Services · Website migration
Moving without losing your
visibility.
A migration is a lock: the site moves to a new level without anything being thrown overboard. Content, links, and rankings come along. The basin is where redirects, tests, and measurements happen. Maintaining those rankings is part of our broader approach to SEO and GEO. If you are unsure whether a migration is necessary, request the SEO and GEO audit first.
Within two business days, you will know what a move will deliver.
URL mapping
/services/old-page/→/services/new-page/
/blog/article-2019/→/knowledge/article/
/old-category/→/services/
301Maintain ranking
The transfer
Moving without loss of ranking
The inventory
Everything counted before departure, and again after arrival
A migrationMigration Moving a website to a new system, a new server, or a new address. fails on what you haven’t counted. That is why we record everything that is moving beforehand—down to the forms and language linksHreflang A code that informs search engines which page corresponds to a specific language or country.—and check it piece by piece afterward.
Everything is counted before departure and counted again on arrival. If one number is off, the site does not go live.
If one number is off, the site does not go live.
Approach
Our approach
01
Full inventory beforehand
We record the existing site down to the page level: all URLsURL The address of a page on the internet, such as https://eqwise.nl/contact/., rankings, traffic, internal linksInternal link A link from one page on your site to another page on your site., metadataMetadata Information about a page that is not displayed on the page itself, such as the title and description shown by Google., and structured dataStructured data Additional information in the code that tells search engines and AI exactly what is on a page.. AIAI Computer programs that perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as writing text or answering questions. does the work here where humans make mistakes—namely, overlooking nothing in a site of thousands of pages.
02
A redirect plan based on meaning
Every old URL gets a new destination that is contextually correct, not just a collection of redirectsRedirect An automatic redirection from an old web address to a new address. to the homepageHomepage The first page of a website, which you see when you only type in the domain name.. Where pages merge, we determine which one becomes the primary page.
03
Migrate and check immediately
After the transfer, we compare the new site line by line with the baseline measurementBaseline Measurement The measurement of the initial situation before any changes are implemented.. Missing texts, disappeared metadata, and broken links surface before visitors encounter them.
04
Measure, don’t hope
In the first months after the migration, we track rankings and traffic per page. If something drops, we know exactly which URL is affected and what has changed.
The benefit
Why a migration often wins instead of loses
Retention is the minimum. The gain lies in the fact that a migration is the only time you can clear out accumulated clutter at no extra cost.
✓Outdated pages that competed with each other are merged
✓Slow technology disappears with the old system
✓Internal links are rebuilt based on content structure, not by chance
✓Structured data is implemented completely, even where it never existed before
Whether traffic actually increases depends on the starting situation. A site that was already technically sound primarily keeps what it had. A site with overdue maintenance has the most room to gain. What we can say in advance, we say based on the inventory, not based on a promise.
Outdated pages that competed with each other are merged into pages that actually perform.
Frequently asked questions about website migration
Can I migrate from Wix, Squarespace, or Joomla to WordPress?
Short answer: yes. Wix, Squarespace, Joomla, Drupal, an old DiviPage builder An additional program in WordPress that allows you to build pages by dragging and dropping components. 4 site, or something custom-built: it can all be migrated to WordPressWordPress The world's most widely used system for building and managing websites..
What does differ per platform is how much manual work it takes. With systems that have an open export (Joomla, Drupal, older WordPress sites), the contentContent All content on your website, such as text, images, and videos. comes out fairly structured. With closed platforms like Wix and Squarespace, that export is limited, and texts, images, and page layoutsTemplate A fixed layout used for an entire group of pages simultaneously. must largely be rebuilt.
That sounds annoying, but in practice, it often turns out well. Such a switch is the natural moment to cut: outdated pages, duplicate content, texts no one reads anymore. Transferring everything blindly just means you’re taking the clutter to a new house.
What we are particularly focused on are your existing URLsURL The address of a page on the internet, such as https://eqwise.nl/contact/.. Each one must point to the correct new page; otherwise, you will lose rankings and visitors will encounter error messages. This is the most labor-intensive part of a platform switchMigration Moving a website to a new system, a new server, or a new address. — and the element that makes the difference between a successful and a painful migration.
More on this on the website migration page.
Can you migrate my existing site?
Short answer: yes. We take your existing contentContent All content on your website, such as text, images, and videos. with us. We only leave the technical clutter behind.
Precisely that transferring and cleaning up is where AIAI Computer programs that perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as writing text or answering questions. really saves time. Outdated texts, duplicate pages, messy formatting, and broken linksBroken link A link that points to a page that no longer exists. used to be manual work that took days or weeks. The larger the site, the more that time saving adds up.
