Shopify Migration SEO Audit

Book an audit
$1,500
Both audits, from — 10-hour block
5 days
Turnaround, working days
75+
Replatforms delivered since 2018
Jump to the 48-hour triage

Two audits, depending on where you are. A pre-launch audit checks your redirect map, metadata and indexation before you cut over. A recovery audit diagnoses why traffic dropped after you already did. Both start at $1,500 for a 10-hour block, and both produce a ranked, costed findings list you can hand to any developer — including one who isn't us.

What to expect

$1,500
Pre-launch audit
$1,500
Recovery audit
5 working days
Turnaround
$150/hr
Rate
Ranked findings
Deliverable — plus fix list

Traffic dropped after your Shopify migration. What now?

Work in this order, because the cheapest causes are also the most common. Check whether redirects are actually firing on live URLs, not just present in the redirect table. Then check whether title tags and meta descriptions survived the move. Then check indexation in Search Console. Most post-migration losses are one of those three, and all three are fixable in days rather than months.

The instinct is to assume the whole migration was wrong. It usually wasn't. Ranking loss after a replatform is normally one specific broken thing, and the job is finding which.

The 48-hour triage

Run these in sequence. Stop when you find the cause — you probably won't need all six.

  1. Are redirects firing? Take 20 old URLs with traffic and request them. A redirect that exists in the table but returns 404 is the single most common failure. Shopify redirects only fire on URLs that return a 404, so anything conflicting with a live path silently does nothing.
  2. Did metadata survive? Spot-check 20 product pages for title tags and meta descriptions. On migrations from WooCommerce or Magento this data often lived in an SEO plugin and never travelled with the product export. A store launching with empty meta tags loses rankings for a reason nobody diagnoses for weeks.
  3. Is the site indexable? Check robots.txt, confirm the theme isn't carrying a staging noindex, and check Search Console coverage. A password or a leftover noindex explains a total collapse rather than a dip.
  4. Are canonicals self-referencing? Shopify themes can render products at both /products/handle and /collections/x/products/handle. If canonicals point the wrong way, signals split across duplicates.
  5. Is the sitemap submitted and clean? Resubmit, then check for 404s and non-canonical URLs inside it.
  6. Is it actually the migration? Compare against the same period last year, check whether an algorithm update landed in your window, and look at whether a competitor moved. We have told clients their drop was seasonal more than once, and it is a cheaper answer than an audit.

What each audit covers

Pre-launch audit — before you cut over

  • Full URL inventory reconciled from three sources: a live crawl, 12 months of Search Console data, and your platform's historic URL table
  • Every URL with traffic or backlinks mapped to a specific destination, signed off by you
  • Redirect count checked against your plan's ceiling — 100,000 on standard Shopify plans, 20,000,000 on Shopify Plus
  • URLs Shopify will not let you redirect flagged and solved: its own fixed paths, plus prefixes including /apps, /cart, /orders and /services, and collection tag-filter URLs
  • Metadata migration plan — titles, descriptions, alt text, structured data
  • Canonical and indexation configuration reviewed on staging
  • A baseline snapshot of rankings and Core Web Vitals, so you can prove afterwards whether it worked

Recovery audit — after traffic dropped

  • The full 48-hour triage above, run properly rather than in a panic
  • Every 404 with traffic or referring domains identified and mapped
  • Redirect chains found and collapsed to one hop
  • Metadata gaps quantified across the catalogue
  • Indexation and canonical problems diagnosed
  • Realistic recovery timeline, with what is fixable this week versus this quarter
  • A ranked, costed fix list

What's realistic to recover, and when

Redirect problems fixed within the first fortnight usually recover fully. The same problems left for three months take considerably longer, because Google has by then re-crawled and re-scored the new URLs on their own merits rather than inheriting from the old ones.

Metadata is fast — republish and it re-crawls. Indexation blocks are fast once removed. Deleted pages whose backlinks were never mapped are the hardest, because if the old platform is decommissioned the source list may be gone entirely.

