In shortA law firm can change website provider without losing its search position, but only if the move protects what the current site has already earned: its addresses, enquiry routes, email and regulatory pages. Google says rankings can fluctuate for a few weeks during a move and then settle, and that permanent redirects pass on a page's value.
Most lasting damage comes from pages dropped without redirects, broken forms or a domain the firm doesn't control.
Why firms switch, and why many put it off
The usual reasons are familiar: changes take weeks, the firm can't see what it is paying for, the site looks dated, or enquiries have flattened. Some firms discover they are tied in by a contract, or that the provider controls the domain or the hosting in a way that makes leaving awkward.
The hesitation is understandable. A law firm's website often carries years of search history, links from directories and referrers, and an enquiry route the practice relies on. The fear is losing that. The good news is that the value lives in things that can be identified and carried across, not in the old provider.
What is actually at stake in a move
It helps to separate the things that carry the firm's search position and enquiries from the things that are simply the old design.
- Page addresses (URLs): search engines, directories, Google Business Profile, referrers and old emails all point at them.
- Content that earns enquiries: some older pages quietly bring in work and look unimportant until they disappear.
- Email: on most firms' domains, email and the website share the same DNS settings, so a careless change can stop email.
- Enquiry delivery: forms, call tracking and notifications have to be reconnected and tested, not assumed.
- Measurement: analytics, Search Console and their history should stay with the firm.
- Regulatory content: price and service information, complaints details and the SRA number and badge must be in place on the day the new site goes live.
The ownership questions that decide how easy it is
How smooth a move is depends less on the new provider than on what the firm already controls. If the domain is registered to the firm and the firm can manage its DNS, analytics, Search Console and Google Business Profile, a move does not need the old provider's goodwill. If the provider registered the domain in its own name or holds the only admin access, recovering those comes first.
The contract matters too: who owns the content and design, any notice period or minimum term, and what happens to hosting when the agreement ends. We cover what a firm should own in our guide to SEO retainers and ownership.
What Google says about site moves
Google's own guidance is reassuring on the main fear. It says to expect temporary fluctuation in rankings during a move, that for a medium-sized site it can take a few weeks or more for new addresses to replace old ones, and that rankings settle down over time.
Where addresses change, Google recommends permanent server-side redirects from each old URL to its new equivalent, says these do not lose ranking value, and advises keeping them for as long as possible and generally for at least a year. Where the domain itself changes, Search Console has a Change of Address tool. None of this is exotic, but each part has to be done for the move to be uneventful.
Where moves usually go wrong
Problems after a move are rarely caused by the new design. They come from things nobody owned during the switch.
- Old addresses left to 404 because the new site was planned around a new structure, with no redirect map.
- Pages judged 'old' and dropped, when they were among the few that brought in enquiries.
- A 'do not index' setting from the test site carried into the live site.
- Email interrupted for a day or more because DNS records were replaced rather than migrated.
- Enquiry forms that look fine but no longer deliver anywhere, discovered weeks later.
- Price pages, complaints information or the SRA badge missing at launch.
- Launch checked on the build rather than on the live site, so problems in hosting or caching go unseen.
What a careful move involves
A careful provider starts by understanding what the current site does before anything changes: which pages bring visits and enquiries, where links come from, how email and forms are set up, and what regulatory content must survive. Every old address is then either kept or redirected to its best equivalent.
At launch the work is checked on the live site, not just in development: redirects, indexing, forms delivering to the right inbox, email still flowing, and the SRA details in place. Then the site is watched for some weeks while search engines catch up, so anything unexpected is fixed early rather than discovered in next quarter's figures.
How we handle a move
When we take over from another provider, we keep existing addresses wherever they still make sense and redirect the rest, carry across content that earns enquiries, and test enquiry delivery end to end before and after launch. A typical firm website launches in four to six weeks, depending on scope and how quickly content is approved.
On full payment the new site, its code and its content belong to the firm, so the next move, if there ever is one, is easier than this one. We won't promise that rankings never move; Google itself says they fluctuate during a move. We will tell you what we're protecting and show you that it has been protected.
Sources
Checked 29 October 2026. This guide summarises the rules; it is not legal advice.