Healthcare Website Migration SEO
Healthcare website migration SEO decides whether a redesign keeps the patients your current site already brings. Most traffic losses after a launch come from the same few causes: redirects to the homepage, content that didn’t make it across, and tracking that broke on day one. I plan, check and monitor the move so none of them happen quietly.
Why migrations lose traffic
A migration is judged on launch day by how the new site looks. Google judges it over the following months by whether every URL that earned rankings still leads somewhere equivalent, whether the new templates say the same things, and whether it can crawl the new site as easily as the old one. Those are the parts no one on the design team is checking.
What you get, and what I tune it for
What you getFull crawl, rankings, top pages, backlinks and conversions before anything changes.
What I optimise it forA record of every URL that earns traffic, links or enquiries, so nothing valuable is dropped by accident.
What you getOne-to-one redirects for every URL that matters.
What I optimise it forEach old page mapped to the new page that answers the same intent, not to the homepage or a category. Redirect chains removed. Acquired practices’ domains merged only where the content genuinely carries across.
What you getCrawl of the new site before launch.
What I optimise it forTitles, canonicals, headings, schema, internal links and indexability compared template by template, including the noindex tags that so often go live by mistake.
What you getLaunch-day checklist run with your developers.
What I optimise it forrobots.txt, sitemaps, redirects, tracking and Search Console verified within hours of go-live. Change of address filed when the domain changes.
What you getProfiles and citations updated.
What I optimise it forGoogle Business Profile links, directories and NAP updated to the new URLs, so local signals don’t split between old and new.
What you get12 weeks of checks after launch.
What I optimise it forCrawl errors, 404s, index coverage, rankings and enquiries compared with the benchmark weekly, with fixes shipped as soon as anything drops.
Infrastructure is part of SEO
Trained in cloud architecture (AWS certified, Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert in 2025), I can work directly with your hosting, CDN and IT teams on caching, redirects at the server or edge, performance and server-side tagging, instead of passing notes through three people.
The grey side, and why it matters to you
Buying expired domains or old clinic domains purely to redirect their links into your site is what Google’s expired domain abuse policy targets. Merging a practice you have genuinely acquired is different, and I handle that properly. I also check that the migration doesn’t carry across leftovers from past agencies: hidden links, doorway pages or old spam.
Work in this sector
A migration that made the site faster
After the migration, Largest Contentful Paint improved from 6.2 seconds to 1.8 seconds, and the group went on to 85+ qualified patient enquiries a month.
Anonymised client work. Figures come from the client’s own Search Console, Analytics and call tracking. I walk you through the reports on a call, with identifying details removed.
Recovering what a migration broke
Five clusters of competing pages and URLs indexed twice were mapped and fixed after a migration done without SEO oversight. Anonymised client work. Figures come from the client’s own Search Console, Analytics and call tracking. I walk you through the reports on a call, with identifying details removed.
Questions practices ask
When should SEO be involved in a redesign?
Before design starts. Redirects, templates and content decisions made early are cheap. The same fixes after launch are expensive and slower to recover.
Will we lose rankings during a migration?
A short wobble is normal while Google recrawls. A lasting drop usually means something was missed. Benchmarking and weekly monitoring are how it gets caught early.
Can you work with our developers or agency?
Yes. Most migrations I support are built by another team. I provide the redirect map, parity checks and launch checklist, and review their work.
We are merging two practices. What happens to their websites?
I map which content and links carry across, redirect by intent, and consolidate Google profiles and citations so the merged practice keeps both reputations.
Is this a fit? Let’s find out
A free 30-minute strategy call. I review your current search footprint, local visibility and AI search presence before we speak, and tell you plainly what is achievable.
- You speak with me directly, always
- Reply within 24 hours
- If SEO isn’t your bottleneck, I’ll say so