Website Migration — SEO Impact Report

truelegacyhomes.com — Static Site Transition Analysis
Report Date: April 14, 2026 Prepared by: Justin Hart, CMO Period: Jan 1 – Apr 9, 2026 Updated with Ahrefs audit data
Critical Finding: The website migration around March 9 has caused a 57% drop in daily organic sessions, a 97% crash in organic conversions, and a 75% decline in organic form submissions. Three technical root causes have been identified that require immediate action.

Key Metrics at a Glance

Comparing Pre-change (Jan 1 – Mar 8, 67 days) vs. Post-change (Mar 9 – Apr 9, 31 days). All changes are daily-rate adjusted.

Organic Sessions/Day
-57%
478 → 207/day
Organic Conversions
-97%
2.04 → 0.06/day
Organic Form Submissions
-75%
2.3 → 0.6/day
Bounce Rate (Organic)
57%
Was 32% pre-change
Total Form Submissions/Day
-61%
13.5 → 5.3/day
Sitemap Pages Indexed
0
126 submitted, 0 indexed

Form Submissions by Source (CallRail)

Source Pre-Change Pre/Day Post-Change Post/Day Change
Google Ads 546 8.1 118 3.8 -53%
Google Organic 154 2.3 18 0.6 -75%
Direct 97 1.4 23 0.7 -49%
Estate Sale Shoppers List 68 1.0 0 0.0 -100%
Facebook Organic 6 0.1 0 0.0 -100%
Yahoo Organic 6 0.1 2 0.1
TOTAL 904 13.5 163 5.3 -61%

Weekly Form Submission Trend

W01 (Jan 5)
148
W02 (Jan 12)
100
W03 (Jan 19)
68
W04 (Jan 26)
98
W05 (Feb 2)
121
W06 (Feb 9)
110
W07 (Feb 16)
91
W08 (Feb 23)
61
W09 (Mar 2)
87
W10 (Mar 9) ← switch
30
W11 (Mar 16)
29
W12 (Mar 23)
38
W13 (Mar 30)
45
W14 (Apr 6)
24

Google Analytics — Organic Search Channel

Metric Pre-Change (67 days) Daily Rate Post-Change (31 days) Daily Rate Change
Sessions 32,069 478 6,406 207 -57%
Engaged Sessions 21,855 326 2,764 89 -73%
Page Views 42,327 631 8,763 283 -55%
Bounce Rate 31.9% 56.9% +78% relative
Avg Session Duration 171 sec 112 sec -35%
Conversions 137 2.04 2 0.06 -97%

All Channels Comparison

Channel Pre Sessions Post Sessions Pre Bounce Post Bounce Pre Conv Post Conv
Organic Search 32,069 6,406 31.9% 56.9% 137 2
Direct 10,051 27,020 64.5% 96.0% 68 7
Cross-network 13,054 3,566 67.5% 59.8% 44 1
Email 8,763 135 33.7% 56.3% 105 1
Paid Search 5,787 1,632 53.5% 58.0% 183 3
Organic Social 575 165 51.0% 62.4% 2 0
Referral 293 113 39.2% 53.1% 6 0

Note: The "Direct" channel post-change shows 27K sessions with a 96% bounce rate — likely bot traffic or tracking misconfiguration on the new site.

Top Organic Landing Pages — Before & After

Daily-rate adjusted. Many pages were moved from root paths (e.g., /hummel-figurines/) to /blog/ paths. Combined old+new URL traffic is shown where applicable.

Page Pre/Day Post/Day (old URL) Post/Day (new /blog/ URL) Net/Day Net Change
/hummel-figurines/ 98 25 13 38 -61%
/royal-doulton-figurines/ 34 6 4 10 -71%
/lladro-values/ 30 6 2 8 -73%
/antique-crocks/ 30 5 5 10 -67%
/age-glass-bottles/ 27 5 10 15 -44%
/corningware-blue-cornflower/ 20 4 4 -80%
/fenton-glass-values/ 17 2 5 7 -59%
/shop-current-estate-sales/ 16 2 2 -88%
/toby-jugs-values/ 15 4 3 7 -53%
/beanie-baby-value/ 16 4 4 -75%
/ (homepage) 30 30 30 ≈0%

Bounce rates on surviving old URLs jumped from ~27% to ~70%+, indicating content or UX changes are driving visitors away even when they do land on the page.

Google Search Console — Top Query Performance

Query Pre Clicks Pre Position Post Clicks Post Position Daily Change
true legacy homes 637 1.5 230 1.3 -22%
estate sales san diego 368 5.0 70 6.5 -57%
hummel figurines value 364 1.7 75 2.3 -54%
true legacy estate sales 327 2.0 157 1.2 -3%
royal doulton figurines value 291 1.9 23 3.0 -82%
hummel figurines 277 6.2 40 5.7 -68%
hummel figurines price guide 182 1.5 32 1.7 -62%
royal doulton figurines 166 3.9 dropped out
hummels value 162 1.6 37 1.7 -49%
lladro figurines value 67 3.4 22 2.0 -27%
san diego estate sales 92 4.3 16 5.8 -62%

Average positions have slipped for most non-branded queries, with several losing 1–2 positions. Branded queries ("true legacy homes") are holding relatively stable.