The content is only the fast part. Maintaining your Google rankings is the part that takes time, and that is intentional: URL structureURL Structure The way your site's web addresses are structured., redirectsRedirect An automatic redirection from an old web address to a new address., metadataMetadata Information about a page that is not displayed on the page itself, such as the title and description shown by Google., internal linksInternal link A link from one page on your site to another page on your site., and structured dataStructured data Additional information in the code that tells search engines and AI exactly what is on a page. must be correct. We compare the situation before and after.
Honest about the risk: if a migrationMigration Moving a website to a new system, a new server, or a new address. is handled sloppily, your rankings can drop significantly. Recovering from that takes much more time than doing it right the first time. That is why we measure your site’s status beforehand and monitor rankings after launchLaunch The moment a new or redesigned website becomes visible to everyone..
The gain is in less manual work, not in skipping steps.
How long do redirects stay in place after a migration?
Short answer: for years, because old links persist for years.
A redirectRedirect An automatic redirection from an old web address to a new address. is not a temporary bandage that you remove after a month. As long as there is a link to your old address somewhere on the internet—in a trade journal, a bookmark, or an old email—traffic will come from there that needs to land somewhere.
What does need to happen, and immediately:
- Adjust internal linksInternal link A link from one page on your site to another page on your site. to the new addresses. You don’t want to permanently leadLead Someone who has shown interest and left their contact details, for example via a form or a phone call. visitors and search enginesSearch engine A website used to search the internet, such as Google or Bing. through a detour.
- Update sitemapSitemap A list of all your website's pages, specifically designed for search engines. and canonicalsCanonical A directive in the code that specifies which version of a page is the primary one., so no old addresses are submitted anymore.
- Clean up chains: if old points to new and new later points to newer, the first redirect must go directly to the final destination.
You leave the redirects themselves in place. They cost nothing, and removing them only results in broken linksBroken link A link that points to a page that no longer exists..
How long does a migration take, and will my site go offline?
Short answer: expect the entire process to take a few weeks, but your visitors will generally not notice a thing. The new site is built elsewhere first.
It works like this: we build and test everything in a separate environment not visible to visitors or Google. Only when everything is correct do we switch over. That switch moment itself is short; the rest of the time your current site continues to run normally.
What determines the leadLead Someone who has shown interest and left their contact details, for example via a form or a phone call. time is almost never the technology. It’s the contentContent All content on your website, such as text, images, and videos. and the decisions: which pages go along, which do we drop, who provides the new texts and photos. Once that’s settled, it goes quickly.
One thing to keep in mind: after the switchover, there is a period during which Google must crawlCrawler A program that automatically visits websites and reads the pages. everything again. Rankings may fluctuate for a few weeks. This is normal and will recover if the redirectRedirect An automatic redirection from an old web address to a new address. and meta work are correct. That is why we record your site’s performance beforehand, so you don’t have to guess after going live.
You can read more about how we approach that on the website migration page.
What does a website migration cost?
Short answer: it mainly depends on the number of pages and how cluttered the current site is, not on the system you are coming from.
Four factors determine the price. First, the scale: transferring twenty pages is a different story than two hundred, especially if there are years of blog articles attached. Second, the state of the contentContent All content on your website, such as text, images, and videos.: are texts and images neatly structured, or does it need cleaning up first? Third, the technical aspects: forms, integrations, a webshop, or a member area each require individual attention. And fourth, your current Google rankings: the more you have to lose, the more carefully the redirectRedirect An automatic redirection from an old web address to a new address. and trackingTracking Recording what visitors do on a website, such as which pages they view and what they click on. work must be executed.
That last point is where the most money goes, and where you should skimp the least. Transferring content is fast nowadays. Maintaining your positionsPosition The location where your website appears in search results, for example, spot 3. is precision work.
We only provide a price once we know what we are dealing with. A free website scan shows how your site is currently performing, so you know exactly where you stand.
What happens to my email, domain, and DNS during a migration?
Short answer: your domain remains yours and your email continues to work as usual. Only the reference to the web serverServer A computer that is always on and provides websites or other services to visitors. changes.
A domain name, a website, and email are three separate things that happen to share the same name. During a migrationMigration Moving a website to a new system, a new server, or a new address., only the website moves. In the DNS settingsDNS The internet's address book that links a website name to the server where the site is hosted., we adjust the records pointing to the web server and leave the email records alone. This way, your mail keeps coming in while the site moves.
Two things to arrange in advance. First: ensure you have access to your domain registration yourself. It is common for a domain to be registered in the name of a former developer—exactly the moment you do not want to find that out. Second: if your email is moving to another provider, we will plan that separately. Transferring mailboxes is a distinct task with its own risks.
To be safe, we lower the DNS TTL in advance, so the switch takes effect within minutes instead of hours. Unsure how this is set up for you? Contact us. This can often be sorted out in five minutes.
Want to know what a migration means in your case?
Request the free scan. Within two business days, you will know what is there, what is at stake, and what a move would deliver.
