The six-step migration plan
We run these six steps, in this order, on every migration. Hold your team or agency to the same sign-offs.
| Step | What happens | Done when |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Crawl and benchmark | Crawl every URL; export Search Console data and backlinks; record today's AI answers | A baseline exists |
| 2. Map every URL | Each old URL gets a new home or a reason to retire | Your team signs off the redirect map before design starts |
| 3. Model the content | Blogs, case studies and product pages become CMS collections with SEO fields | SEO fields are bound on every template |
| 4. Design and build | Figma templates built in Webflow on staging with real content | Top pages are on staging, content intact |
| 5. Test before launch | Redirects, metadata, schema, sitemap, robots settings, forms and analytics tested on staging | Every old URL passes the crawl |
| 6. Launch and monitor | Submit the new sitemap; track rankings, indexing and AI citations for 90 days | Drops fixed, day-90 comparison done |
Together they close the four gaps that sink migrations: URLs that vanish, metadata left behind, content rewritten blind, and AI assistants that keep describing the old site.
Steps 1 and 2: benchmark, then map every URL
For anything beyond the simplest move, Google says to list your old URLs and map them to new destinations. Capture this before anyone opens Figma:
- Every URL, images and PDFs included, from sitemaps, a crawl and Search Console.
- Top pages, queries and conversions: your baseline and your test order.
- Pages with backlinks. Each one needs an exact redirect.
- Titles, meta descriptions, canonicals and schema from the crawl, so nothing gets dropped.
- The pages AI answers cite. Run 10 to 20 buyer prompts in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews and note what they say and link to.
Keep URLs where you can. Where one changes, redirect it to its closest equivalent. Google warns against pointing many old URLs at one irrelevant page such as the homepage, which can be treated as a soft 404.
Webflow serves CMS items from a collection folder, such as /blog/post-name, so root-level or dated blog URLs need a mapping decision early. Check volume too: Webflow's Premium site plan allows 20,000 CMS items, and Enterprise is custom.
Steps 3 and 4: build the SEO into Webflow
Bind the SEO fields on every collection template, and launch your top pages and AI-cited pages with their content intact. Rewrite later, in batches you can measure.
Then set the platform details:
- Global canonical in Site settings > SEO: include the protocol, use www only if your default domain does, and leave off the trailing slash.
- Staging indexing off in Site settings > SEO > Indexing. It only sets robots.txt on the staging subdomain.
- OAI-SearchBot allowed. OpenAI says sites that opt out won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers.
What this looks like on a regulated site
A HIPAA-compliant AI healthcare platform was moving from an older system into Webflow. Another agency ran the main rebuild, and we joined that workflow to handle the hands-on Webflow and technical SEO work.
We addressed the core SEO risks to avoid indexing or ranking losses, fixed structural issues, resolved layout bugs that were slowing pages down, cleaned up CMS collections and removed unused assets. We also improved accessibility and made adjustments so the site would pass compliance-related technical checks.
The result: 82% fewer technical SEO errors after the migration.
Step 5: test every redirect on staging
Add redirects in Site settings > Publishing > 301 redirects. Wildcards use (.*) in the old path and %1 in the new one. Webflow has no hard cap but recommends 1,000 redirects at most, so use wildcards for whole folders.
A live page at the old path blocks its redirect: delete it, set it to draft or change its slug first. Localized paths need their own rules.
The CSV import takes two columns, old path and new path. It overwrites every existing redirect, so export first, and one invalid row fails the whole file.
Google wants server-side permanent redirects (301 or 308) and no chains. To test, list-crawl your exported old URLs on staging. A URL passes when it makes one 301 hop to a 200 at its mapped URL, carries a self-referencing canonical, and has no noindex in the meta tag or HTTP header.
Check any CDN or edge rules in front of the site too: they can add redirects or noindex headers Webflow won't show you. Our technical SEO checklist for redesigns covers the rest of the pre-launch checks.
Step 6: launch, then monitor for 90 days
On launch day:
- Set the default domain and publish the redirects.
- Confirm the canonical and remove any migration-only noindex or robots.txt blocks.
- Submit the new sitemap and keep the old one, so you can watch indexing shift.
- Use Google's Change of Address tool only for a domain or subdomain change, not for HTTPS, www or path changes.
- On a domain move, use Bing's Site Move tool too.
- Crawl the old URL list again and test every form and analytics event.
Then hold the team to this schedule:
| When | Check | If it's wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | 404s and redirect errors in the Page indexing report; your top 50 URLs | Fix the redirect map that day |
| Day 30 | New URLs indexed; top-page clicks against the baseline | Find the template or folder that lags |
| Day 60 | Rankings on top queries; rerun the AI prompts from step 1 | Restore lost content or links |
| Day 90 | Full comparison with the baseline | Hand over to your team or move into an SEO plan |
AI assistants can keep describing the old site until the new one is clear, linked and consistent, so keep tracking AI Overviews after day 90.
Google says to expect temporary fluctuation. A small to medium-sized site can take a few weeks for most pages to move, and larger sites take longer. Keep redirects for at least a year.
If the domain changes, Change of Address forwards signals for 180 days, and Google recommends keeping the old domain registered for at least a year. Share all of this with your CEO before launch, so a short dip reads as expected.
What it costs and how long it takes
Our migration or redesign starts from $25,000. That covers discovery, the URL inventory and redirect plan, a design system and templates in Figma, the Webflow build with CMS and integrations, pre-launch SEO and AI-search checks, and 90 days of post-launch monitoring. It's a fixed price after discovery, set by page and CMS item count, URLs that change, content cleanup, integrations and approvals.
Most take 6 to 12 weeks. Sites with thousands of pages or complex integrations take longer.
Prices are starting points. Your quote depends on scope, not your funding round.
For growth after the 90 days, our SEO and AI search campaigns start from $3,500 a month, with a six-month commitment. We've moved more than 75 websites from WordPress to Webflow in 2026.
Send us your URL, current platform, rough page count and whether the domain is changing, and we'll tell you what moving your site to Webflow involves. Contact our team to start.
