Fixing SEO Issues After WordPress Migration

Migrating a WordPress site can be a huge milestone for your business—it might mean you're moving to a better hosting provider, switching to a new domain, or redesigning your site for a better user experience. But while the technical side of a migration is important, there’s another factor you can't afford to overlook: your SEO.

What Happens During a Site Migration?

When you migrate a WordPress site, you’re essentially moving your content and structure from one place to another. Whether it’s a change in your domain, a new hosting provider, or even just updating your site’s design, these changes can easily create SEO issues if not handled carefully. Moving parts like URLs, internal links, and site structure can break things behind the scenes, which search engines won’t like.

One of the biggest concerns is lost rankings. If the URLs for your pages change and no redirects are set up, search engines like Google may not know where to send users, causing a drop in your site’s rankings. Additionally, broken internal links, duplicate content issues, or incorrectly set hreflang tags can create chaos for your SEO.

The result? You might see a sharp decline in traffic and search visibility. Search engines need a clear and structured roadmap of your site to crawl and index it properly, and site migration—if not managed well—can disrupt this process, leading to lost rankings and reduced traffic.

Poorly Handled Migrations Can Damage Your SEO

The bottom line is: SEO can take a hit during a site migration if you’re not careful. You’ve likely spent months or even years building your website’s authority and search rankings. A poorly managed migration can undo much of that hard work, affecting your site’s visibility in search results, leading to a loss of organic traffic, and ultimately impacting your revenue.

Imagine this scenario: You’ve been ranking on the first page of Google for critical keywords that bring in a steady stream of new customers. After the migration, your site drops to the second or third page because search engines can’t find the right URLs or notice missing internal links. That’s a potential disaster for customer acquisition efforts, especially for indie founders, solopreneurs, and small business owners who rely heavily on organic search traffic.

A smooth migration ensures that search engines can continue crawling and indexing your site without interruption, preserving your rankings and traffic. Failing to address common SEO issues during migration can cause lasting damage, making it harder to recover your site’s position in search results.

Fixing Broken Links After Migration

One of the most common issues that arise after a WordPress site migration is broken links. Broken internal links can severely damage your user experience and SEO performance, so it’s essential to identify and fix them as soon as possible. If left unattended, these broken links can send your site into a spiral of lost traffic, frustrated users, and missed SEO opportunities.

Broken links usually occur when the URLs of your site’s pages change during the migration process. Whether you’re moving to a new domain, updating your site structure, or changing your permalinks, there’s a good chance that some links will break along the way. If your old URLs are no longer valid, clicking those links will lead to 404 errors—the page users and search engines expect to find doesn’t exist anymore.

This is where the trouble begins: when a user encounters a 404 error, they’re more likely to bounce from your site, which signals to search engines that your site is not providing a good user experience. This can lead to a drop in your rankings as Google and other search engines penalize sites that have multiple broken links and high bounce rates. You also lose out on valuable link juice—the SEO value that internal links pass between your pages—when a link leads to nowhere.

• Impact on SEO: Broken links create dead ends for search engines, preventing them from crawling your site efficiently. This can hurt your site's overall indexability and lead to a drop in rankings. A few broken links here and there might not seem like a big deal, but if they accumulate, they can severely harm your SEO performance.

How to Identify Broken Links

The good news is that finding broken links on your WordPress site doesn’t have to be a manual task. There are several tools you can use to quickly scan your entire site for 404 errors and broken links.

• Google Search Console: One of the best free tools available, Google Search Console will alert you to any crawl errors (including broken links) that Google encounters when crawling your site. You can also get insights into which pages are affected by broken links.

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider: This tool crawls your website the way a search engine would and highlights any broken links or 404 errors it finds. It’s excellent for scanning both internal and external links across your site.

• Ahrefs: Ahrefs has a Site Audit tool that can help you identify broken links and 404 errors, while also giving you a comprehensive overview of your site’s health.

• Pro Tip: When checking for broken links, don’t forget about your external links. Sometimes, the sites you link to may have changed or removed content, leading to broken outbound links that can hurt your SEO and user experience. Tools like Screaming Frog can help you detect these as well.

Fixing Broken Links

Once you’ve identified the broken links on your site, it’s time to fix them. There are two primary ways to handle broken links: replacing them with the correct URLs or redirecting them to relevant pages.

• Replace Broken Links: If the URL has changed (for example, you’ve updated the permalink structure), simply replace the old URL with the correct one. This ensures that users and search engines are directed to the right content without any disruption.

