Post-launch traffic recovery
SEO recovery services after a website relaunch
For owners and marketers whose organic search traffic or inquiries fell after a migration, redesign or domain change, and whose own checks found no cause.
If search traffic or inquiries fell after a migration, redesign or domain change, the Named-Cause Diagnosis compares Google Search Console data around your launch date, crawls your old URLs, checks the six causes in Google’s guide and names the cause with dated evidence, from $490 / £390. In-scope causes get the Recovery Fix in WordPress, from $1,990 / £1,590.
Charged on delivery: Card saved at booking; charged only when we email the report. No report, no charge.
When SEO recovery starts with a diagnosis
The Named-Cause Diagnosis is for one situation: clicks or inquiries from Google fell after your site relaunched, and your own checks have not found why. The relaunch can be a redesign, a platform switch, a domain change or a URL structure change, on WordPress or another platform.
A drop that starts at a launch date has its own suspects: redirects that never went live, a noindex tag carried over from staging, canonicals that still point at old URLs, or titles and content that changed in the new templates. A penalty is a different thing. Google issues a manual action “when a human reviewer at Google has determined that pages on the site are not compliant with Google’s spam policies”1, and Search Console lists it in a report of its own.
If you have not yet lined the drop up against your launch date, the traffic-drop decision tree takes you through the first checks yourself. Bring the diagnosis in when those checks point at the relaunch but not at a specific URL, template or setting.
Six causes, checked against your launch date
Google’s traffic-drop guide lists the main causes to investigate after a drop and suggests reading the last 16 months of Search Console data2. The diagnosis checks each cause against your launch date:
- Site moves and migrations: we crawl your old URLs on the live site and flag 404s, redirect chains, redirects to the homepage and URLs missing from the new sitemap.
- Technical issues: noindex tags, robots.txt rules and canonicals, read from the Page indexing and Crawl stats reports and from URL Inspection on key pages.
- Algorithmic updates: your drop date set against the rollout windows Google posts on its Search Status Dashboard.
- Spam issues: the Manual Actions report.
- Security issues: the Security Issues report.
- Seasonality and changing interests: the same weeks a year earlier, and Google Trends for your top queries.
Since December 2025, Google’s core and spam updates have rolled out in the windows charted below3, so a drop that starts inside one is checked against the update before anything on the site is changed.
Two more checks sit outside Google’s list: AI Overviews appearing on your top queries, and analytics or consent changes that alter what your reports count.
The report names the cause with dated evidence: which URLs lost clicks, from when, and what changed on them or around them.
Diagnosis first, then a fixed-price fix
The work comes in two steps, so the fix is priced only after the cause is known.
| Step | What you receive |
|---|---|
| Named-Cause Diagnosis | A written report naming the cause with dated evidence, a fixed-price quote for the fixes in scope, and a walkthrough call |
| Recovery Fix | Hands-on fixes in WordPress for the causes in scope, then a re-crawl that checks each fix is live |
The diagnosis price depends on how many old URLs the crawl covers, and the price list below prints both tiers and the Recovery Fix’s starting price. Diagnosis credit: Diagnosis fee credited in full if you book the Recovery Fix within 14 days of the report. Every other package, from pre-launch plans to full migrations, sits on the full price list.
Named-Cause Diagnosis prices and options
Founding-Client 5-Business-Day Named-Cause Diagnosis Sprint for Relaunched Sites
Sites whose Google traffic or leads fell 1-6 months after a migration, redesign, domain change or platform switch (any platform)
| Size | USD | GBP |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 10,000 URLs | $490 | £390 |
| Above 10,000 URLs | $890 | £710 |
Includes
- Search Console before/after comparison by URL (16 months)
- Crawl of up to 10,000 old URLs on the live site
- URL Inspection on up to 50 key URLs
- A check of the six causes in Google's traffic-drop guide, including Google update dates, AI Overview presence on the top 20 queries, and analytics/consent changes
- A written report naming the cause with dated evidence, plus a fixed-price fix quote
- A 30-minute walkthrough call
Not included
- Implementing the fixes (that is the Recovery Fix)
- Link building
- New content
Recovery Fix
Diagnosed sites whose causes are in scope: redirects, 404s, canonicals, noindex/robots, internal links, metadata, content restores, sitemaps
| Size | USD | GBP |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed price quoted in the diagnosis | From $1,990 | £1,590 |
Includes
- Hands-on WordPress fixes at the fixed price quoted in the diagnosis
- Re-crawl verification within 2 business days of the last fix
- 90 days of Weekly Redirect Guard
- Link Reclamation for the top 20 linking domains
Not included
- Fixes not in the fixed-price quote
- New content
What the Recovery Fix changes in WordPress
The Recovery Fix fixes the causes the diagnosis names, inside your WordPress site and at the price quoted in the report. In scope: missing or chained redirects, and old URLs that redirect to the wrong page; 404s on URLs that earned clicks or links; canonicals, noindex tags and robots.txt rules left over from staging; internal links that still point at old URLs; titles, headings and content lost in the new templates; and sitemaps that list old URLs.