Core Web Vitals move on a 28-day rolling window in Google's field data, so a genuine speed fix will not show for about a month. Anyone reporting a Core Web Vitals recovery days after a deploy is showing you lab numbers. See Shopify speed optimization for how we handle that side.

When you don't need this audit

  • Your migration hasn't happened yet and you have a competent partner. The pre-launch checks belong inside the migration project, not as a separate purchase. Our Shopify Plus migration services include them, and our free 100-point migration checklist covers the same ground — run it yourself and skip us entirely.
  • Traffic is flat, not down. A migration that held its rankings did its job. Growing from there is conversion and content work, not an SEO audit. Start with our free CRO audit checklist.
  • The drop is under two weeks old and you haven't checked redirects yet. Run the triage above first. If it's redirects, you have your answer for free.
  • You have an in-house SEO who can run this. Then they should. The findings list is the value, and if your team can produce it, buying it from us is waste.

Platform-specific failure patterns

Magento loses metadata held in platform code, and its .html suffix plus category-nested URLs mean every product URL changes. The url_rewrite table holds every historic URL and is the most commonly ignored asset in the whole migration. See Magento to Shopify Plus migration.

WooCommerce hides metadata in Yoast or Rank Math, and /product/ versus /products/ is a one-letter difference Google treats as two entirely different URLs. See WooCommerce to Shopify migration.

BigCommerce allows free-form URLs, so there is no pattern to map from and the redirect work is bespoke per store. See BigCommerce to Shopify migration.

What it costs

Both audits start at $1,500 — a 10-hour block at $150 an hour — with findings inside five working days. Larger catalogues take longer and we will quote before starting rather than after.

Implementation is separate and optional. Several of the highest-impact fixes are configuration your own team can do, and those get handed over in the findings rather than billed. Retainers start at 20 hours or $3,000 a month. Full rates: Shopify Plus cost.

Who runs it

Solo Media Group is a Platinum-tier Shopify development company — the top of Shopify's five partner tiers — with 75+ replatforms delivered since March 2018 and 500+ merchants served, rated 5.0 from 37 reviews on Shopify's Partner Directory.

Verify on the directory
"SOLO MEDIA GROUP helped see me through a transition from WordPress to Shopify… SEO crawls and fixes, multi-agency brainstorming sessions, as well as the development of new buildout for our Site."
Dana Lusted, Brand Manager, Wild Planet Foods

FAQs

How long does a migration SEO audit take?

Five working days for a standard catalogue, from access to findings. Larger catalogues take longer and we quote before starting.

How much does it cost?

Both audits start at $1,500, which is a 10-hour block at our $150 hourly rate. Implementation is quoted separately, and fixes your own team can handle are handed over rather than billed.

How long does traffic take to recover after a Shopify migration?

Redirect problems fixed inside the first fortnight usually recover fully. Left for three months, recovery takes considerably longer because Google has re-scored the new URLs on their own merits. Metadata and indexation fixes are fast; unmapped backlinks to deleted pages are the hardest.

Is a 15–20% drop after migration normal?

It is common, and it is not inevitable. Reported dips in that range happen where redirects were handled loosely. A migration with a complete redirect map live at cutover should hold its rankings.

Can you audit a migration another agency did?

Yes, and we do it regularly. We audit the work, not the agency, and the findings list is yours to give to whoever fixes it.

What if the drop isn't the migration's fault?

We will tell you. Seasonality, an algorithm update in your window, or a competitor change all produce the same-shaped graph. That is one of the six triage checks, and it is a cheaper answer than a project.

Do you need access to our store?

Search Console and Analytics read access, plus a Shopify staff account with theme and redirect visibility. No write access needed for the audit itself.

Book an audit

Bring your launch date, your previous platform, and roughly when traffic changed. If the answer turns out to be a free fix, we'll say so.