• Implement 301 Redirects: If the content has moved or no longer exists, set up 301 redirects to guide users and search engines to the new location of the page or to the most relevant alternative. 301 redirects preserve the SEO value of the old link while ensuring a seamless user experience. Tools like the Redirection plugin make it easy to set up and manage redirects in WordPress without needing technical knowledge.

• Use Plugins to Automate the Process: The Broken Link Checker plugin for WordPress automatically scans your site for broken links and lets you fix them directly from your WordPress dashboard. This is a great tool for ongoing maintenance, as it alerts you whenever a link breaks, allowing you to fix it quickly.

• Pro Tip: After fixing broken links, always test them to ensure they are working properly and that your redirects are in place. Additionally, re-scan your site periodically to catch any future link issues that might arise.

Implementing 301 Redirects to Retain Juice

One of the most important tasks after a WordPress site migration is to ensure that your old URLs still point users (and search engines) to the right content. This is where 301 redirects come into play. Setting up proper redirects can save your SEO, maintain your site’s rankings, and ensure a smooth experience for your visitors during the transition.

What Are 301 Redirects?

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another. When a user or search engine visits an old URL, they’re automatically sent to the new URL, and—here’s the crucial part—the SEO value of the original page is passed along to the new one. This means that any link equity (or “link juice”) the old URL had is transferred to the new page, helping you retain your search engine rankings and avoid losing traffic.

Why does this matter? During a site migration, URLs often change—whether because of new permalink structures, changes in domain, or a restructuring of your content. Without 301 redirects, anyone visiting the old URLs will land on a 404 error page, and search engines won’t know where to direct users, causing you to lose any SEO authority you’ve built over time. This can result in a significant drop in traffic and visibility, which can take months to recover from if not addressed quickly.

• Pro Tip: Always use 301 redirects for permanent URL changes. Avoid using 302 redirects unless the redirect is temporary, as 302 redirects do not pass SEO value in the same way.

How to Implement 301 Redirects in WordPress

Setting up 301 redirects in WordPress can be done easily, even if you’re not a technical expert. There are two primary ways to implement redirects: using plugins or manually updating your .htaccess file.

1. Using Plugins: For most users, the easiest way to manage 301 redirects is by using a plugin like Redirection. This plugin allows you to set up and manage redirects directly from your WordPress dashboard without needing to touch any code.

   • How to Use Redirection: After installing the plugin, simply navigate to the Redirection settings in your WordPress admin panel. From there, you can enter the old URL and the new URL, and the plugin will handle the redirect automatically.
   • Why Use a Plugin? Plugins like Redirection are beginner-friendly, making it easy to monitor and manage all of your redirects in one place. The plugin also tracks 404 errors and provides reports, which can help you catch any missed URLs that need to be redirected.

2. Manually Updating the .htaccess File: If you’re comfortable with code, you can implement 301 redirects by manually editing the .htaccess file on your server. This method is more advanced but gives you greater control over your redirects.

   • How to Edit the .htaccess File: Connect to your site’s server via FTP or use a file manager in your hosting dashboard. Find the .htaccess file in your site’s root directory and add lines of code for each redirect in the following format:

     Redirect 301 /old-page-url https://yoursite.com/new-page-url

     This tells the server to permanently redirect traffic from the old URL to the new one, preserving SEO value.

• Pro Tip: Use Google Search Console or tools like Screaming Frog to identify any 404 errors or pages that may need a redirect. Setting up redirects early in the migration process prevents users and search engines from encountering broken links.

Common Redirect Mistakes

While setting up 301 redirects is essential, it’s equally important to avoid some common mistakes that can hurt your SEO or confuse search engines.

1. Redirect Chains: A redirect chain occurs when a page is redirected to another page, which is then redirected to yet another page, and so on. This can happen if you’ve made multiple changes over time, creating a chain of redirects. Search engines don’t like this because it slows down crawling and can dilute the SEO value being passed through each redirect.

   • How to Avoid Redirect Chains: Always redirect directly from the old URL to the new one. If you’ve made several changes, update the redirect to point to the most current URL, avoiding unnecessary steps.

2. Redirect Loops: A redirect loop happens when a page redirects to itself or creates an infinite loop between two or more pages. This can result in users and search engines being stuck in a loop, unable to access the content.