Google’s site-move guide names incorrect redirects as a common mistake, including redirects “to the wrong (non-existent) URLs on the new site”4. A re-crawl checks each fix once it is live, and billing follows that check: Fix-Verified billing: Half to start; the other half invoiced only after our re-crawl shows each quoted fix live on your site. Others’ later changes excluded.
The fix also includes a period of Weekly Redirect Guard, which re-crawls your old URLs and alerts you when one breaks, and Link Reclamation, which asks the owners of sites that link to your old URLs to update those links. Both are listed under Prices. If the site runs on a platform other than WordPress, the diagnosis still names the cause and the URLs involved, and your developer makes the changes.
What you provide before the diagnosis starts
The diagnosis only reads data, so read access to Search Console is enough: a property owner adds us as a user under Settings > Users and permissions5, and owner rights are not needed.
Viewer access to Google Analytics 4, your old sitemap and a list of your old URLs help if you have them. WordPress admin access matters only once you book the fix. Before granting any access, you can read how site access and customer data are handled.
What no one can promise after a relaunch
No one can promise when, or whether, search traffic returns to its old level, and SEO Migration Studio does not. Google decides when the fixed URLs are crawled and indexed, and how they rank; the fix controls what Google finds when it gets there. For moved URLs, Google’s site-move guide says that “for medium-sized websites, it can take a few weeks or more for Google to gradually start showing the new URLs instead of the old ones”4, which is index time, not a traffic forecast.
Search traffic is a separate measure from index time. SALT.agency’s June 2026 study of 1,052 domain changes, drawn from its own projects and ones crowdsourced from the SEO community, put the median recovery time at 304 days, counting a site as recovered once the new domain’s monthly organic search traffic reached the old domain’s pre-migration baseline6. The study covers domain changes only. Queries where an AI Overview now appears are a separate matter: the report keeps them apart from the ones a fix can address.
After the fix: keeping the old URLs watched
Redirects need to stay in place after the fix: Google’s site-move guide says to “Keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year”4. After the included period, Weekly Redirect Guard continues at $149 / £119 a month.
If another relaunch is planned, a plan for your next relaunch maps each URL on your signed URL inventory before launch day instead of after it. If organic search brings in inquiries or sales and the cause of the drop is still unclear, the diagnosis is the place to start.
Terms for Named-Cause Diagnosis and options
Charged on delivery
- Applies to
- Named-Cause Diagnosis, booked with a saved card.
- How it is billed
- The card is charged only when the report is emailed; without a report there is no charge.
- Limit
- If your card cannot be saved at booking, you pay the fee at booking.
Diagnosis credit
- Who qualifies
- You book the Recovery Fix within 14 days of the diagnosis report.
- What you get
- The diagnosis fee is credited in full against the Recovery Fix.
- How it is applied
- Book the Recovery Fix within 14 days of the report.
- Limit
- Once per diagnosis.
Fix-Verified billing
- Applies to
- Recovery Fix at the fixed price quoted in the diagnosis.
- How it is billed
- The second half is invoiced only after our re-crawl shows each quoted fix live; we re-crawl within 2 business days of the last fix.
- Limit
- Others' later changes excluded. If the site is down or access is removed, the second half is invoiced 10 business days after the last fix.
Founding-Client bonus
Projects signed by 29 January 2027, 11:59 p.m. ET get 9 more months of Redirect Guard (sold separately at $149 / £119 a month).
- Who qualifies
- A Migration, Redesign, Intensive, SEO Migration Package or Recovery Fix signed before 29 January 2027, 11:59 p.m. ET.
- What you get
- 9 more months of Weekly Redirect Guard after the included 3, starting after your own launch.
- How it is applied
- Included in the order form when it is signed before the deadline.
- Limit
- Once per project. The window runs once and closes at 29 January 2027, 11:59 p.m. ET.
Frequently asked questions
What does the diagnosis check?
What access do you need?
How soon can you start a diagnosis?
How long until traffic comes back?
What if the cause is not something you can fix?
Do you handle Google penalties?
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