Shop Migration & Internationalization
Relaunch, replatforming or new markets: I support your shop migration so that rankings and revenue are preserved, instead of dropping after launch.
The risk of a relaunch
With every shop relaunch or replatforming, URLs, structure and templates change. Without proper SEO support, you lose exactly the rankings you worked years for. The typical post-launch drop is avoidable when the migration is planned from an SEO perspective from the start.
The most common causes of the drop are always the same: missing or faulty 301 redirects, hundreds of suddenly created 404 error pages, lost backlinks pointing into the void, and a sitemap that still serves the old URLs. Each of these costs rankings, and together they create the visibility loss that you see immediately in any SEO tool.
A replatforming from practice
How quickly a relaunch becomes a pitfall is shown by a switch from Shopware to Shopify, where the shop was migrated over a single weekend. Around 50,000 indexed URLs became roughly 5,000 overnight, a deliberate consolidation that is dangerous without a complete redirect matrix.
This is exactly where success is decided: if every old URL is cleanly redirected to its new target and the shop is consistently supported after launch, visibility stays stable. If that care is missing, the drop in the visibility curves is only a matter of time. That's why my support does not end on go-live day, but continues through the crucial weeks afterwards.
Migration without ranking loss
My proven roadmap for Shopify migrations and relaunches, in five steps:
Secure the status quo
A complete crawl of the old shop, an indexing and ranking snapshot, and a record of all existing URLs and backlinks.
URL & 301 plan
Mapping every old URL to its new target and a complete 301 redirect matrix, so link equity and rankings carry over.
Technical SEO
A review of canonicals, robots, sitemaps, structured data and load time on the new platform before go-live.
Staging sign-off
A check of the new shop on staging, testing the redirects and a sign-off checklist before going live.
Launch & monitoring
Support on go-live day, 404 monitoring, checking indexing and rankings in the weeks afterwards, and quick adjustments.
Internationalizing your shop
Want to expand into new markets? For Google to serve the right language version in the right country, you need a clean technical foundation:
- hreflang setup for every language and country version, without conflicts and self-reference errors
- Domain strategy: ccTLD, subdomain or subdirectory, weighed against resources and target markets
- Translation SEO instead of pure word-for-word translation, with local keyword research per market
- Geo-targeting in Search Console and consistent internal linking per language region
- Avoiding duplicate content between language variants and correct canonicals
PURELEI: growth on Shopify instead of a drop
The work with the jewelry brand PURELEI shows that a cleanly set up Shopify shop can grow strongly instead of dropping. Instead of a relaunch drop, organic visibility climbed continuously, and the SISTRIX index has more than doubled since October 2024.
Plan your migration
Is a relaunch or expansion into new markets coming up? Let's talk early, the sooner SEO is involved, the safer your visibility stays.
Book an intro call