How to Move Your Website to New Hosting Without Losing Rankings

Businesses move web hosts for good reasons: the site is slow, support is poor, the price jumped or the old provider is shutting down. The move itself is where things go wrong. A rushed migration can take a site offline, break email, lose pages from Google and leave you with a very bad weekend. Done in the right order, it is quiet and unremarkable, and your customers never notice.

Step one: take a full backup and keep it safe

Before touching anything, take a complete copy of the files and the database, and store it somewhere other than the old host. Check that you can actually open and restore it. A backup you have never tested is a hope, not a backup.

Step two: list everything that depends on the old host

A website rarely stands alone. Make a list of the domain registrar, where DNS is managed, email hosting, forms that send email, scheduled tasks, SSL certificates, third party integrations and anything that connects by IP address. Email is the one people forget, and moving DNS carelessly can silently break it.

Step three: build the new site and test it before switching

Set up the new server, copy the site across and test it thoroughly using a temporary address or a local hosts file change, so you see the new server while everyone else still sees the old one. Click through key pages, test forms, logins and checkouts, and compare page speed. Fix problems now, while nothing is live.

Step four: lower the DNS timeout in advance

DNS records carry a time to live that controls how long the old address is remembered. A day or two before the move, lower it to a few minutes, so the switch takes effect quickly and, if needed, can be reversed quickly.

Step five: freeze changes, then switch

Choose a quiet time. Pause content changes, take a final backup, copy any new data across and then update the DNS records to point at the new server. Keep email records exactly as they were unless email is moving too. Keep the old hosting running for a week or two as a safety net.

Step six: protect your search rankings

If the address of any page changes, set up permanent redirects from each old address to its new one. Check that robots rules and sitemaps are right, that the site is not accidentally blocking search engines, that canonical tags are correct and that the secure certificate is working. Submit the sitemap again in Google Search Console.

Step seven: check everything afterwards

Test forms, email delivery, checkout, login and key pages on desktop and phone. Watch Search Console for crawl errors and watch your analytics for unusual drops. Keep checking daily for the first week.

Or let someone else do it

K4O5 migrates websites for businesses across Northamptonshire and the Midlands as part of our hosting service, with testing, redirects and a rollback plan. If you are thinking of moving, we are happy to look at your site first and tell you what the move involves.