A website migration can be one of the most critical and risky events in a site’s lifecycle. While planned migrations—where every redirect, URL update, and structural change is mapped out—can protect your rankings, an unexpected migration can cause significant damage to your organic visibility.

One of the most common issues occurs when a domain’s structure changes without proper planning. For example:

• Switching from HTTP to HTTPS without setting up redirects
• Moving from www to non-www (or vice versa) unintentionally
• Altering URL structures in a redesign without a migration strategy - even something as simple as removing or adding a trailing slash to a URL.

When this happens, Google will interpret the impacted pages as an entirely new pages. From an SEO migration perspective, this means years of earned authority, backlinks, and rankings can vanish almost overnight. Organic traffic can drop sharply, sometimes taking months (or longer) to recover if action isn’t taken quickly.

Why It Happens

Unexpected migrations often occur when development teams push live updates without involving SEO experts. Changes in hosting, CMS platforms, or security configurations can inadvertently alter how Google indexes the site. Without 301 redirects, updated sitemaps, and Search Console adjustments, search engines lose the connection between the old URLs and the new ones.

How to Prevent or Recover

• Plan every migration with a detailed SEO migration checklist
• Monitor site changes closely during launches
• Use 301 redirects to preserve link equity
• Track domain and protocol changes in Google Search Console

If you’ve experienced a sudden drop in traffic after a website migration, quick action is essential. Identifying and correcting the issues early can drastically shorten recovery time.

CTO Migrations is an SEO migration service by Charles Taylor Online LLC. CTO Migrations is dedicated to helping websites and brand avoid huge traffic losses that come with site migrations.

In this episode of The SEO Migration Podcast, Charles Taylor; aka The SEO Migration Guy, dives into one of the most common and critical questions in SEO: Does changing your website URL affect SEO? Spoiler alert: it absolutely can. But the good news is, with the right process in place, you can protect your rankings, traffic, and authority.

Charles breaks down why URLs matter so much to search engines, what risks are involved in changing them, and how to handle URL changes during a website migration or redesign. If you’re planning to change domain names, switch to HTTPS, restructure your site, or launch a new CMS, this is a must-listen.

Whether you're an SEO pro or a site owner preparing for a big move, you'll walk away with clear, actionable insights on how to change your website URL without damaging your SEO.

🔍 Key Takeaways:

• Why every URL is like a phone number in Google’s database
• The real SEO impact of changing a URL structure or domain
• How improper redirects can wipe out your organic traffic
• The difference between a smart migration and a slow SEO death
• What you can do to protect rankings before, during, and after launch

Need Help with Your Site Migration?

Changing your website’s URL doesn’t have to mean starting over. CTO Migrations (a service of Charles Taylor Online LLC) helps site owners, SEOs, and developers navigate high-stakes site changes with confidence. Schedule a free discovery call at https://www.CharlesTaylorOnline.com.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hey everyone, welcome back to Migration Mondays at CTO Migrations —I’m Charles Taylor, the SEO Migration Guy. Today’s question is a big one I get all the time:

👉 Does changing your website’s URL affect SEO?
Short answer? Yes. And sometimes in ways that can be… painful if you're not careful.

Here’s what’s at risk:

🔍 Loss of rankings: Pages may disappear from search if redirects aren’t done right. This means you will lose traffic and most importantly revenue.

🐢 Slow recovery: I discussed this in a previous episode. Studies show, on average sites take 16 months to regain their previous traffic, if they recover at all.

Let me break down why this occurs:

When Google indexes your site, each URL is essentially like a phone number in its database. It’s got history, links pointing to it, and a reputation that helps it rank. So, when you change that URL—whether it’s a full domain switch or just a new URL structure—you’re basically switching our your current number.

But just like in real life, if you don’t leave a forwarding number — i.e. set up a proper migration process — people (and Google) won’t know how to reach you. Your pages can vanish from search results, traffic can drop, and it can over a year—to recover, if at all.