   • How to Avoid Redirect Loops: Double-check your redirects to ensure they lead to the correct destination and don’t inadvertently create a loop. Testing your redirects is crucial before going live.

3. Redirecting All Pages to the Homepage: Another mistake is redirecting every old URL to the homepage. While this might seem like an easy solution, it creates a poor user experience and doesn’t transfer SEO value effectively. Search engines want to see that the old content has a logical equivalent on your new site, not just a blanket redirect to the homepage.

   • Pro Tip: Always redirect users to the most relevant content on the new site. If you’ve removed a page entirely, find the next best page for that redirect—whether it’s a similar blog post, category page, or service page.

Pro Tip: Check Your Redirects Regularly

After implementing your redirects, don’t just set it and forget it. Make sure to check your redirects regularly to ensure they are functioning properly and that no issues arise, especially after a major site update or migration. Broken redirects or redirect chains can pop up over time, and regular checks ensure your SEO remains intact.

• Tools to Monitor Redirects: Use tools like SEOJuice, Ahrefs, or even Google Analytics to monitor the performance of your redirects. These tools can help identify any problems, such as chains or loops, that may have gone unnoticed.

Fixing Issues with Wrong hreflang Tags

When you’re running a multilingual website or a site that targets different countries, getting your hreflang tags right is critical. After a WordPress migration, hreflang tags can often get scrambled or lost in the process, leading to serious SEO issues—especially for international traffic. If hreflang tags aren’t properly set, search engines may serve the wrong language or country-specific version of your webpage, confusing users and harming your search rankings. Fixing these issues early on can ensure your global audience sees the right content at the right time.

hreflang tags are special HTML attributes that tell search engines which language and region-specific version of a webpage to display to users. Essentially, they act as signals to Google (and other search engines) to show the most relevant version of your website based on the user’s language preference and location.

For example, if you have an English version of your site for the U.S. and a Spanish version for Spain, hreflang tags will help Google know which version to display to users searching from each respective region. This is crucial for maintaining a positive user experience and keeping your SEO intact across multiple languages and regions.

Without proper hreflang tags, search engines might show the wrong version of your website to users—for instance, serving the U.K. version to U.S. visitors, or the French version to users in Canada. Worse yet, without hreflang tags, search engines might treat the content as duplicate pages, penalizing your site for repeating content across different regions.

Common hreflang Mistakes After Migration

Site migrations often cause a slew of SEO issues, and hreflang mistakes are among the most common for multilingual or region-specific sites. Here’s what typically goes wrong after a migration:

1. Missing hreflang Tags: During the migration, hreflang tags may not transfer properly, especially if you’ve restructured your URLs or if the new site uses a different template. Missing tags can result in search engines not knowing which version of your content to serve.

2. Incorrect hreflang Tags: Even worse than missing tags, incorrect hreflang tags may lead to the wrong page being shown to users. For example, a user in Germany might see the U.S. English version of your website instead of the German version, or a user in Spain might see the French version instead of Spanish. This can result in confusion, higher bounce rates, and loss of conversions.

3. Improper Formatting: hreflang tags need to be properly formatted. Errors in the code—like missing quotation marks or incorrect language codes—can cause search engines to misinterpret your hreflang signals, or ignore them altogether.

4. Canonical Tag Conflicts: Another common mistake is setting up canonical tags incorrectly in combination with hreflang tags. If the canonical tag points to the wrong version of the page, Google might ignore the hreflang tag, leading to the wrong content being indexed.

How to Fix hreflang Issues

Fortunately, identifying and fixing hreflang issues isn’t as complicated as it sounds, especially with the right tools. Here’s how to tackle these problems post-migration:

1. Use Tools to Identify hreflang Errors: Start by using tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs to audit your site for any missing or incorrect hreflang tags. These tools crawl your website and help pinpoint where the issues lie, giving you a clear picture of which pages need to be fixed.

2. Check Your hreflang Setup: Review your hreflang tags manually to ensure they’re correctly formatted. The tags should clearly define the language and country code for each version of your page. For example:

   <link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/en-us/" hreflang="en-us" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/fr-fr/" hreflang="fr-fr" />

3. Make sure there’s a self-referencing hreflang tag for every version of the page, meaning each page should point to itself in the hreflang setup, as well as to the other language/country versions.

4. Avoid Incorrect Canonical Tags: When using canonical tags in combination with hreflang, make sure the canonical tag points to the correct language version. A mismatch between hreflang and canonical tags can confuse search engines, causing them to ignore your hreflang instructions.

