One of the most difficult components of SEO is frequently regarded is website migrations, more specifically domain migrations.
As SEO experts, it is our responsibility to reduce as many risks and variables as we can so that the company doesn’t have organic performance concerns, either at all or for a longer time than is necessary.
I’ve been in on a few pitch meetings over the years for migration projects, and I’ve overheard people say things like, “The other agency said there should be no traffic loss at all, it will be like a light switch.”
More often than not, the prospect has gone with the salesperson’s pitch, and monitoring the website in Ahrefs and other tools, you see situations like this:
A domain migration that hasn’t recovered organic traffic more than two years after migration.
Most businesses can’t withstand that much of a decline in organic traffic for that long without seeing major effects on daily operations.
This brings us full circle to the query stakeholders pose to us when we scope and pitch SEO migration projects:
How long should it take to migrate your SEO?
Study Techniques
The purpose of this study is to investigate and offer a data-driven response to the question, “How long should an SEO migration take,” in order to assist both in-house SEO specialists and SEO consultants in providing better estimates and communications with non-SEO stakeholders of their migration projects.
