Assertive Media
CMS Migration SEO Support
At Assertive we provide a fully fledged CMS migration service to help you transition to another content management system without jeopardising your pre-existing rankings and traffic.
Trusted by ambitious brands
What We Offer
We offer a full CMS migration SEO service to help clients with the migration from one platform to another. We work with businesses & design/dev agencies to help get involved to ensure CMS migrations are done to the highest quality standard + done properly to minimise any potential risk to website rankings and traffic.
We offer CMS migratory support in the sense of auditing, guidance and strategic evaluation & we cover everything from URL architecture changes to rendering checks, plugin checks, URL handling, internal linking, navigation, page layouts and more.
CMS changes are "inevitable" at some point for a lot of businesses, particularly those that have gone through growth over time and look to bigger solutions, or, solutions that are generally better, more flexible and offer superior control.
However, CMS migrations are also common points for traffic & ranking losses, especially if the dev agency have built it without SEO considerations or without considering migratory factors such as URL consistency, menu accessibility, rendering, javascript utilisation + lots of other things.
Client Testimonial
We've been working with Assertive on our SEO & AI SEO Strategy, we're very pleased with the results, the team are fantastic & very helpful
We've been working with Assertive on our SEO + our AI SEO / GEO strategy for a while now. The team have been very knowledgable and supportive.
We had our first wholesale bulk order through chatGPT which is one of the largest orders we've had to date, we're getting more customers telling us they found us in chatGPT searches, so very pleased.
Appletons Wholesale
Verified client
Some of Our Clients
What Is a CMS Migration
A CMS (Content Management System) is usually an open-source platform that gives website owners an interface to manage their websites content, pages, orders & enquiries through. A CMS migration is the process of moving from one content management to another.
Some of the most common CMS migrations include Wordpress to Shopify, Wix to Wordpress, Squarespace to Wordpress, Magento to Shopify.
A more exhaustive list is provided below.
Tier 1 - The Most Frequent CMS Migrations We See
- WordPress → Shopify (the single most common commerce replatform - content/blog site adding or scaling a store)
- Magento (Adobe Commerce) → Shopify (huge ongoing trend as merchants flee Magento's cost and maintenance burden)
- WordPress → Webflow (design-led rebuilds; very high in the agency/marketing-site space)
- Wix → WordPress (SMBs outgrowing Wix and wanting control/scalability)
- Squarespace → WordPress (same driver as Wix)
- WordPress → WordPress (re-platform/redesign or host-to-host - easy to overlook, but extremely common and a real SEO-risk event)
Tier 2 - Strong, Steady Demand
- Shopify → WordPress (WooCommerce) (merchants wanting more control or lower per-transaction cost)
- WooCommerce ↔ Shopify (both directions are common; WooCommerce → Shopify for managed simplicity, Shopify → WooCommerce for flexibility)
- WordPress → Next.js / React (headless) (performance/dev-led rebuilds; rising fast)
- Magento → WordPress / WooCommerce (smaller Magento stores downsizing)
- Wix → Shopify (SMBs moving from Wix's basic commerce to a real store)
- Squarespace → Shopify (same)
- HubSpot CMS ↔ WordPress (marketing-site moves in both directions)
Tier 3 - Common Within Specific Niches
- WordPress → HubSpot CMS (marketing teams consolidating onto HubSpot)
- Drupal → WordPress (the dominant Drupal exit path as orgs simplify)
- Joomla → WordPress (legacy CMS migrations; declining but still real)
- BigCommerce ↔ Shopify (commerce platform switching, both ways)
- Webflow → WordPress (the reverse of the Tier 1 path - outgrowing Webflow's CMS limits)
- Squarespace ↔ Wix (lateral SMB moves)
- Shopify → BigCommerce (larger merchants seeking different fee/feature structures)
Tier 4 - Enterprise / Less Frequent But High-Value
- Drupal → Next.js / headless (enterprise modernisation)
- Sitecore / Adobe Experience Manager → headless or WordPress VIP (enterprise replatforms - rare but very high contract value)
- WordPress → Sanity / Contentful (+ Next.js) (headless CMS adoption)
- Magento → BigCommerce (commerce-to-commerce enterprise moves)
- Ghost ↔ WordPress (publication/blog-focused moves, both directions)
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud / Shopify Plus (enterprise commerce tier moves)
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Why CMS Migration SEO Support Is Important
Getting a CMS migration right is crucial, getting it wrong can lead to a catastrophic loss of rankings, traffic & ultimately revenue. A badly executed CMS migration can lead to a loss of indexed pages, a loss of rankings and subsequently the traffic that comes with it.