5. Pro Tip: Use the Yoast SEO Plugin: If coding hreflang tags manually sounds overwhelming, WordPress users can use the Yoast SEO plugin to handle hreflang tags without needing to touch the code. This plugin automatically generates hreflang tags for each language and region-specific version of your pages, ensuring your international SEO is taken care of. Simply configure the settings for each language, and Yoast will handle the rest.

Common SEO Penalties

Site migrations are notoriously tricky when it comes to SEO. If not managed carefully, they can trigger common SEO penalties that harm your site’s visibility, rankings, and traffic. These penalties often stem from indexing issues or duplicate content problems, both of which can easily arise during the migration process. The good news is that most of these penalties are avoidable if you’re aware of the risks and take proactive steps to prevent them.

Indexing Issues

One of the most frequent problems post-migration is accidentally leaving noindex tags on pages that you actually want search engines to index. The noindex tag tells search engines to ignore a particular page, which can be helpful when you’re working on a new site or testing features, but if it remains on live pages after migration, it prevents those pages from being crawled and ranked by Google or other search engines.

This can be disastrous for your SEO, as entire sections of your site—or even the whole site—might disappear from search results if they remain noindexed. The end result? A significant drop in traffic and lost rankings, which could take months to recover from.

• How to Fix It: Start by checking your website’s robots.txt file and meta tags to ensure that important pages are not being blocked from indexing. In WordPress, you can use plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math to easily manage these settings. For manual fixes, remove the noindex tags from any pages that you want to be crawled and indexed by search engines. Be thorough—check your homepage, key landing pages, and blog posts to ensure noindex tags are gone where they shouldn’t be.

• Pro Tip: Don’t forget about noindex, nofollow tags. nofollow tells search engines not to follow the links on a page, which can hurt your site’s link equity if left in place after a migration. Make sure you review both noindex and nofollow tags during your post-migration audit.

Duplicate Content Penalties

Another common SEO issue that arises post-migration is duplicate content. Duplicate content occurs when the same (or very similar) content exists across multiple URLs, causing search engines to become confused about which version to rank. During a migration, it’s easy for this to happen—old URLs might still be live and accessible, leading to multiple pages with the same content.

When Google finds duplicate content, it can penalize your site by devaluing all versions of the content or deciding to rank only one version (and it may not be the one you want). In some cases, search engines may even flag your site as engaging in content duplication, which can result in a more significant penalty.

• How to Fix It: The best way to address duplicate content issues is by implementing canonical tags. A canonical tag tells search engines which version of a page is the primary one, effectively consolidating all SEO value to that page. For instance, if you have two versions of a page—one at example.com/page1 and another at example.com/page1-old—you should use the canonical tag on the secondary page to point to the primary one, like this:

  <link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/page1">

• Pro Tip: Use tools like SEOJuice or Ahrefs to crawl your site for duplicate content and make sure every instance of it is addressed with canonical tags. You can also set up 301 redirects to permanently redirect the old URLs to the correct, primary version of the page.

After a migration, one of your best friends in monitoring your SEO health is Google Search Console. It provides a comprehensive overview of your site’s performance in Google’s index and flags any issues—such as indexing problems, duplicate content, or crawl errors—that might be affecting your rankings.

• How to Use Google Search Console:
  1. Submit Your New Sitemap: After the migration, make sure to submit your updated XML sitemap to Google via Search Console. This helps Google understand your new site structure and begin crawling it efficiently.
  2. Check for Indexing Issues: Under the Coverage section, look for any warnings or errors, such as pages being excluded from indexing due to noindex tags or crawl errors.
  3. Monitor for Duplicate Content: Keep an eye on the Performance and Coverage sections for signs of duplicate content issues, such as multiple URLs for similar pages showing up in the index.
  4. Watch for Penalties: Google Search Console will also alert you if your site is hit with a manual action penalty due to something like duplicate content or spammy links.

By regularly checking Google Search Console after migration, you’ll be able to catch and fix any SEO issues before they turn into major problems.

Migrating your WordPress site is a huge step, but it comes with the risk of serious SEO issues if not handled properly. The good news is that most of these issues are preventable, and by addressing them early, you can protect your search rankings and avoid traffic drops. By focusing on fixing common post-migration problems like broken links, hreflang issues, 301 redirects, and schema markup, you can ensure your site remains visible and relevant to both search engines and users.