Most migration SEO damage is not caused by the migration itself. It is caused by the 48 hours after it, when nobody is watching. Search engines re-crawl aggressively after a domain or URL change, and whatever state they find in that window is the state they index. Here is the checklist I run the moment a migration goes live, in order.
Hour 0: redirects, verified live
Before anything else, prove your 301s work — not just for the homepage. Test five URLs in a browser and with curl -I: homepage, a deep page, a paginated archive, an image attachment URL, and one URL with query parameters. Each should return a single 301 hop to a 200 page. Chains (301 → 301 → 200) waste crawl budget and are the most common redirect mistake I find in audits.
If the old site is gone entirely and you are relying on hosting-level rules, re-test after propagating. Redirect rules that exist in staging but not in production Nginx configs are a classic silent failure.
Hour 1: Search Console and analytics
- Verify the new property in Google Search Console before the old one expires. Use the Domain property type where possible.
- If the domain itself changed, submit the Change of Address tool. If only URLs within the domain changed (HTTP→HTTPS, path changes), do not use it — the redirects carry the signal.
- Submit the new XML sitemap and request indexing for your 20 most valuable URLs.
- Check analytics is firing on the new property. I once “lost” a week of data because the measurement ID differed between environments — data loss looks exactly like traffic loss in reports.
Hours 2–24: crawl the site yourself
Run a crawler (Screaming Frog free tier is fine) against the new domain and look for three things: 4xx or 5xx responses, redirect chains, and missing canonical tags pointing at the old domain. Every internal link should point at the new URLs directly, not through redirects — internal redirects work, but they are a crutch that slows crawling.
Also compare indexed page counts: site:olddomain.com should be shrinking, site:newdomain.com should be growing. Both staying flat usually means redirects are not being followed.
Days 2–14: interpret the noise correctly
Rankings will wobble. That is normal. The pattern I expect after a clean migration: a dip in the first week for mid-tail terms, recovery within 2–4 weeks, and stable performance by week six. What is not normal: a page that ranked top-3 for months disappearing entirely with a ” Crawled – currently not indexed” status for more than a couple of weeks. That points at a redirect miss or a canonical problem, and it is fixable — but only if Search Console is telling you about it.
Watch these Search Console reports weekly for the first month: Coverage (indexing drops), the redirects report, and Core Web Vitals, since new hosting means new performance baselines. If vitals regressed, my Core Web Vitals fixes apply the same on the new host as the old.
What actually preserves rankings
Redirects and Search Console hygiene are table stakes. What genuinely preserves rankings is content parity: same titles, same content, same internal link structure. If you migrated “and rewrote a few pages along the way,” you did two risky things at once. Keep content identical through the migration window; improve it after rankings stabilize. When I help teams decide between migrating versus rebuilding, this is the tiebreaker — a rebuild that also changes content doubles your variables.
Finally, keep the old domain 301ing for at least a year if you own it. Redirect equity decays slowly; expiring a domain after three months is the single most preventable ranking loss I see. If your move was host-only with no URL changes, you skip most of this — see my migration checklist for what still applies. And if the move is still ahead of you, my domain change guide covers the SEO setup order that makes this checklist easier.
How long do rankings drop after a WordPress migration?
Expect a dip in the first 1-2 weeks and recovery within 2-4 weeks for most terms. Full stabilization can take up to 6 weeks. A page still missing after 3-4 weeks signals a redirect or canonical problem worth investigating, not patience.
Should I use Search Console's Change of Address tool?
Only when the domain itself changes. For URL changes within the same domain, such as HTTP to HTTPS, 301 redirects alone are correct. Using the tool unnecessarily can slow re-crawling.
Do redirect chains hurt SEO after a migration?
Chains work but waste crawl budget and add failure points. Google follows multiple hops, but each hop risks timeout or misconfiguration. Fix chains to single 301 hops during the post-migration crawl.
How long should old domain redirects stay in place?
At least 12 months, ideally longer if the domain costs little to keep. Registrars and hosting providers treat expired domains as gone, and the accumulated redirect equity disappears with them.
Is it safe to update content right after migrating?
Wait until rankings stabilize, usually 4-6 weeks. Changing content during the re-crawling window makes it impossible to tell whether any ranking change came from the migration or the edits.