Years of SEO work can be undone in a matter of hours if a CMS migration is deployed without the proper checks & configurations in place.
Even simple things such as unhandled URL changes, improperly configured redirects, misconfigured robots.txt can lead to sudden and abrupt ranking losses.
A properly handled CMS migration takes into consideration:
- Changes in how the CMS's work
- URL architecture / sub folder configurations
- Default crawlability
- URL handling & HTTP status handling
- Website architecture and components i.e. eCommerce filtering
- SEO plugins and add ons & how they handle various aspects of SEO
- Redirect maps (OLD to NEW CMS URL Structure)
- CMS rendering (is the new CMS putting out HTML/content accessible to bots?)
- How directives are handled (index,noindex, follow,nofollow)
- How auxiliary pages are handled (tags, pagination)
- URL consistency (www, non www, https, trailing slash, non trailing slash)
- Code flexibility for making core changes
- Dynamic URL generation
- Canonical configurations
- HREFLANG configurations
Going Without SEO Support Can Lead To
There's a lot to a CMS migration and subsequently there are a lot of potential points of failure which is why it's important to get the right SEO advice before finalising a destination CMS (new CMS). Going without SEO support can lead to:
- Sudden ranking losses
- Indexing issues
- URL conflicts (cannibalisation, legacy URLS)
- Security & vulnerability issues
- Difficulty indexing new content
- Going live with directives blocking the new website
CMS Selection Process & Guidance
We can advise you or your dev agency on the CMS that best suits your businesses needs that takes into account your current digital marketing strategies (SEO, PPC, Social, AI etc). We can advise on which CMS will best fit the businesses needs whilst allowing for the best SEO profile with the most flexibility.
Pre-CMS Migration Audit
We audit your current websites Google search console data to see where and how your website gets traffic, we look at which pages generate traffic and their weighting/value. We then perform a technical SEO audit to review your current website & CMS configuration. We then review your websites page indexing performance to see how much of the website is and isn't being indexed and why.
We size up all key things such as:
We can then understand what needs doing as part of the transitionary work (CMS migration).
- Size of website
- URL structure and sub folder architecture
- Pre-existing directives management
- Robots configuration
- CMS plugins / SEO Plugins and configuration
- Website index performance
- Page architecture
- Page rendering
- On Page SEO
- Default URL profile (www/non www, trailing slash)
- Crawl stats
- CMS flexibility and overall architecture
- Auxiliary URL management
- Feature management i.e. filtering
Recommendations for New CMS
Based on the findings from the audit, we can then evaluate the new target CMS and what things need configuring and handling - from URL management and crawl directives through to SEO plugin configuration.
We can work with your internal dev team or external dev agency to ensure everything is spec'd properly.
Real client results
Case Studies
Lenovo EMEA
One of the world's largest computer manufacturers Assertive supports search across EMEA markets.
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BNP Paribas Cardif
International insurance group Warranty Direct programme growth via SEO.
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Pharmacy Online
Online dispensary for prescription & over-the-counter medications.
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SCI-MX Nutrition
One of the UK's leading sports nutrition & protein supplement retailers.
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Audley Travel
Tailor-made luxury travel bespoke itineraries crafted by destination specialists.
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Emma Sleep
Award-winning sleep products mattresses, pillows and bedding.
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Orangeries UK
Bespoke orangeries design, manufacture and installation across the UK.
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Justerinis & Brooks
Fine wine & spirits merchant one of the world's oldest, established 1749.
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Craft Irish Whiskey
Ultra-luxury, super-premium Irish whiskey crafted in small batches.
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Sykes Dream Cottages
Dorset's largest holiday cottage agency with 300+ properties.
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Large Mortgage Loans
UK leader in High Net Worth mortgages finance for larger property purchases.
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SQS
Global IT service management & infrastructure software organisation.
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Post CMS Migration Audit
Before the website can go live, we need to ensure everything is set up and correctly configured - this can cover SEO alongside things such as tagging (GTM, GA4, GSC). We do a full post CMS migration to ensure that:
We do a substantial and thorough post CMS migration audit before you go live with the new website - this minimises the chance of any technical SEO issues from creating any unexpected ranking drops or losses.
