By Mehdi HassanShould you rewrite copy during a migration?
Yes, for some pages, and no for others. Rewrite copy during a migration on pages that are judged by conversion, and leave pages that are judged by search alone until the new site has settled. The split protects your rankings while still fixing the pages that sell.
A migration is tempting as a fresh start. The platform changes, the design changes, and it feels wasteful to carry old words into a new site. But search engines rank pages partly on their content, so rewriting a page that ranks is a second change on top of the URL and template change. If traffic drops, you won't know which change caused it.
We work copy-first, so we're biased toward better words. This framework is how we keep that bias from costing a client their traffic. It sits inside the wider process in our guide to CMS content migration.
Lift and shift vs rewrite: what's the difference?
Lift and shift means moving content unchanged to the new platform. A rewrite means changing the message, structure or wording on the way. Most good migrations do both, on different pages, plus a third option: merging or removing pages that shouldn't move at all.
Approach | What changes | Best for | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
Lift and shift | Platform and template only | Pages with organic traffic or backlinks | Low, if URLs and metadata carry over |
Rewrite now | Message, structure and copy | Homepage, pricing, product and paid landing pages | Low for SEO, since these rarely depend on long-tail search |
Refresh later | Copy updated after launch | Ranking posts that are dated or underperforming | Low, because changes are isolated and measurable |
Merge or redirect | Page removed, 301 to the best match | Thin, duplicate or outdated content | Low, when the redirect target is relevant |
The common failure is a fifth option nobody chooses on purpose: rewriting everything because the new design needs different lengths. Design for the content you have, or decide the new copy first. Don't let a layout force rewrites on ranking pages.
Which pages should you rewrite now?
Rewrite the pages that visitors arrive at already interested, where the job is to explain and convert rather than to be found. For most startups, that's a short list, and it's where new copy pays off fastest.
- Homepage. It usually ranks for your brand name, which a rewrite won't threaten. It's also where an outdated positioning hurts most.
- Pricing. Plans, packaging and objections change faster than any other page. Old pricing copy is often simply wrong.
- Product and feature pages. These tend to describe the product as it was at launch, not as it is now.
- Paid landing pages. Their traffic comes from ads, so search rankings aren't at stake at all.
- About and careers. Low search value, high trust value, and often years out of date.
Check the exception before you start: if a product page ranks for a valuable non-brand term, treat it like a blog post and keep its core content, or rewrite carefully around the same topic and headings.
Which pages should you move as-is and refresh later?
Move any page that earns meaningful organic traffic, holds backlinks or gets cited by AI answers, with its URL, title, headings and main body intact. Refresh it after launch, once you can measure the effect of each change on its own.
Blog posts, guides, comparison pages, glossaries and documentation usually fall here. Their value is accumulated: links, rankings and the trust search engines have in that specific page. Keep the substance and fix only what is broken, such as dead links, wrong prices or a product name that's changed.
When the new site is stable, refresh in batches. Our guide to how often to update website content covers the cadence. Pages you plan to restructure heavily also deserve a look at the content model, so the new CMS doesn't copy old mistakes.
How do you decide page by page?
Score each page on two things, search value and conversion role, then let the combination decide. It turns an argument about taste into a spreadsheet decision your whole team can check.
Export the page list
Start from a crawl and the sitemap. Add organic clicks, backlinks and conversions per page from your analytics and Search Console.
Mark search value
High if the page earns non-brand organic clicks or holds links. Low if almost all its visits come from navigation, ads or email.
Mark conversion role
High if the page asks for a signup, demo or purchase, or sits one click before one. Low if it's mainly informational.
Apply the rule
Low search, high conversion: rewrite now. High search: move as-is and refresh later. Low on both: merge, redirect or cut.
Lock the decisions
Record the decision per URL in the same sheet as your redirect map, so the build team doesn't make copy calls on the fly.
The method overlaps with a website content audit before a redesign and a content audit before migration. Run them as one exercise rather than three.
Hypothetical example: a SaaS site with a dated homepage and a busy blog
For example, suppose a B2B SaaS company is moving from WordPress to a new platform. Its homepage still describes the product it sold two years ago. The blog has a handful of guides that bring in most of its organic signups, plus many short news posts nobody reads.
Using the framework, the homepage, pricing and three feature pages get new copy before design starts. The strong guides move unchanged, apart from fixing outdated screenshots and links. The news posts are merged into a single changelog page or redirected. After launch, the team refreshes two guides at a time and watches their rankings. This is an illustration, not a client result.
How do you rewrite copy during migration without losing rankings?
Keep the URL, the topic and the main headings of any page that ranks, and change copy around them in small, measurable steps. Search engines tolerate improvement; they struggle with pages that suddenly become about something else.
Also keep titles and meta descriptions on ranking pages unless they're clearly weak. And if you're moving from a JavaScript-heavy build, make sure the new pages serve their copy in the HTML; React SPA SEO migrations fail on rendering more often than on words.
Who should rewrite the copy, and when?
The person who understands your buyer best should write it, before design starts. Copy written after the design is finished ends up shaped by boxes instead of by what the buyer needs to hear.
For conversion pages, that's often a founder working with a copywriter, or a team that owns words and design together. We cover the options in who should write your website copy. AI drafting helps with volume, but as our guide to AI-assisted website migration explains, agents are better at moving content than deciding what it should say.
If conversion is the real worry behind the migration, a CRO audit can tell you which pages to rewrite first, using evidence instead of opinion.
