The verdict in three sentences
A poorly prepared site migration loses 20 to 50 % of organic traffic, with recovery taking 2 to 4 months at best. A controlled migration costs 3,500 to 9,000 EUR in 2026 and takes 4 to 8 weeks: URL mapping, a 301 redirect plan, tag preservation, and a comparative before/after crawl. The golden rule: no URL should return a 404 on launch day.
Migration cost by scope
Price depends mostly on the number of URLs and the complexity of the source and target CMS. Here are 2026 order-of-magnitude figures.
| Site scope | Migration price (EUR) | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Brochure site (< 30 URLs) | 3,500 - 5,000 | 4 - 5 weeks |
| Content site (30-150 URLs) | 5,000 - 7,500 | 5 - 6 weeks |
| Large site/blog (150-500 URLs) | 7,500 - 9,000 | 6 - 8 weeks |
| E-commerce (> 500 URLs) | 9,000 - 18,000 | 8 - 12 weeks |
| Audit + redirect plan only | 1,200 - 2,500 | 1 - 2 weeks |
The most underestimated line item: the 301 redirect mapping. On a 200-page site, that's 2 to 4 days of meticulous work that prevents a traffic drop.
The 18-point checklist and KPIs to watch
A successful migration follows a protocol. Here is the condensed checklist and the control indicators.
| Checklist step | KPI to watch | Alert threshold |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Full pre-migration crawl | Number of indexed URLs | Baseline |
| 2. Export positions + traffic (baseline) | Average positions | Baseline |
| 3. 1:1 old/new URL mapping | Share of mapped URLs | < 100 % |
| 4. 301 redirects (no chains) | Redirect chains | > 1 hop |
| 5. Preserve title/meta/Hn | Tags preserved | < 95 % |
| 6. Updated XML sitemap | URLs in sitemap | vs baseline |
| 7. Robots.txt verified | Accidental blocks | > 0 |
| 8. Post-migration crawl | 404s detected | > 0 |
| 9. Search Console indexing tracking | Deindexed pages | > 5 % |
Beyond these 9 key points, the full checklist covers schema markup, canonicals, hreflang, images, internal linking, load time, HTTPS, structured data, and analytics tracking, for 18 points total.
Mini case study
The director of an industrial SME in Singapore migrates a 180-page site from WordPress to a modern stack. Organic traffic is 28,000 visits/month generating 95 leads/month. Without a redirect plan, a 35 % drop would cost 33 leads/month for 3 months, roughly 99 lost leads at 45 EUR value = 4,455 EUR of lost revenue. He invests 6,500 EUR in a controlled migration: the loss is contained to -4 % in month one and fully recovered by month 2. The migration budget is justified by traffic protection alone.
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FAQ
What's the real risk if I do nothing?
A drop of 20 to 50 % in organic traffic, with recovery over 2 to 4 months. On a revenue-generating site, that's often the most costly loss of the project.
How long does a clean migration take?
4 to 8 weeks for a brochure or content site, longer for e-commerce (8 to 12 weeks). Audit and mapping take about a third of the time.
Are 301 redirects enough?
They are necessary but not sufficient. You must also preserve tags, avoid redirect chains, and monitor indexing in Search Console for 4 to 8 weeks.
When does traffic return to its prior level?
With a controlled migration, the dip is 0 to 10 % in month one and traffic returns to baseline in 4 to 8 weeks. Without a method, expect 2 to 4 months.
Can you migrate an e-commerce site without breaking SEO?
Yes, but it's the most sensitive case: product, category, filter, and pagination URLs must be mapped one to one. Budget 9,000 to 18,000 EUR depending on catalog size.
Let's scope your project. Tell us your current CMS, target CMS, and URL count, and we'll price a zero-loss SEO migration (3,500 to 9,000 EUR) over 4 to 8 weeks. Detailed quote within 48 h. WhatsApp +221 77 596 93 33.
Mohamed Bah
Fondateur, Kolonell
Passionate about digital and entrepreneurship in Africa, Mohamed has been helping Sénégalese businesses with their digital transformation since 2020. Founder of Kolonell, he believes every SME deserves a professional and accessible online présence.