Root Causes Identified

1. URL Structure Changed — Content Moved to /blog/ Paths

Blog and content pages were moved from their established URLs (e.g., /hummel-figurines/) to new paths (e.g., /blog/hummel-figurines). While 301 redirects are in place, URL changes trigger a ranking reset in Google. It can take weeks to months to recover, and the new URLs have to re-earn the ranking equity the old URLs had built up over years.

2. Canonical Tags Point to GitHub Pages CRITICAL

Google Search Console URL Inspection reveals that the site's canonical tags point to iambarabbas.github.io instead of truelegacyhomes.com. Google is currently overriding this to use the correct domain, but conflicting canonical signals create indexing confusion and likely contribute to ranking degradation.

User canonical: https://iambarabbas.github.io/blog/hummel-figurines.html
Google canonical: https://www.truelegacyhomes.com/blog/hummel-figurines

3. New Sitemap Has Zero Indexed Pages CRITICAL

The new sitemap at truelegacyhomes.com/sitemap.xml has 126 URLs submitted but 0 indexed. The old sitemap (www.truelegacyhomes.com/sitemap_index.xml) has 1 error and 2 warnings. Google is not discovering the new site structure through the sitemap.

4. Bounce Rate Doubled Across All Content

Every major content page saw bounce rates jump from ~25–35% to ~55–80%. This indicates the new site may have thinner content, different layout/UX, missing internal links, or fewer engagement elements (CTAs, related articles, etc.) compared to the old site.

5. Conversion Tracking Likely Broken WARNING

Organic conversions crashed 97% (from 2.04/day to 0.06/day). The homepage alone went from 74 conversions to 0 in the post period. This extreme drop suggests the new site either lacks proper GA4 event tracking, changed the form/CTA implementation, or broke the form submission flow.

6. Anomalous Direct Traffic

Direct traffic jumped from 10K to 27K sessions post-change, but with a 96% bounce rate and minimal conversions. This is likely bot traffic hitting the static site, or a tracking implementation issue where sessions are being miscategorized.

Ahrefs Site Audit — Technical Health

Independent crawl-based audit confirms and extends the issues found via GA4 and GSC. Domain Rating: 23. Referring Domains: 522.

Site Health Score
45/100
Trending down (−10)
Broken Pages
148
42 returning 404, 42 other 4XX
Broken Images
106
Across 88 pages
Redirect Chains
337
Internal links → redirects

Full Issue Breakdown

Issue Count Severity Impact
Canonical tags pointing to redirect URLs 158 Critical Confirms the GitHub Pages canonical issue — Google sees conflicting signals
Redirect URLs in sitemap 97 Critical Sitemap lists old URLs that redirect instead of final destinations
Broken images (missing files) 106 High Hurts UX and page quality signals; contributes to bounce rate increase
Pages returning 404 42 High Old content URLs returning not-found instead of redirecting
Pages returning other 4XX 42 High Access or configuration errors on live pages
Internal links pointing to redirects 337 Medium Redirect chains slow crawling and dilute link equity

How This Connects to the Traffic Drop

The Ahrefs audit independently confirms all three critical issues found via Google's own tools:

Combined with 106 broken images and 337 redirect chains, Google is seeing a site with significant quality and technical issues — which directly explains the ranking drops across all content pages.

Search Console — Top Pages by Clicks

Page URL Pre Clicks (67d) Post Clicks (30d) Daily Change Status
/hummel-figurines/ 6,381 732 -74% Redirecting
/blog/hummel-figurines 325 New & Indexed
/lladro-values/ 2,461 234 -79% Redirecting
/royal-doulton-figurines/ 2,387 145 -86% Redirecting
/antique-crocks/ 2,099 144 -85% Redirecting
/age-glass-bottles/ 1,898 162 -81% Redirecting
/blog/age-glass-bottles 283 New & Indexed
/ (homepage) 1,513 733 -8% Stable
/corningware-blue-cornflower/ 1,336 127 -79% Redirecting
/fenton-glass-values/ 1,206 55 -90% Redirecting
/beanie-baby-value/ 1,026 92 -80% Redirecting
/shop-current-estate-sales/ 974 77 -82% Redirecting

Recommended Actions

Data Sources

Pre-change period: January 1 – March 8, 2026 (67 days). Post-change period: March 9 – April 9, 2026 (31 days). All percentage changes are daily-rate adjusted to account for different period lengths. GSC data available through April 7 (2-day lag).