How do I switch SEO companies without losing rankings?
Short answer
Rankings are attached to your website and your Google Business Profile, not to the company managing them, so a switch on its own shouldn't cost you anything. The losses come when something is removed: a site on the old provider's platform, a phone number, a page, account access. Secure everything first, record a baseline, then change providers.
To switch SEO companies without losing rankings, make sure nothing that Google already relies on is removed or changed during the handover. SEO stands for search engine optimization. Your rankings rest on your pages, your domain, your Google Business Profile, your reviews and the links pointing at you. Changing who manages those doesn’t, by itself, tell Google anything. I can’t promise that rankings will hold, because nobody controls Google, but the avoidable losses come from a short list of causes.
What causes a drop during a switch
Usually something has disappeared.
| What goes missing | How it happens | How to prevent it |
|---|---|---|
| The whole website | It sat on the old provider’s platform and ends with the service | Find out before giving notice, and have a replacement ready on the same domain |
| Individual pages | Pages the old provider wrote are taken down, or addresses change in a rebuild | Keep the pages if your terms allow it, and redirect any address that changes |
| A phone number | A tracking number owned by the old provider is switched off while it’s still on your site or profile | Find every place a tracking number appears and replace it first |
| Account access | The profile, analytics or ad account was in the provider’s name | Move ownership to yourself before the switch |
| Measurement | Tracking is removed, so nobody can tell whether anything changed | Keep your own analytics and Search Console in place throughout |
The order to do it in
Secure, record, add, and only then remove.
- Confirm what you own. Work through the domain, website, profile, analytics and ad accounts until you know who owns your website and accounts.
- Read your notice terms, so you know the dates and what the provider will and won’t hand over.
- Record a baseline: current rankings across your service area, the list of every page address on the site, and recent call and form numbers.
- Take a full copy of the website.
- Give the new provider access while the old one still has it, so there’s no gap.
- Give notice, and when the service ends, remove the old provider’s access and change any shared passwords.
Keep the handover civil if you can. The outgoing provider knows things about your site that aren’t written down anywhere, and many will answer a reasonable question from whoever takes over.
If the website has to be rebuilt
This is the riskiest part of a switch, so treat it as its own project. If the old site can’t come with you, the new one needs to keep the same domain and, where possible, the same page addresses. It also has to carry over the content that was earning traffic. Any address that changes needs a 301 redirect, which tells browsers and Google that a page has moved for good. Skipping this step is a common way to lose rankings in a site migration.
Don’t let the new provider change everything at once
The other risk comes from the new provider, me included: changing too much in the first weeks. If the titles, the content, the profile categories and the site structure are all rewritten together and rankings move, nobody can say which change did it.
I start with the baseline from a Scientific SEO Audit, then change one thing and measure again about two weeks later. I leave whatever was already working alone until there’s a measured reason to touch it. A previous provider’s work can be better than the owner was led to believe, and it would be a waste to undo it.
How to tell whether the switch cost you anything
Compare the same measurements before and after, taken the same way. That means the same searches, with rankings checked from the same points across your service area, and calls counted from the same sources. Some movement from week to week is normal and has nothing to do with the switch. A change worth acting on is one that shows up across the service area and lasts beyond a single measurement.