Ask An SEO: How Can We Recover A 30% Drop In Organic Traffic From A Site Migration? via @sejournal, @kevgibbo

This week’s Ask An SEO question comes from an ecommerce business that followed best practices, but still lost traffic after migrating to a new platform.

“We recently migrated our ecommerce store to a new platform, and despite following all the recommended SEO practices, our organic traffic dropped by 30%.

What recovery strategies should we prioritize, and how long should we expect before seeing improvements?”

This is a common frustration many ecommerce businesses face after a platform migration.

But why does it happen, and more importantly, how can you recover lost traffic? Let’s dive into the likely causes of this issue and explore the most effective strategies to get your organic traffic back on track.

Why Organic Traffic Can Drop Post-Migration

So, why does this happen? And more importantly, what can you do to fix it?

Understanding why this happens is key to finding a solution. Without pinpointing the root cause, any recovery efforts can feel like a shot in the dark – and that’s the last thing you want.

Tracking Issues

After a migration, it’s surprisingly common for something small to go wrong with your analytics setup. Maybe the Google Analytics 4 tag wasn’t added correctly. Maybe your Google Search Console property wasn’t verified.

Even a tiny mistake – like a misconfigured setting or a missing bit of code – can make it look like traffic has fallen off a cliff, when really it’s just not being tracked properly.

The upside? These problems are usually quick to spot and easy to fix. It’s always a good first step before diving into deeper SEO troubleshooting because the issue might not be your traffic at all, just your data.

Technical Issues

If your tracking is working as it should and the traffic drop is real, the next step is to check for technical SEO problems on your new site – and this almost always starts with redirects.

During a migration, especially if URLs have changed, redirects are crucial. One missing or incorrect 301 redirect can break the connection between your old and new pages, making Google think important content has disappeared.

That can quickly tank rankings and traffic. Make sure all old URLs point to the right new ones, that you’re using proper 301 (not 302) redirects, and that there are no long redirect chains slowing things down.

Other common technical pitfalls? Broken or removed internal links, staging URLs accidentally left in canonical tags, or no-index rules carried over from development.

Any of these can stop Google from crawling or indexing your site properly, and if that happens, your content won’t show up in search at all.

It’s also worth checking your XML sitemap and robots.txt file. Make sure your sitemap is up to date and submitted in Google Search Console, and that robots.txt isn’t blocking important sections of your site.

On-Page Content

In some cases, ranking drops can be caused by changes to page content itself. Even small changes like missing H1s, altered metadata, or content now rendered in JavaScript can have a big impact.

So, you will need to double-check the content on your pages to identify if anything has changed.

But, don’t forget that Google will need time to reindex and trust your new setup, especially if you didn’t submit an updated sitemap or if backlinks still point to old URLs.

Although you may see some big changes in your SEO performance initially, monitor it for a little while to see if things settle back down on their own.

Steps To Recover Your Organic Traffic

Crawl Your Site: Look For Redirect Problems And Broken Links

The first thing you should do is crawl your site. Tools like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb are perfect for this.

Crawling your site helps you identify technical issues such as broken redirects, incorrect or missing 301 redirects, and redirect chains.

During a migration, URL changes are common, and improper redirects can create huge SEO setbacks.

If you have old URLs pointing to pages that no longer exist or haven’t been properly redirected, Google might struggle to index your site correctly, impacting traffic and rankings.

Another key issue to spot during crawling is orphaned pages. These are pages that exist on your site but have no internal links pointing to them.

Without internal links, Google may have a harder time finding and indexing these pages, which can hurt your rankings.

Fix Redirect Problems Immediately

Once you’ve identified any issues with redirects during the crawl, fixing them should be your priority.

Redirects are crucial for preserving SEO value during a migration. Check that all old URLs are properly redirected to their new counterparts using 301 redirects, if your URLs have changed.

Ensure there are no redirect chains, as these can slow down page load times and confuse search engines.

Even if you think you’ve set up redirects, it’s worth doing a detailed check. Missing or incorrect redirects are one of the top causes of traffic loss after a migration.

Remember, each redirect is a connection that ensures the SEO equity of your old pages gets passed on to your new ones.

Tackle Potential On-Page Issues

If you’ve ruled out any major technical errors, focus on the content itself.

Compare your post-migration content with the version you had before the migration. Did anything change that might have negatively affected your rankings?

Ensure that all your pages are optimized for the target keywords, including title tags, meta descriptions, header tags (especially H1s), and body content.

It’s also worth revisiting your product pages to ensure they meet Google’s standards for quality content. This might involve adding more detailed product descriptions, improving product images, or enhancing user-generated content such as reviews.

Update Your XML Sitemap And Google Search Console

Once your on-page content is reviewed and technical issues addressed, the next step is to update your XML sitemap to reflect the new URLs, if applicable.

Submit the updated sitemap to Google Search Console so Google can easily find and crawl your pages. This also helps Google understand that you’ve made changes to your site’s structure and allows it to index the new pages more quickly.

Don’t forget to monitor Google Search Console closely. Regularly check for crawl errors and use the URL Inspection Tool to request indexing for important pages that may not have been crawled yet.

How Long Does SEO Recovery Take?

Recovery isn’t an instant process, unfortunately. Typically, sites begin to see improvements within four to 12 weeks, but several factors can influence the recovery timeline.

If your migration involved significant changes, like a new domain or a complete overhaul of your site structure, Google may treat your site as if it were brand new.

In this case, it can take longer for Google to rebuild trust and restore organic visibility. Sites with many pages may also experience slower recovery times, as Google has to crawl and reindex more content.

The content on your site can also affect recovery time. If important pages were altered or lost valuable content during the migration, it might take longer for Google to recognise the changes and rank your pages again.

→ Read more: How Long Should An SEO Migration Take? [Study Updated]

Long-Term Lessons & Preventative Measures

A smooth migration doesn’t start on launch day; it starts way before. SEO needs to slot into your QA and development process from the beginning.

That means making sure things like redirects, content structure, and crawlability are all working before you go live, ideally in a proper staging environment.

Issues can still happen when you go live, though, so remember to crawl your old site before launch. That way, you can run side-by-side audits of your old and new sites and catch issues early.

It’s also a smart idea to have a rollback plan just in case. That means having backups and knowing what to do if something goes wrong.

Final Thoughts

Recovering from an SEO drop after a migration can be frustrating, but unfortunately, it’s often part of the process.

By focusing on the right technical checks, reviewing your on-page content, and giving search engines time to recrawl and reindex your site, you can get things back on track.

Keep a close eye on your data, be patient, and use this as an opportunity to strengthen your site’s overall SEO health.

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Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal