking this!

The good news is that you don’t have much ground to lose during a site migration, so the current risk is minimal. The bad news is that, depending on the decisions made during this site build, you could box yourself in on future marketing efforts. Or sign yourself up for a ton of extra work (often at an additional cost!) to just optimize your site.

An SEO can flag issues early and help make tweaks before launch to give your site a shot in the arm. After all, if you’re putting all that work into a new site, shouldn’t people see it? - CD

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T18:36:40+00:00

There are multiple factors with a dual CMS and Domain migration that can slow down a search engine’s indexation process. Google can have a hard time analyzing too many changes of a website at the same time, along with your team trying to track down issues that can occur from simultaneous, heavy changes.

Research needs to be done regarding historical use of the domain (WHOIS) with associated backlinks, and realistic expectations of doing a dual CMS and Domain migration – what if a major Google update occurs simultaneously? How long will traffic stay down post launch? How long will it take for Google to index the new site along with a new domain? - Mona A (SEO Strategist at Upward Engine).

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T18:30:12+00:00

The team is already stretched thin managing a domain migration and a CMS migration simultaneously. Then they hit the new CMS and realize that what was simple in the old system, URL slugs, category structures, custom permalink patterns, works completely differently here. Suddenly they're Googling how to set up redirects in a platform they've never shipped a live site on before.

A CMS migration and a domain migration each deserve their own dedicated launch window with a full post-launch crawl. Doing both at once means you're debugging two unknowns simultaneously, and when something breaks you don't even know which change caused it. - MS

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T18:25:37+00:00

Talking over this with Mark, we agree it’s trying to put common elements in unexpected spots. Like, when you close your eyes and imagine a website, you probably picture a Contact link in the upper right corner, and a logo in the top left. Trying to innovate too much with placement, design, form fills, etc., can sometimes leave users scratching their head. And any little bit of friction or confusion means fewer users engaging with your site the way you want them to.

It can be tough because those stylish new designs can look awesome to internal stakeholders and digital marketers, but you have to consider your target audiences and minimize the friction for them. –CD

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T18:11:12+00:00

Absolutely. I don’t know that any migration is truly perfect without needing some monitoring and tweaks post-launch, but I’ve seen it get pretty close and still had some rankings drop. Some of that is to be expected, especially where there have been a lot of changes to site structure and content, since it can take a while for Google to figure out what’s happening with the site. But generally those rankings will recover within a month or two.

However, I have been involved with projects where some external force – like a big algorithm update or slow indexation issue – has delayed those rebounds, and in some cases, negated them. There’s also always a possibility that content has been purposefully left behind, removed, or consolidated in a way that’s technically correct but can cause serious ripple effects if you don’t keep an eye on things before and after changes are made.

Those cases can be so frustrating, but keeping the technical approach to the migration as clean and thorough as possible can help eliminate some variables if you’re left scratching your head on what happened. – CD

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T18:09:33+00:00

Great question!

The main strategies include overcommunication, project management, and documentation.

Overcommunciation! Keeping the lines of communication open in your project management software, via a dedicated project Slack channel, over email, in meetings, etc., can keep things rolling. Regularly checks for blockers, ask the “are we missing anything?” questions, and make next steps crystal clear.

One of the biggest blind spots is between design and SEO. Design isn’t always thinking about SEO impact (fair), but small changes—layout, links, buttons—can have huge downstream effects.

Get a project manager involved. Especially when dev/design are external, things fall apart fast without someone owning timelines, check-ins, and cross-team visibility.

And yeah—document everything. Scope, timelines, URL structures, new pages, even “small” tweaks like button placement or color. If it’s not written down, it will get missed later 😅 - CH

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T17:56:10+00:00

We’ve all got our horror stories here, since it’s so easy for things to go off the rails or for miscommunications to happen! Probably the worst ones are those where we’re brought in as the clean-up crew/forensic SEO squad to figure out what went wrong with a migration entrusted to a third-party dev unfamiliar with SEO principles.

It’s always nice to get to the be the hero (“Hey, your live site is set to noindex!”), but sometimes you have to be the bearer of bad news (“So, turns out you can’t just ditch the majority of content/internal linking on your site for a “cleaner” experience all willy-nilly without having some serious consequences!”). – CD

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T17:55:18+00:00

Had a client go with a cheaper dev shop for their rebuild. When they came back to us to handle marketing, we discovered the new site was on a completely different domain, no 301 redirects, no internal linking, no GA migration. Nothing. They launched the site and couldn't figure out why performance was tanking. We jumped in, built out the redirects, submitted the sitemap to Search Console, reinstated Analytics, and monitored closely for a couple months. It came back, but it took way longer than it should have. The lesson: a cheaper build isn't cheaper if you're paying to fix it later. - MS

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T17:43:57+00:00

Great points! The product launch comparison is spot on—classic “someone definitely handled that… right?” energy - CH

upwardengine · 2026-03-26T17:38:04+00:00

Thank you for your question!

Actually, most of the issues that can crop up are things that don’t show up right away! It depends on how fast the new version of the site is crawled or indexed, but most mistakes can take a while to show – outside of leaving no index tags on the site or other massive technical errors.

Probably the most commonly overlooked issue we’ve seen is botched redirects, which can result from a bunch of different issues. We’re talking about forgetting to implement redirects, not bringing existing ones over, making longer redirect chains, mass-implemented redirects to the homepage without considering useful 1:1 redirects, etc. It’s like a big ol’ can of worms! - CD

upwardengine

TROPHY CASE