TL;DR: Two weeks after a “cheaper” team took over a website without a proper hand-off, organic search traffic dropped ~70%. That wasn’t bad luck—it was a preventable SEO equity wipeout. SEO works like credit: you earn trust slowly, then one missed “payment” (bad migration, broken redirects, noindex mistakes, performance hits) can tank your score overnight. Here’s exactly why it happens, how to avoid it, and how Metrotechs handles migrations without burning your rankings.
The Case: A 70% Drop in 14 Days
We spent months building steady organic growth for GetOutlier.com. Within two weeks of a cut-rate handoff, traffic crashed ~70%. The chart says it all: a long, disciplined climb followed by a cliff.
What changed? Not Google’s algorithm. The site. And when you change the site without protecting your hard-won SEO equity, you pay for it in rankings, traffic, and GMV.
Why SEO Equity Is Fragile
Think of SEO like your credit history:
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Trust compounds slowly. Content quality, internal links, Core Web Vitals, and a clean crawl—all of it stacks up over time.
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One mistake can erase months of progress. A bad redirect map is the SEO version of a missed payment. Multiple issues are like default.
When a new team “replatforms” or “refreshes” the site without a rigorous SEO plan, they usually break the very signals that were compounding.
What Usually Breaks (and Why Rankings Tank)
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No 301 Redirect Map: Old URLs return 404s or 302s → link equity is lost.
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Changed URL Structure: Category/page slugs get “prettied up” with no mapping.
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Titles/H1s/Content Revamps: Keyword targeting and internal link anchors are wiped.
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Robots/Noindex Mistakes: Staging rules accidentally shipped to production.
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Sitemaps Disabled or Outdated: Google stops discovering the right URLs.
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Canonical Chaos: Duplicates, wrong canonicals, or self-referencing errors.
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CDN/Hosting/Region Changes: Core Web Vitals regress (LCP/TTFB) and crawl slows.
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JavaScript-Only Navigation: Internal link graph gets thin or invisible to crawlers.
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Feeds Broken: Merchant Center and other discovery surfaces lose sync.
Cheaper isn’t cheaper when it torches rankings and gross merchandise value.
The Metrotechs Pre-Migration Playbook (Do This Before You Touch Anything)
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Full Inventory Crawl
Capture every live URL, status code, title, H1, meta, canonical, internal links, and top queries. (We use Screaming Frog + GSC exports.) -
Redirect Coverage Plan
Build a one-to-one 301 map for every legacy URL. Validate with automated testing until coverage is 100% for money pages. -
Preserve On-Page Signals
Keep titles, H1s, schema, and internal link anchors stable for top pages. If you must change them, do it in phases—measure, then move. -
Keep Performance & Region Stable
Maintain CDN, caching, and hosting region during rollout. Optimize TTFB/LCP first, aesthetics second. -
Stage → QA → Soft Launch
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Block staging from indexing (properly)
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Crawl staging for parity (status codes, canonicals, hreflang, etc.)
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Soft launch to a % of traffic and monitor
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Verification & Rollback Plan
Define objective rollback conditions (e.g., 20–30% drop on priority landing pages for 72 hours) and be ready to revert.
14-Day Post-Launch Checklist
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Day 0–1: Submit XML sitemaps, verify robots.txt, check server logs for 404/500 spikes, validate top 500 redirects.
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Day 2–7: Watch GSC coverage, crawl stats, and impressions for priority pages. Track CWV in real time.
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Day 8–14: Compare entry pages, queries, and CTR vs. pre-launch baselines. Fix broken internal links. Validate canonicalization on facets and PDPs.
Monitors we set up: GA4, Search Console, log analysis, uptime, LCP/TTFB, 404/5xx alerts, and Merchant Center/feeds.
Already Shipped and Traffic Cratered? Do This Now.
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Restore Redirects
Rebuild a comprehensive 301 map. Fix 302s and trailing slash/case mismatches. -
Undo Noindex/Robots Errors
Remove stray noindex tags. Confirm robots.txt allows crawling of key sections. -
Re-enable Sitemaps & Feeds
Submit clean sitemaps. Fix product feeds to restore discovery and shopping surfaces. -
Repair Internal Links
Reinstate navigational and contextual links to top money pages. Avoid JS-only menus. -
Fix Performance Regressions
Reinstate CDN, move hosting back to the target region, compress images, lazy-load, cache. -
Request Re-crawls
Use URL Inspection for priority templates. Monitor logs to confirm Googlebot response. -
Phase Content Changes
Revert heavy on-page rewrites. Reintroduce improvements gradually.
Recovery is possible, but time is money. The longer the signals stay broken, the more equity you lose.
The Real Cost of “Cheaper”
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Lost Revenue: 50–70% organic drop strains GMV immediately.
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Ad Tax: You’ll overspend on paid to cover organic gaps.
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Rebuild Cost: You’ll pay—again—for proper redirects, content parity, and performance.
Shortcuts turn into detours. Detours turn into dead ends.
How Metrotechs Handles Risk (Our Non-Negotiables)
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Crawl-to-Crawl Parity: We prove parity between old and new before launch.
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100% Redirect Coverage for Priority URLs: Programmatic + manual validation.
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Performance Guardrails: TTFB and LCP targets set and enforced in CI.
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Staged Rollouts with Rollback: No big-bang launches. Evidence over ego.
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Data First: GA4, GSC, and Looker Studio dashboards wired before go-live.
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Platform-Agnostic Expertise: WordPress/WooCommerce, headless, custom apps—plus AWS hosting, security, and automation when you need it.
We’re not a “WordPress shop.” We’re your technical growth partner for resilient, SEO-safe commerce.
What to Do If You’re Planning a Redesign or Replatform
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Get a pre-migration SEO audit and redirect plan.
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Keep your hosting region/CDN stable until performance equals or beats baseline.
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Avoid sweeping content rewrites on launch day—phase them.
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Demand a rollback plan with specific triggers.
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Treat internal links as product navigation, not decoration.
Ready to Ship Without Burning Your Rankings?
If you’re an eCommerce leader about to flip the switch—or trying to recover from a cliff drop—Metrotechs can help you protect the equity you’ve already paid for with time and money.
Let’s sanity-check your plan before you launch.
We’ll review your crawl, redirects, performance, and monitoring—and give you a clear go/no-go with fixes.
