By Mehdi HassanHow do you avoid losing image search traffic during a migration?
You avoid losing image search traffic by keeping the signals Google uses to understand images: the page they appear on, their file names, alt text and nearby text, and stable URLs for images that already rank. Images get forgotten in migrations because they're treated as assets, not content.
For most B2B sites, image search is a small channel, so this is about not breaking things rather than chasing new traffic. For sites with product shots, diagrams or original illustrations, it can matter more. Either way, images belong in the plan alongside pages, which our website migration SEO checklist covers end to end.
Does image search traffic matter for your site?
Image search traffic matters if Search Console shows meaningful clicks with the search type set to Image, or if other sites link to or embed your images. Check before you plan, because the answer decides whether you need image redirects at all.
Filter Search Console by image
In the Performance report, change the search type to Image and export pages and queries. This shows which pages earn clicks through image results.
Check image backlinks
In your backlink tool, look for links that point directly at image files, such as diagrams or infographics others have embedded.
Crawl image URLs
Crawl the old site with image extraction on, and export each image's URL, file name, alt text and the pages it appears on.
Mark the valuable ones
Flag images with search clicks or backlinks. These get preserved URLs or redirects; everything else just needs good alt text on the new site.
What happens to image URLs on Webflow and Framer CDNs?
On Webflow and Framer, images are served from the platform's own CDN domains rather than from your domain. That's fast and convenient, but it means you don't control those URLs. When you leave the platform, you can't redirect them, and they may stop working once the old site or assets are removed.
Where images are hosted | Example | Can you redirect old image URLs? |
|---|---|---|
Your own domain | example.com/wp-content/uploads/chart.png | Yes, like any URL |
Webflow CDN | Webflow asset domain | No, the domain isn't yours |
Framer CDN | Framer asset domain | No, the domain isn't yours |
Your own CDN subdomain | images.example.com/chart.png | Yes, at the CDN or DNS level |
Next.js image optimization | Optimized path on your domain | Source files yes; optimized paths regenerate |
There's a second trap in Webflow exports. When you export CMS content as CSV, images inside rich-text fields come out as references to the Webflow CDN, and importing rich text elsewhere can turn them into placeholders. Every one of those images has to be downloaded and re-hosted, or the new site will depend on the old platform. Our guide to importing a CSV into Webflow CMS covers the reverse direction, which has its own rich-text issues.
How do you migrate file names and alt text?
Migrate file names and alt text by exporting them with your crawl and mapping them as fields, the same way you'd handle titles and descriptions. Descriptive file names and accurate alt text help Google understand images, and alt text is also an accessibility requirement.
- Keep descriptive file names when re-hosting. Platforms sometimes rename uploads with hashes or IDs, so check what the new platform does.
- Carry over alt text from the old crawl, not from memory. On CMS sites, alt text may live on the asset, the field or the rich-text image.
- Fix empty and junk alt text while you're there, describing what the image shows. Decorative images should have empty alt text on purpose.
- Keep captions and nearby text next to the image. Google uses surrounding content to understand it.
- Keep images on the same pages they appeared on before, since the page's relevance carries to the image.
Google's guidance on image SEO best practices covers file names, alt text and image sitemaps in detail. Metadata for social sharing images is a separate field set, so map Open Graph images alongside titles and descriptions.
When do redirects matter for image SEO in a migration?
Image redirects matter when the old image URL is on a domain you control and the image earns search traffic or backlinks. In that case, a 301 from the old image URL to the new one helps Google connect them. For all other images, focus on alt text and re-hosting instead.
Add image rows to your 301 redirect map only for the flagged images. On WordPress moves, uploads paths are on your domain, so redirect rules or a host rule for the uploads folder can handle them. For images on a platform CDN, the best you can do is keep the new image on the same page with the same file name and alt text, and let Google re-index it.
Hypothetical example: a diagram that other sites embed
For example, suppose a startup's WordPress blog has an original architecture diagram that other blogs embed and link to, at example.com/wp-content/uploads/data-pipeline-diagram.png. Search Console shows it earning clicks from image search.
The new Next.js site stores images in a public folder, so the team keeps the file name and places it at example.com/images/data-pipeline-diagram.png, adds a 301 from the old uploads path, keeps the alt text and caption, and leaves the diagram on the same post. Sites embedding the old URL still show the image through the redirect, and the team emails the two largest of them to update the link.
How do you check images after launch?
Check images after launch by crawling the new site with image extraction on and comparing it with your old crawl. Look for broken images, missing alt text, images still loaded from the old platform's CDN and images that lost their file names.
Then watch Search Console with the Image search type over the following weeks, page by page. If image clicks fall on a page that kept its images, check that the images are in the HTML rather than loaded only by script, and that the page itself kept its rankings. Our guide to traffic drops after a website migration covers page-level diagnosis, and what to do after an SEO audit helps turn the findings into a fix list.
