Leaving a platform
The website was never the hard part.
Building a new site used to be a three-month project. It isn't anymore. What still takes skill is getting out with your rankings, your phone numbers and your reviews intact — and that's the part nobody quotes on.
Firms put off leaving a platform because they think the risk is the build. It isn't. The risk is the fortnight around the switch, when a phone number stops ringing, a Business Profile changes hands, and six years of rankings depend on a redirect map somebody made in a hurry.
I've done this migration. I know which parts break.
Find out what you actually own
Before anything else, and before you say a word to your current vendor. Twelve places where firms assume they're covered — domain registrant, DNS, primary ownership of your Business Profile, whose account the phone numbers sit in. Roughly half of them you can take back without anyone's permission. Some you can't. The difference decides everything that follows.
A written ledger of what's yours, what isn't, and which is whichRead the contract before you signal
Notice windows, auto-renewal dates, what has to be sent, to whom, in writing. Contracts differ, and yours will say what it says — but missing a notice window by a week can cost a full renewal term, and that's a discoverable fact rather than a surprise.
Your actual exit date, and what has to happen before itSecure what you can while you still can
This is the step that's worth more than everything else on this page. Wherever the agreement allows it, we move the domain, primary ownership of your Business Profile, and your ad and analytics accounts into your own credentials before notice is given. Cooperation is at its highest while a vendor still expects to keep the account.
The things you can control, under your control, before anyone is askedMove the site without losing the rankings
A full URL inventory and a redirect map before anything moves. Titles and page intent preserved through the switch rather than improved during it. Structured data ported. And one variable at a time — re-platforming, redesigning and rewriting in the same week means that if traffic drops, nobody can say which change did it.
Same URLs answering, same pages ranking, on new groundThe phone numbers, which is where this usually goes wrong
Numbers can be ported — that right belongs to whoever is the account holder of record, which may not be you. Either way, new numbers get provisioned and pushed to your Business Profile, your site and your citations before cutover, with the old ones forwarding wherever that's possible. A firm that loses its number for two days loses signed cases, and that's the failure people remember.
Every number ringing, through the switch and after itProve it worked
Thirty, sixty and ninety days against the baseline we took before the move: indexation, rankings on the terms that matter, calls, form fills, signed cases. If something moved the wrong way, you'll hear it from me first.
The same numbers, before and after, side by sideI'm not going to tell you this is easy. Anyone who does is either not doing the work or hasn't done it before. It's a project with real risk, and the reason to pay someone for it is that the risk gets managed rather than discovered.
Before you ask me anything else
I don't know what it says until we read it
Terms vary by vendor, by year, and by what was negotiated. I won't tell you what yours contains, and I'd be wary of anyone who claims to know before reading it.
Some things don't come back
Links built to properties your vendor owns were never yours to move. Analytics history inside their account can't be handed backwards. I'd rather you hear that now than at the end.
No guarantees, here either
A well-run migration protects what you have. It doesn't promise a position, and neither do I — on this page or any other.
Start before you're ready to leave
The most useful version of this work happens two or three months before notice, not after. If you're already out, I can still help — it's just a harder job.
Start with the free audit. If it turns up nothing, you've lost ten minutes and gained an answer.