Before the build
A full crawl and Search Console pull of the existing site, so we know exactly which URLs earn traffic and revenue. That list becomes the thing the migration protects.
Shopify Migration Consultant
Most Shopify migrations lose organic traffic, not because Shopify is worse, but because nobody on the project owns SEO until it's too late.
Book a discovery callI've worked on close to 100 Shopify migrations agency side. I now come in alongside your build team as the SEO lead, so the rankings and revenue you've already paid for survive the move.
Why do sites lose traffic after migrating to Shopify?
Because the SEO work happens too late, or not at all.
A migration is usually run by a design and build team, and they're good at design and build. The URL structure gets rethought because the new navigation calls for it. Collection pages get merged because there are too many. Old blog posts don't get carried over because nobody could see the point. Every one of those is a sensible decision in isolation, and together they quietly delete the pages that were earning the money.
Then the site goes live, rankings drop, and the diagnosis starts three months later when the quarter's numbers come in.
The fix isn't complicated. It just has to happen before launch, and somebody has to own it.
What does a Shopify migration consultant actually do?
I sit on the migration as the SEO lead, alongside whoever's building it.
That means being in the room when the URL structure gets decided, not after. It means having a mapped redirect file before launch rather than a scramble afterwards. It means knowing which of your pages actually earn organic revenue, so nobody bins them for being ugly.
During
URL mapping and redirect rules, template-level SEO on the new theme, structured data, internal linking, and a check that the content actually made it across.
Launch week
A staging crawl before you go live, then a live crawl after, indexing requests, and monitoring for the drops that need catching in days rather than months.
After
Tracking recovery against the pre-migration baseline, so you know whether it worked instead of hoping.
Who have you done this for?
Close to a hundred Shopify migrations, most of them agency side across ten years before I went freelance.
Clients over that time include Barbour, Montane, Buff, Yogamatters and Eribé. Big catalogues, long histories, the kind of sites where a migration done carelessly costs real money.
The volume matters more than any single name on that list. A hundred migrations is a hundred versions of the same few problems: the redirect nobody mapped, the collection structure that looked tidy and wasn't, the blog archive somebody decided wasn't worth moving. I've seen the ways these go wrong often enough to spot them in the planning stage rather than in the post-launch report.
Book a discovery call Which platforms do you migrate from?
Most of the work is Magento, WooCommerce and BigCommerce moving to Shopify or Shopify Plus, plus Shopify-to-Shopify rebuilds where the theme changes but the domain doesn't.
The platform you're leaving matters less than how much organic traffic you've got to lose. A small catalogue on WooCommerce with fifty ranking pages is a simple enough job. A Magento store with fifteen years of category structure and thousands of indexed URLs is where the money gets lost, and where having someone own it pays for itself.
How long does a Shopify migration take?
The build sets the timeline, and my part runs alongside it rather than adding to it.
The one thing that does need protecting is the gap between the URL structure being finalised and the site going live. That's the window where redirect mapping happens, and compressing it is where mistakes get made. If the build team tells you the structure's locked two days before launch, that's the point to push back.
What happens to your rankings during the move?
Some movement is normal. Google has to recrawl and reprocess the site, and that takes weeks, not days. A short dip that recovers is a migration working as intended.
What isn't normal is a drop that doesn't come back. That's almost always redirects, either missing, chained, or pointing somewhere that doesn't match what the old page was about. Catching it in week one is a fix. Catching it in month three is a rebuild.
How does working together actually work?
Usually a project fee that runs alongside the build, from planning through to a few weeks post-launch, since that's the window where the damage happens and gets caught.
Some clients keep me on afterwards on a retainer to carry on the organic work once the site's stable. That's a separate conversation and not something you need to decide up front.
Either way it starts with a look at what you've currently got to protect, before anyone quotes anything.
Why work with a consultant rather than an agency?
Agencies build good Shopify stores. That's a different job to protecting organic revenue, and on most migrations it's nobody's job at all.
I'm not going to build your theme, and I'd rather not pretend otherwise. What I do is make sure the thing you've spent money on doesn't cost you the traffic you already had. That works whether you've picked your build partner already or you're still deciding.
If you're just doing something for SEO, it's probably not worth doing. Migrations are the opposite: the SEO work is the bit that protects everything else. I covered a fair bit of this in my BrightonSEO masterclass on Shopify ecommerce SEO.
Shopify migration FAQs
What is a Shopify migration?
Moving an existing online store onto Shopify from another platform, or rebuilding an existing Shopify store on a new theme. It covers products, customers, orders, content and, if it's done properly, the URL structure and search rankings that came with the old site.
Will I lose SEO when I migrate to Shopify?
Not if the URL mapping and redirects are handled before launch. A short dip while Google recrawls is normal. A permanent drop means something was missed, usually redirects or content that didn't make it across.
How do I protect my SEO rankings when migrating to Shopify?
Start with a crawl and Search Console export of the current site, so you know which URLs actually earn traffic. Map every one of those to its new destination. Keep the content that ranks. Crawl staging before launch and the live site after, and request indexing on the important pages.
What are the most common Shopify migration mistakes?
Redirects done after launch instead of before. Changing URL structures without mapping them. Dropping blog content nobody could see the value of. Leaving the staging site indexable. Assuming the build team is handling SEO when nobody's actually been asked to.
Do you do the Shopify build as well?
No. I work alongside your build team or agency as the SEO lead on the project. If you haven't picked a build partner yet, I'm happy to talk through what to look for.
How many Shopify migrations have you worked on?
Close to a hundred, mostly agency side over ten years, for clients including Barbour, Montane, Buff, Yogamatters and Eribé.
Planning a move to Shopify?
Book a discovery call and we'll look at what you've got to protect.
Book a discovery call
Work with me
Start the conversation today
If you want more organic revenue out of your ecommerce store, send me a message and let’s talk.