Services · Migration

Website and platform migration

Move hosting, change CMS or replatform a shop without losing search rankings. Redirects mapped before launch, not after traffic drops.£4,000 to £8,000

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Website and platform migration, Optimum IT Solutions

What website and platform migration actually means

Website migration is moving a site, changing where it is hosted, switching the system it is built on, or replatforming a shop, without losing the search rankings and traffic you have built up. It is deceptively dangerous, because a website is not just files. Every page has a web address that Google has indexed and that other sites link to, and if those addresses change or break in the move, the traffic that took years to earn can vanish overnight.

The specific thing that goes wrong is redirects, or rather the lack of them. When pages move to new addresses, every old address needs to point cleanly to its new home, so that both visitors and Google follow the trail instead of hitting a dead end. Skip that, or do it after launch as an afterthought, and you get a wave of broken links, a drop in rankings, and a very expensive lesson in why the boring part mattered.

So we do the boring part first and properly. Before anything launches we map every existing address to its new one, set up the redirects, check nothing is orphaned, and only then switch over, and we watch the site closely afterwards, because the days just after a migration are exactly when problems surface. Done this way, a site can change host, platform or shape and keep its rankings and traffic as if nothing happened underneath.

See it work

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IMAP / Google WorkspaceMicrosoft 3650%

A scripted demonstration. Real migrations are planned, tested on a copy first, and cut over out of hours so your team keeps working.

How it helps your business

The first benefit is that you can improve the site without paying for it in lost traffic. Moving to faster hosting, a better platform, or a shop that suits you more should be an upgrade, but the fear of tanking your search rankings is what keeps businesses stuck on a site they have outgrown. Handling the redirects and the technical detail properly means you get the upgrade and keep the visibility, rather than trading one for the other.

The second is protecting an asset you have already paid for, often for years. Search rankings and the traffic they bring are the return on all the content, links and time that went into the site, and a careless migration writes that investment off in a weekend. Carrying it across intact means the move builds on what you have rather than starting you back at the bottom of Google, which for a business that relies on being found is enormous.

And watching the site afterwards catches the problems while they are still small. The issues that a migration throws up, a missed redirect, a page that did not come across, a drop on a key term, almost always show in the first days, and spotting and fixing them fast is the difference between a brief wobble and a lasting loss. Most migrations are judged on that aftercare, and it is exactly the part cheaper jobs skip.

How website and platform migration helps your business, Optimum IT Solutions

What is included

WordPress, Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and bespoke platforms
Full redirect map built and tested before cutover
Search Console monitored afterwards, because that is when problems show

Real examples

Illustrative cases. Tap one to see what happened and what could have been done.

The replatform that kept its rankings

The case

A retailer wanted off a platform costing them a fortune in fees, but had been warned by others that moving would wreck the search rankings their business depended on.

What could have been done

Mapping every product and category address to its new home, setting up the redirects before launch, and monitoring closely afterwards, lets them move to a cheaper shop that suits them with rankings and traffic carried across almost untouched, which the scare stories say is impossible.

The rescue after someone else's move

The case

A firm had a previous developer move their site to new hosting without any redirects, and their Google traffic fell off a cliff, with old links now hitting dead ends across the web.

What could have been done

Reconstructing the map of old addresses to new and putting the missing redirects in place recovers the rankings over the following weeks. It is a textbook example of the one thing website migration cannot skip.

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Common questions about website and platform migration

How much does website and platform migration cost?

£4,000 to £8,000. We agree the exact number before any work starts, so there are no open ended day rates.

How long does website and platform migration take?

Most work of this kind is live within three to four weeks. We give you a date before we begin and tell you early if anything threatens it.

Do you work outside Edinburgh?

Yes. We are based in Edinburgh and work on site across the Lothians, Fife and Glasgow, and remotely across the United Kingdom.