Site migration · SEO redesign
An SEO migration is a redesign, domain change or CMS change carried out with a redirect plan and monitoring. It is a classic breaking point for visibility: a poorly prepared migration loses URLs, links and signals, and visibility in AI engines with them.
Standalone definition · 43 words
What are the steps of a migration?
Before: URL inventory, old-to-new mapping, traffic and ranking benchmark, testing on staging. During: one-to-one 301 redirects, canonicals, sitemaps, hreflang, correct robots.txt. After: control crawl, tracking of indexing, errors and traffic, fast fixes.
Which mistakes cost the most?
A staging noindex or robots.txt left in place, redirects to the home page instead of the equivalent page, redirect chains, loss of content that was ranking, unredirected URLs and rendering changes that remove content from the initial HTML.
Migration and AI visibility
AI engines keep references to old URLs. Clean 301 redirects and equivalent content help keep citations. Then check what engines answer about the brand and watch AI bot logs after the switch.
Frequently asked questions
How long should I keep redirects?
At least a year, and longer as long as links or citations point to the old URL.
Should I use the change of address tool?
For a domain change, Search Console offers this tool, in addition to redirects.
When should I migrate?
Avoid peak commercial periods. Plan a rollback.
Related terms
Further reading
- Checklist GEO and LLM / AI 2026
- 2026 GEO Tools Comparison: The Decision Guide
- ← Back to the GEO glossary (114 terms)