We migrated from Magento to Shopify just over three months ago and have noticed a decline in UK organic traffic. Is this typical after a migration, and what key checks should we prioritise to recover UK rankings?
Hi @karina_tabo
I might be able to offer you some insights on this
A traffic drop lasting over three months is not normal; it indicates a technical failure to pass your old site’s authority to the new one. Since the drop is specific to the UK, the root cause is almost certainly broken 301 Redirects or incorrect International Targeting settings.
First, verify that your old Magento URLs redirect to the exact corresponding Shopify product pages. If those old links now hit a “404 Not Found” or simply dump users onto the homepage, you have severed the SEO history those pages built up over years
Second, check Settings > Markets to ensure the UK is configured as a primary market and that your site is generating the correct hreflang="en-gb" tags.
Hope this helps!
Thanks, that’s really helpful. We’ll double-check our 301 redirects from Magento and review our UK market and hreflang settings. Appreciate you pointing us in the right direction.
Just to add to what PieLab said - I completely agree that the redirects are the first place I’d look.
The tricky part is having the right URLs to test.
Once a Magento store has been replaced by Shopify, many merchants no longer have a complete list of their legacy URLs. Checking only the redirects currently configured in Shopify doesn’t tell you whether every historical URL is covered.
If you still have an old sitemap, Search Console export, or server logs, those are great sources to validate against. Otherwise, it’s often worth reconstructing the historical URL list (for example, from the Wayback Machine) and testing those legacy URLs individually.
That’s usually where you’ll find the pages that now return 404s or quietly fall back to the homepage instead of reaching the most relevant destination.