sAIph Search
Contact

WEBSITE MIGRATION SEO

Last updated .

A Website Relaunch Built to Be Recommended by AI

A new website is the best moment to become the hotel ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity recommend. We build every template for AI search and GEO from the first wireframe: answer-first pages, facts AI can quote, open crawler access and an AI visibility baseline before and after launch. Your rankings come across intact as part of the work.

Free, within two working days, no call needed. Budget season: the Snapshot gives you the evidence for a 2027 AI search line.

ONE ROW OF A REDIRECT MAP

Old/rooms/deluxe-king.html
New/stay/deluxe-king-room/
Status301
AI readableYes

★★★★★Trusted by world-renowned five-star hotels, including The Langham, London and Raffles London at The OWO

AT A GLANCE

A website migration is when most brands lose search traffic.

sAIph Search maps every old address, protects the pages that earn rankings and builds each page so ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity can read and quote it.

+20%abby Connect traffic and sales from launch day
6 weeksof daily monitoring after launch

Trusted by world-renowned five-star hotels including The Langham, London and Raffles London at The OWO.

10 → 230

Case study →

+20%

Abby Connect traffic and sales from launch day on the migrated site. Case study →

210 → 1,006

ranking keywords for a fashion group after relaunch.

WHAT A MIGRATION INCLUDES

What does an AI search-ready migration include?

SEO FUNDAMENTALS

✓Full crawl and benchmark before anything moves

✓A one-to-one redirect map from crawl, Search Console, analytics and backlinks

✓Content and metadata parity, never silently dropped

✓Staging checks, launch-day monitoring, six weeks of follow-up

THE AI SEARCH LAYER

✓AI crawler access at robots.txt, the firewall and the CDN

✓Key facts in the HTML, readable without code running

✓Answer-first templates and question-led headings

✓AI visibility measured before and after launch

HOW IT WORKS

How does the migration process work?

01

Benchmark

Crawl, rankings, AI visibility and conversions. Week one.

02

Map

Redirects, content plan and template rules. Weeks one to three.

03

Build checks

Staging crawl, rendering and AI access tests.

04

Launch

Redirects live, sitemaps submitted, hourly checks.

05

Protect

Six weeks of monitoring and a before-and-after report.

FREE · TWO WORKING DAYS · NO CALL

Find out who AI recommends instead of you.

Ten guest questions, your competitors side by side and up to five quick wins your own team can make this month.

Two emails: your Snapshot and one check-in a week later. Nothing else unless you reply. We never sell your details. Privacy notice →

Max Carmichael-Jack, Founder of sAIph Search, smiling, in a green corduroy jacket

Rather talk it through?

Questions, advice or a second opinion on what your agency is doing: tell Max about your property, portfolio or project and we reply within one working day.

QUESTIONS

Questions about website migration SEO

Will we lose rankings?

Some movement in the first weeks is normal. With a complete redirect map, content parity and monitoring, rankings usually settle at or above their previous level.

When should we involve you?

Before design starts. The redirect map and template rules shape the site structure.

Can you work with our developer?

Yes. We supply the redirect map, template rules and test plan, check staging and sign off before launch.

How much does it cost?

It depends on pages, platform and whether we build the site. Priced on scope after a short call.

THE RISK

Why do websites lose traffic after a migration?

Because addresses change, content moves and the signals search engines trusted disappear overnight. That is true of a redesign, a CMS migration and a domain migration alike. The common causes are old pages left without redirects, redirect chains, content cut during the redesign, internal links pointing at dead addresses and templates that render key text only after code runs. AI engines add a new failure: if their crawlers are blocked or cannot read the rendered page, the brand drops out of AI answers even while Google rankings hold.

For a hotel, the pages most at risk are the ones guests and AI quote most: rooms, dining, events, and offers.

The key takeaway: a migration is a search project first and a design project second.

HOTELS

What changes when a hotel website migrates?

  • Booking engine journeys and cross-domain tracking in GA4 kept intact.
  • Room, dining, spa and event venue pages mapped one to one.
  • Google Business Profile, Bing Places and booking-site links updated to the new addresses.
  • Brand-template and multi-property moves handled property by property.

CHECKLIST

What is on the website migration SEO checklist?

Download the checklist as a PDF, no form ↓ (PDF to follow)
  1. 01Crawl the live site and export every URL.
  2. 02Pull URLs from Search Console, analytics and backlink tools.
  3. 03Record rankings, traffic, conversions and AI visibility as the baseline.
  4. 04Map every old URL to its new address.
  5. 05Carry titles, headings, copy and structured data across.
  6. 06Check AI crawler access in robots.txt, the firewall and the CDN.
  7. 07Confirm key text renders in the HTML without code running.
  8. 08Crawl staging and fix errors before sign-off.
  9. 09Launch, remove staging blocks and submit sitemaps to Google and Bing.
  10. 10Monitor daily for six weeks and report before and after.
Max Carmichael-Jack, Founder of sAIph Search

Not sure where to start? Ask us anything.

Advice, a second opinion or a quick question. We reply within one working day.

Get in touch

RESULTS

What results has a well-run migration delivered?

+20%

Abby Connect

Traffic and sales on the site we rebuilt and migrated. "Rankings shot up the day we launched." Nathan Strum, CEO. Case study →

210 → 1,006

A fashion group

Ranking keywords after its relaunch, with monthly organic visits up from 639 to 4,730 between September 2024 and April 2025. Source: Semrush and the client's analytics.

Limitation: our published migration results are rankings, traffic and conversions; AI visibility before and after is measured on every migration from now on.

COMPARISON

How does an AI search-ready migration compare?

Typical redesignSEO-only migrationsAIph migration
Redirect map for every old addressSometimesYesYes
Content and metadata parity checkedRarelyYesYes
AI crawler and firewall access testedNoRarelyYes
Pages readable without code runningRarelySometimesYes
Answer-first templatesNoNoYes
AI visibility measured before and afterNoNoYes

ADVISE OR BUILD

Do you only advise, or do you build the site too?

Both. sAIph Search can run the search layer alongside your existing web agency, or sAIph Search can design and build the new site with SEO and AI search built in from the first wireframe. Either way you get one redirect map, one set of template rules and one owner for search.

THE COST

How much does an SEO migration cost?

It depends on the number of pages, the platform and whether we build the site. Migrations are priced on scope after a short call. Start with the free Snapshot, which shows what AI engines can read on your current site and flags the pages most at risk.

WHAT'S CHANGED IN AI SEARCH

What has changed in AI search this month?

The engines change their sources and rules every few weeks. We track what moved, what we have stopped recommending and why.

Last reviewed 1 October 2026. Updated monthly.

Every change, with sources →
Rising ▲

Cloudflare blocks some AI bots by default on new domains.

For you: on pages that show ads, AI agents can be blocked without anyone deciding to, so check your settings.

Source: Cloudflare ↗
Myth ✕

llms.txt files go largely unread.

For you: almost no AI crawler requests the file, so it never comes before content, access or authority.

Source: Ahrefs, 137,210 domains ↗
Falling ▼

Google retired FAQ rich results.

For you: keep FAQ answers on the page for guests and AI, but stop expecting the search snippet.

Source: Google Search Central ↗