How long before a local SEO migration recovers?

Plan for weeks, not days. Search engines need to recrawl the old URLs, follow the redirects, and reassign signals to the new ones, and Google Business Profile edits go through their own review. A well-executed migration usually shows a short dip and a return toward baseline within four to eight weeks; monitor for a full 90 days before drawing conclusions.

Do I need to change my Google Business Profile during a site migration?

Only the website field, unless the physical address or service area is also changing. Update the profile's website URL to the new domain or page on launch day. If you are also physically relocating, treat that as a separate change with its own re-verification and citation cleanup, and avoid doing both in the same week.

Should I redirect every old URL to the homepage?

No. Blanket redirects to the homepage are treated as soft 404s and lose the relevance signals of the original pages. Map each old URL to the closest equivalent new page; only send a URL to the homepage when no relevant equivalent exists, and even then a relevant category page is usually better.

What is the single most common local migration mistake?

Losing the individual location pages. Businesses consolidate several location pages into one 'Locations' page during a redesign, then wonder why local visibility fell. Each location that has its own address, hours, staff and reviews should keep its own indexable page.

Local SEO Migration Checklist for Vancouver Businesses

Migrations break local SEO more reliably than almost anything else — not because redirects are hard, but because the local layer sits outside the website. URLs get mapped carefully while the Google Business Profile, citations, and call tracking are left to sort themselves out. They do not.

This checklist covers a full local migration in order: scope, inventory, redirects, location pages, Business Profile, citations, tracking, launch day, and 90 days of monitoring.

1. Scope the migration honestly

Write down exactly what is changing, because each change carries its own risk:

Domain change (highest risk)
URL structure change
Platform or CMS change
Design and content change
HTTP to HTTPS, or www to non-www
Physical address or service-area change

Change one category at a time where you can. Stacking a rebuild, a domain move and an office relocation in the same fortnight makes any drop impossible to attribute.

2. Build the URL inventory

Before anything is switched off, capture a complete list of live URLs and the value attached to each:

Full crawl of the current site.
Search Console pages export — every URL that received impressions in the last 12 months.
Analytics landing pages by sessions and conversions.
Every URL with external backlinks.
Every URL referenced from a Business Profile, directory listing, ad campaign, email footer, or printed material.

Deduplicate into one spreadsheet. This file is the migration.

3. Map old to new

Every inventoried URL gets a destination and a redirect type. Use 301 for permanent moves. Rules:

One hop only — no redirect chains. Update older redirects to point at the final destination.
Closest equivalent page, never a blanket homepage redirect.
Preserve trailing-slash and case conventions consistently.
Retire genuinely obsolete pages deliberately with a 410, not by accident.
Redirect images and PDFs that earned links too.

4. Redirect and canonical QA

Test on staging, then again in production within the first hour:

Every mapped URL returns a single 301 to a 200 destination.
No chains, no loops, no redirects to 404s.
Canonicals self-reference the new URLs — a leftover canonical pointing at the old domain undoes the redirect.
robots.txt on the new site does not carry over a staging Disallow: /.
No stray noindex tags survived from staging.
XML sitemap lists only new, canonical, indexable URLs; submit it in Search Console.
hreflang, pagination and structured data reference the new URLs.

5. Preserve location pages

For multi-location businesses this is where local rankings are won or lost. Each location keeps:

Its own indexable URL.
Exact NAP matching the Business Profile, character for character.
Embedded map, hours, parking and transit detail, and a location-specific phone number.
LocalBusiness structured data reflecting the visible content.
Genuinely local content — staff, service area, neighbourhood references — not a city name swapped into a template.
Reviews and testimonials tied to that location.

6. Google Business Profile

On launch day, update the website field on every profile to the new URL, and check any appointment or menu links. If you are also moving premises:

Update the address on the profile and expect re-verification.
Do not create a duplicate profile for the new address — edit the existing one so reviews and history carry over.
Update service areas if the coverage genuinely changed.
Post an update announcing the move so customers arriving from search see it.

7. Citations and directories

Inconsistent NAP across the web is the classic post-move drag on local visibility. Work through, in priority order: Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yelp, Yellow Pages, Facebook, industry associations and BBB, then local Vancouver directories and chamber listings. Keep a spreadsheet of every listing, its URL, login, and update status — you will need it again next time.

8. Tracking and lead capture

More migrations "fail" in reporting than in search. Before launch confirm:

Analytics tag present on every template of the new site, including thank-you pages.
Conversion events and goals rebuilt and tested end to end.
Forms actually deliver — submit a real test to the real inbox, not just a success message.
Call tracking numbers configured, with the Business Profile number left consistent with your NAP.
Ads and Search Console properties updated to the new domain, and annotations added for the launch date.

9. Launch-day checks

Spot-check 20 high-value redirects manually.
Confirm the homepage and top 10 landing pages return 200 and render fully.
Submit the new sitemap; use URL Inspection on the most important pages.
Test one form and one phone call for real.
Check mobile rendering and Core Web Vitals on the top templates.
Verify the Business Profile website link resolves without a redirect.
Watch server logs and error monitoring for 404 spikes for the first 48 hours.

10. Ninety days of monitoring

Week 1: daily 404 reports, crawl stats, index coverage. Weeks 2–4: weekly comparisons of impressions, clicks and conversions against pre-migration baselines, plus local pack visibility for core terms. Weeks 5–12: monthly review, cleaning up remaining citations and consolidating any redirect chains that crept in. Keep every change dated in one log — see our reporting approach for how we structure this.

Planning a move?

Run your current site through the free SEO audit tool before you migrate so you have a baseline worth comparing to. If you would like the migration handled properly, our local SEO team and SEO services group does this regularly for Vancouver businesses — book a free consultation.

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