Technical SEO Consultant Cost for Site Migration: What Drives the Price

The technical SEO consultant cost for site migration is one of the hardest prices to compare, because two “migrations” can be completely different jobs. Moving from HTTP to HTTPS on the same domain is a small, well-documented change. Moving to a new domain, a new CMS and a new URL structure at the same time is a project with many moving parts, and most of the risk sits in the details.

I have done SEO for more than 16 years, and migrations are where I see the most avoidable traffic loss. In almost every case the cause is a skipped step, not bad luck. This article explains what actually drives the price of migration SEO help, which steps you should never cut to save money, and how to ask for a quote you can compare.

I charge by the hour, so there is no price list here. Instead, here are the factors that move the hours, so you can judge any quote, including mine.

What a technical SEO consultant for website migration actually does

A migration has three phases, and the consultant’s work is different in each one.

Before launch is where most of the hours should go. That means collecting every old URL that matters, deciding where each one goes, writing the redirect rules and checking the new site on staging before anyone sees it. Google’s own guide to moving a site with URL changes is clear that “it’s important to map your old site’s URLs to the URLs for the new site”, and recommends “server side permanent redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs as you indicated in your mapping.”

Launch day is a short, focused check: redirects working, robots.txt correct, staging blocks removed, canonical tags and sitemaps pointing to the new URLs, and Search Console set up for the new site.

After launch is monitoring. Google says to “monitor how the user and crawler traffic changes on the new site and also the old site”, and warns that you should “expect temporary fluctuation in site ranking during the move.”

Google’s hiring guidance makes the same point about timing: “a great time to hire is when you’re considering a site redesign (the earlier, the better)” (Do you need an SEO?). Bringing an SEO in after launch usually costs more, because the work turns from planning into repair.

Technical SEO consultant cost for site migration: what moves the quote

These are the factors I use to estimate migration hours. None is about company size; all are about how much has to be checked, mapped and tested.

Why page count is a poor guide

A large shop whose product URLs follow one pattern can be simpler to migrate than a small site with years of hand-made pages and undocumented redirects. What I count is patterns and exceptions. Rules handle patterns cheaply. Exceptions need someone to look at them one by one.

Why several changes at once cost more

Every change you combine with the migration (new design, rewritten content, new domain) is another possible reason for a drop, and untangling which one caused it takes time. For small and medium sites, Google recommends “moving all URLs on your site simultaneously instead of moving one section at a time”. That is about the URLs, not about bundling unrelated changes.

The site migration SEO steps you cannot skip

When a client asks where they can save, these are the steps I won’t drop, because each one protects traffic that is expensive to win back.

Two details matter. First, Google’s redirects guide recommends “a permanent server-side redirect whenever possible”, and says to “only use JavaScript redirects if you can’t do server-side or meta refresh redirects.” If your new platform can’t do server-side redirects, that is a scoping issue to raise early.

Second, the site move guide says to “keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year.” I often see redirects deleted in a later hosting change or plugin clean-up, so write the rule down.

A migration is cheap to plan and expensive to repair, so the hours belong before launch, not after it.

How different moves change the scope

The type of move is the biggest single factor in the price. Here is how I scope the common ones. The effort column is my own judgement from experience, not a fixed rate.

The Change of Address tool has its own conditions: you must be an owner of both the old and new properties in Search Console, use the same Google account for both, and work with domain-level properties. Search Console Help says its actions “continue for 180 days after you start migration in Search Console.” Sort out property ownership before launch day, not on it.

Where saving money backfires (and where it doesn’t)

There are honest ways to bring the cost down:

• Your team does the implementation. A good consultant can write redirect rules and tickets that your developer applies. You pay for the planning and the checks, not for someone else’s time in your CMS.
• You prepare the data. Search Console access, analytics access, earlier redirect files and a list of templates save hours of discovery.
• You make content decisions early. Knowing which pages will be merged or removed before mapping starts avoids doing the map twice.
• You keep the move simple. Launching the new design and changing the domain at separate times is often cheaper overall.

And there are savings that tend to cost more later:

• Skipping the URL inventory and redirecting only what the new CMS knows about.
• Sending every old URL to the home page.
• Launching without a staging check because “the developer tested it”.
• Ending the engagement on launch day, with no one watching the first weeks.

Google’s guide says that “a small to medium-sized website can take a few weeks for most pages to move”, and that Google “will temporarily crawl your new site more heavily than usual” after a migration. That is exactly the period when a missed redirect pattern or a server that struggles under the extra crawling shows up. For tracking those first weeks, my guide to tracking rankings after a website migration explains what to compare and when.

After launch: what to budget for

Budget hours for the weeks after launch. The work is mostly checking: Search Console’s indexing reports for both properties, crawl errors, redirect chains that slipped in, pages that lost traffic, and server logs if the site is large enough for crawling to matter. On bigger sites, a log file analysis shows whether Googlebot is reaching the new URLs and still requesting old ones.

For individual pages that matter most, Search Console’s URL Inspection tool is Google’s own way to check how a URL is seen and to request indexing. A notification step, such as a ping, only tells search engines a page changed. It doesn’t get pages indexed or improve rankings.

The checks I describe in what a technical SEO consultant looks at in the first hour are also the first step of a migration plan.

How I quote a migration

I charge by the hour, with no fixed packages, so a migration quote from me is an estimate of hours split into the three phases. Before I give one, I ask for:

1. The type of move, and every change launching with it.
2. The templates and URL formats on the old and new site.
3. Read access to Search Console and analytics.
4. Staging access, and the developer who will own the redirects.
5. The planned launch date.

From that I can say which steps you can do yourselves, which ones need me, and roughly where the hours will go. If the move is simple, such as HTTP to HTTPS, I will tell you that your developer can probably handle it with a short review. The technical SEO work I do around migrations is the same work as any technical audit, done with a deadline. If you aren’t sure the current site is in a fit state to move, a website audit before the project starts is often the cheapest step of all.

FAQ

How much does site migration SEO cost?

It depends on scope, not on a standard rate. The type of move, the number of URL patterns, the amount of content that changes and who implements the redirects decide the hours. Ask for an estimate split into before, launch and after, so you can compare quotes like for like.

Do I need a technical SEO consultant for website migration?

For a simple HTTP to HTTPS move on the same domain, often not: your developer can follow Google’s guide, ideally with a short review. For a domain change, a new CMS or a new URL structure, an experienced consultant usually costs less than recovering lost traffic afterwards.

How long does site migration SEO take?

Planning should start when the project is planned, not near launch. After launch, Google says a small to medium-sized site can take a few weeks for most pages to move, and larger sites take longer. Budget for monitoring through that period.

How long should I keep redirects after a migration?

Google’s site move guide says to keep redirects “for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year.” If you used the Change of Address tool, Search Console Help says its actions continue for 180 days, so never remove redirects before then.