We have experience owning and managing complex international and multilingual website migration projects at scale.
Our dedicated international website migrations team will work with you to evaluate your existing cross-market architecture and partner with you as your SEO stakeholder, owning every regional consideration throughout the entirety of your migration project. POLARIS are experts in:
/ Benchmarking regional rankings, traffic and conversion data across all target markets to establish what must be retained market by market
/ Evaluating your international URL structure, whether ccTLDs, subdirectories or subdomains, and recommending the right architecture for your new site
/ Auditing and mapping multilingual content to ensure language and regional targeting signals are preserved throughout the transition
/ Technically managing hreflang implementation, geo-targeting configurations and international redirect chains to protect search equity across every market
POLARIS delivered a comprehensive SEO migration for Detecon, a complex project involving a complete website and brand overhaul and a consolidated bilingual sites, all while safeguarding existing search performance and domain authority. The successful project resulted in a 133% increase in daily site visits post-migration.
Detecon Global Website Migration
A proven process designed to protect cross-market performance and give you complete confidence throughout your global site launch. Our SEO website migration service is carried out using a 5-stage process refined using first-hand experience across multilingual, multi-domain and cross-regional projects since 2009.
1. Performance Analysis
We benchmark your existing visibility, traffic and key landing pages across every target market and language, so we know exactly what must be safeguarded during your international migration.
2. Content Migration
We map and validate every important page, keyword and user journey across all languages and locales to ensure your new site retains the international strength and relevance of the current one.
3. User Tracking & Search Engine Compliance
We set up and verify tracking, analytics and international search engine profiles, including geo-targeting configurations in Google Search Console, so your data stays accurate across all markets and search engines fully understand your new site's regional structure.
4. Technical Analysis & Changeover
We assess your new site's technical health for international readiness, covering hreflang implementation, ccTLD and subdirectory mapping, and cross-market redirect chains — delivering a clean, disruption-free changeover with every URL correctly preserved across all regions.
5. Post-Launch Monitoring & Reporting
We manually check international redirects, language validity and regional search visibility after launch to ensure performance holds steady across all markets, quickly resolving any cross-border issues that emerge.
Our Website Migration Checklist"We evaluate all 3 pillars of your SEO performance whilst keeping customer intent in mind. We are very analytical and have an open communication policy. We will keep you informed every step of the way. Managing all stakeholders involved, we will protect your performance and reputation as our own."James FooteSEO Director
The journey for many brands is success. POLARIS have consistently guided marketers to embark on website migration projects to informed and confident to make the right decisions for the journey ahead. From redesigning wireframes to restructuring site architectures, we have over 10,000 hours of website migration experience. Read what our partners have to say about their experience of choosing us as their SEO site migration agency.
POLARIS accelerated the re-development of Milton Park’s new website as they were undertaking a slight re-brand on their current site. As identified by our SEO Agency team, the website had multiple technical and content issues which held back their organic visibility due to an inherited website with fundamental legacy issues.
International migrations involve layers of complexity that go far beyond a standard domestic project. Managing hreflang implementation, ccTLD and subdirectory structures, multilingual content mapping and geo-targeting configurations across multiple markets simultaneously requires dedicated SEO expertise. A web developer or project manager will not identify or mitigate the regional-specific risks that can cause entire markets to lose visibility overnight. Partnering with a specialist SEO migration agency gives you complete oversight on every cross-market decision, protecting your international search presence, user experience and regional business performance throughout the transition.
International migrations typically require longer timelines than domestic projects, due to the added complexity of multi-market content auditing, hreflang validation, regional performance benchmarking and cross-functional stakeholder management. Our 5-stage framework is designed to integrate seamlessly with your broader project timeline, allowing us to work in parallel with your development and localisation teams. The number of markets, languages and URLs involved will determine the precise duration, which we will scope clearly at the outset of every engagement.
The earlier, the better. International migrations carry significantly greater risk when an SEO agency is brought in late, particularly where international site architecture decisions, such as domain structure or URL format, have already been made without SEO input. Engaging POLARIS at the earliest project stage allows us to influence your international URL strategy, multilingual content framework and technical implementation plan before any irreversible decisions are taken.
An international website migration refers to the process of moving a website that serves multiple countries, languages or regions from one platform, domain structure or hosting environment to another. This could involve migrating from subdomains to subdirectories, consolidating ccTLDs into a single domain structure, or redesigning the entire architecture of a multilingual site. Each market introduces its own performance benchmarks, technical signals and user behaviour considerations, meaning the risks of an international migration are amplified across every region the site operates in.
Backlinks pointing to international versions of your site, whether to ccTLDs, regional subdirectories or language-specific pages, carry independent authority that must be preserved during a migration. If URLs change without correctly implemented redirects, that equity is lost, and international rankings built over years can deteriorate rapidly. As part of our technical evaluation stage, we audit the backlink profile of every regional version of your site, ensure all high-value inbound URLs are mapped to their correct destination on the new site, and verify that redirect chains are clean, direct, and properly implemented for each market.
Hreflang is one of the highest-risk elements of any international migration. If your URL structure changes every existing hreflang annotation referencing old URLs becomes invalid, which can cause search engines to lose the ability to serve the correct regional version of your pages to users in the right markets. As part of our international migration process, we audit your existing hreflang implementation before the migration begins, rebuild the annotation framework to reflect your new URL structure, and validate every tag post-launch to confirm that regional targeting signals are correctly re-established across all markets.
By establishing detailed benchmarks across every target market and language, we identify the structural, content and hreflang signals that underpin your international presence. This ensures that critical assets are preserved and optimised throughout the transition, safeguarding your website's regional authority, usability and global search prominence.
This ensures that POLARIS can act as your SEO stakeholder from the beginning, ensuring every decision made about the new site is evaluated through the lens of cross-market performance.
By scrutinising proposed layouts and the architectural framework of your new international site, we ensure continuity and enhancement of your existing regional strengths.
A comparative review of the current and redesigned site - alongside competitor analysis across key markets - provides a strategic perspective on preserving valuable content assets while uncovering opportunities to elevate international performance in underserved regions.
This data-driven approach empowers you to make informed decisions at a market level, refine international digital strategies, and enhance audience engagement region by region.
Additionally, we ensure full compliance with search engine guidelines for international sites safeguarding global visibility and long-term sustainability across all organic markets.
This includes analysing international site architecture, hreflang implementation, load efficiency and regional accessibility to ensure an optimal experience for both users and search engines in every locale.
Additionally, we create a comprehensive international redirection strategy, meticulously mapping all URL changes across every market and language to minimise errors and preserve global search equity. This proactive approach ensures a seamless transition with minimal disruption to any regional market.
We rigorously test international user pathways, multilingual tracking implementation and regional redirect chains to verify seamless functionality and engagement across every locale. Additionally, we provide ongoing performance assessments for up to four weeks post-launch, delivering market-by-market insights to safeguard rankings, traffic and overall digital effectiveness across your entire global footprint.