But here’s the good news:
When migrations are handled properly—with pre-launch plan, mapped content, clean redirects and updated internal links—you can preserve most, if not all, of your SEO value.

In fact, with CTO Migrations, that’s our mission: helping websites and brands retain their search visibility during major moves, redesigns, or rebrands.

So, Does Changing Website URL Affect SEO? Yes, changing URLs can affect SEO… but with the right plan, it doesn’t have to hurt.

That’s it for today! If you’re planning a migration or even thinking about changing your URL structure, let’s talk before you hit publish. You can find me at CharlesTaylorOnline.com or see the link in the show notes below.

Until next time — migrate responsibly.

How long should it take to recover SEO traffic after a migration? In this video, SEO veteran Charles Taylor breaks down the latest migration study by Dan Taylor (no relation) from Search Engine Journal. With over a decade of Enterprise SEO experience, Charles reviews a comprehensive analysis of 892 domain migrations and what it really takes to recover SEO traffic after a migration — and how long it should (and shouldn’t) take.

This CTO Migrations session offers expert commentary on a common pain point for websites: traffic drops after a site or domain change. Charles covers the dangers of poor planning, the shocking stats from the updated migration study, and most importantly — how to recover SEO traffic after a migration faster and more effectively.

SUMMARY:

• The average time to recover SEO traffic after a migration? A shocking 523 days, according to the
• 2024 migration study.
• Best-case scenarios show full recovery in just 19–33 days.
• 17% of domains never recovered even after 1,000 days.
• Learn how CTO Migrations helps brands avoid disaster and reclaim traffic in as little as 30–45 days.
• Charles Taylor explains why it doesn't have to take months (or years!) to recover SEO traffic after a migration.
  
  EXPLAINER:
  If you're wondering how long to recover SEO traffic after a migration, this is your essential guide. Informed by hard data from Dan Taylor’s massive migration study, this video shows how many businesses unknowingly sabotage their rankings — and how to avoid it. From planning and redirects to link equity and crawl lag, Charles Taylor shares actionable insights on how to make your next website migration a success.
  🔹 Whether you're a CTO, marketer, or SEO lead, you'll come away knowing:
  🔹 What to expect from third-party traffic tools post-migration
  🔹 How long SEO recovery typically takes — and why it varies
  🔹 Proven tactics to recover SEO traffic after a migration quickly
  🔹 The role CTO Migrations plays in ensuring smooth transitions
  
  TRANSCRIPT:
  Clients often ask me: How long does it take to recover SEO traffic after a migration? The answer is... it depends — but a recent migration study from December 2024 by Dan Taylor (no relation) gives us real data.
  
  Dan updated a previous study from 2023. The original had 171 migrations; this one analyzed nearly 900 domain migrations. The goal was to see how long it takes for Domain B (the new site) to regain the organic traffic levels of Domain A (the old site).
  
  The average? 523 days.
  
  That’s not a migration — that’s a loss followed by a very slow recovery. It should never take that long. In fact, the fastest recoveries were just 19, 22, 23, and 33 days — exactly where we want to be. Ideally, you should recover SEO traffic after a migration in 30 to 45 days, not over a year.
  
  Even more concerning: 17% of sites never recovered traffic levels even after 1,000 days. That’s nearly three years. In the real world, very few businesses can survive that kind of drop without impact.
  
  At CTO Migrations, our mission is to prevent exactly that. With the right planning, monitoring, and experience, you can avoid becoming another data point in a negative case study.
  
  Don’t let your site sit in SEO limbo for years. Charles Taylor and CTO Migrations help you make strategic website moves that recover traffic fast — not in 500 days, but in weeks.
  
  TOPICS COVERED:
  migration study, how long to recover SEO traffic after a migration, how to recover SEO traffic after a migration, recover SEO traffic after a migration, CTO Migrations, Charles Taylor SEO