- URLS are either like for like or the proper 301 permanent redirects are in place
- URL consistency is maintained where possible i.e. WWW or trailing slash
- Elimination / prevention of redirect hoops / jumps
- Ensuring all pages have the right canonicals / headers / configurations
- Ensuring robots.txt is configured properly
- Ensuring that rendering is SSR
- Ensuring full accessibility of all nav/menu items and JS elements
- Ensuring internal links and content are updated
- Ensuring CMS level configurations are all ready
- Ensuring all tags are present and correctly configured
How Much Will CMS Migration SEO Support Cost?
We typically charge £150-£200 per hour for CMS migration SEO support with most clients needing around 20-40 hours of migration SEO support when going from one CMS to another.
Some clients work with us on a project basis where we deal with all the migration from start to finish (hands-off support) on retainers of around £3k-£4k a month.
We can provide ad-hoc SEO support hourly for as many hours as you need giving you flexibility.
How Long Will CMS Migration Take?
If done properly, most CMS migration can be done within 3-4 weeks, however it does depend on the size and complexity of your website alongside the speed of the development agency / developers. Typically CMS migrations take longest during the content flooding / dev phases - however every site is different.
We can provide short term and ongoing CMS migration support from beginning to end. We recommend not rushing any CMS migrations, we typically require 2-3 weeks to perform the required audits.
Our Process (How We Work)
So typically we have a straightforward process depending on when you engage us, some clients engage us prior to a new website build or pre-CMS selection to get our full support, typical engagements look like this:
- You submit an enquiry via our website, explain your situation, your intentions i.e. if you plan to change CMS and whether you have selected a new CMS
- We generate a quotation giving you an idea of support scopes and costs
- You accept our quote (if you do) and we go through onboarding
- A member of our SEO team will be allocated to your account
- We begin the support service - this can vary depending on where you are
- Pre-CMS migration audit - we'll do a full teardown and ascertain what needs doing between the old and new CMS
- Recommendation generation - we send recommendations for developers to implement, we review and sign off
- Migration of CMS happens
- Post migration audit - we review everything and sign off, we raise any issues and get them swiftly fixed with developers
- We provide ongoing tracking and support until ranking stability is achieved
What You Get With Our CMS Migration Support
You will get:
- Dedicated SEO support to work with whoever is dealing with the CMS change i.e. dev team
- Specialist SEO support from in-house consultants who have CMS migration experience
- Auditing & Recommendations in a clean and concise format
- All assessments managed through a project management tool of your choice / what your business may already use (Asana, Trello, Clickup, Monday, Jira etc)
Why CMS Choices Need Careful Consideration
Changing a websites CMS is generally a major change, because you are fundamentally changing the entire website that the website is built on and built for. When migrating from one CMS to another there are going to be pros and cons that need consideration to ensure that the cons do not lead to a negative impact on your websites traffic profile (which happens more commonly than you may think).
What we do at Assertive is consider both what your business needs and wants as well as what supports current ranking & traffic - this broader consideration means we can make more guided recommendations that are likely to be beneficial as opposed to being limited.
So example considerations:
- WordPress → Shopify: Shopify forces URL structures you can't fully control (/products/, /collections/), the /collections/all duplication trap, the blog moving to /blogs/news/, and faceted/tag handling. This is the single most-searched CMS migration and the one with the biggest URL surprises.
- Magento → Shopify: significant URL changes, loss of layered/faceted navigation, very large redirect maps.
- WordPress → Next.js / headless: rendering is the risk - content not in the origin DOM, dynamic routing, sitemap generation.
- Wix → WordPress: Wix's historic /#! URL fragments and permalink remapping.
Migrating From Open Source CMS to Custom Websites
We support all migrations, even if it's from a CMS to something that's been vibe coded or a new tech stack i.e. NextJS / Vercel deployments. We offer CMS migration support for ALL migrations whether they are to an open source CMS, closed source CMS, headless CMS configuration - we cover all eventualities.
We also help clients who have vibe coded solutions to ensure that Google, search engines, bots and LLMS are able to properly access content - we ensure all appropriate areas of crawlability, rendering and indexability are dealt with.
We work with all popular languages and tech stacks including NextJS, NuxtJS, Python, C#, .NET, Laravel + MORE.
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
Will I lose my rankings if I change CMS?
Not necessarily, it really depends on the state of your current site, what your site is i.e. service pages, eCommerce, publication site, affiliate site etc.
It's more probable that ranking loss could occur if your website CMS change doesn't take into consideration URL preservation or redirects, directive changes, broad structural changes etc. For most businesses, switching CMS is a risk and not worth taking unless it is done properly, not just by a dev agency but by a dev agency with proper SEO support to ensure nothing is missed.
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