Aller au contenu

Expertise: SEO migrations

Redesigns, domain changes, URL restructuring without traffic loss

An SEO migration is one of the riskiest projects for a site's organic visibility. Redesign, domain change, site tree restructuring: each type of migration has its own specifics and traps.

Drawing on my experience as Head of Technical SEO at Havas Market (Havas group) and senior consultant at Novalem and Résonéo, I have overseen large-account migrations on high-volume sites: corporate sites (22,000+ URLs), real estate platforms (65,000+ URLs), international insurance sites.

My methodology is proven: exhaustive pre-migration audit, rigorous redirect plan, technical specifications for the development teams, post-migration monitoring and index coverage tracking.

Author of a 7-part series on SEO migration for Le Réacteur (abondance.com), the reference French-language media for SEO professionals.

To audit and clean up your .htaccess file after a migration, use Htaccess Cleaner: the tool cross-checks your rewrite rules against your real traffic data.

Skills

301 redirect plan

URL mapping

Pre-migration audit

Post-migration monitoring

Domain change

Site redesign

Site tree restructuring

Index coverage monitoring

SEO signal management (backlinks, canonicals)

Use cases & examples

Methodological rigour makes the difference between a successful migration and a loss of traffic.

Talk on this topic (in French):
→ Migration: which technical answers for your SEO? (SEO Campus 2016)

Press articles (in French):
→ JDN: 301 redirects, your ultimate SEO asset in a site redesign
→ SEMrush: How to succeed at your SEO migration
→ E-commerce Mag: Site redesign, SEO on every floor

7-part series for Le Réacteur (abondance.com, in French):
→ Website redesign: what is at stake for SEO
→ Scraping in the service of your SEO migration
→ Analysing the existing site
→ The redirect plan
→ Creating the redirect rules
→ Going live
→ Switching to HTTPS

Methodology

AA/ Sanity check / pre-auditGetting familiar with the site structure and its contentDe-indexing irrelevant pages, consolidating duplicated signalsFixing 404 errorsAnalysis of URLs with SEO potential (clicks, impressions, external links)BB/ SEO strategy: architecture and site treeSite tree designed with an SEO visionContextual internal linking structure (semantic link network)Identification of missing topics through lexical analysisStrengthening semantic distributionCC/ Integration supportTechnical specifications adapted to the CMSSpecifications: templates, internal linking, structured data, mobile, web performanceSEO workshops co-designed with the teamsDD/ Redirect planURL by URL mapping (old to new)Prioritisation by SEO performanceURL parameter handling and removal of obsolete onesIdentification and fixing of redirect chainsProgress tracking (% of traffic redirected)EE/ Acceptance testingSite crawl with a tool simulating GooglebotChecks: SEO tags, headings, internal linking, response codes, response timesRedirect testing after implementationFixes before going liveFF/ Post-migration monitoringKPI monitoring: rankings, organic traffic, performanceTechnical monitoring: 4xx/5xx errors, redirect chainsGoogle Search Console: index coverage

Redesign / SEO migration references

SEO support on redesign and migration projects for leading brands.

Related tools

Screaming Frog Google Search Console SEMrush Ahrefs Htaccess Cleaner

Need support with SEO migrations?

Let's discuss your project and find the best approach together.

Contact me

Other areas of expertise

Technical SEO

Crawl, indexing, crawl budget, JavaScript rendering, information architecture

Crawl audit, indexing, crawl budget, JavaScript rendering and information architecture.

Discover

Web performance

Core Web Vitals, TTFB, page load optimisation, caching and CDN

Core Web Vitals, TTFB, page load optimisation, caching and CDN strategies.

Discover

International SEO

Hreflang, multi-domain strategies, language and market management

Hreflang, multi-domain strategies, language handling and multi-market rollouts.

Discover

Structured data

Schema.org, Knowledge Graph, entities, rich results and E-E-A-T

Schema.org, Knowledge Graph, named entities, rich results and E-E-A-T signals.

Discover

Training

Knowledge transfer, in-house team autonomy, tailored workshops

Knowledge transfer, building the autonomy of in-house teams and tailored workshops.

Discover