Migrating to Contentful, a headless CMS, is becoming more common as businesses look for flexibility, scalability, and future-proofing.

The platform offers clear advantages over traditional CMSs, but any migration carries risks.

For SEO, the stakes are particularly high, lose sight of critical details, and you risk traffic declines, ranking losses, and content visibility issues. This article explores the main SEO risks of moving to Contentful and how to anticipate them.

Content Structure and URL Integrity

One of the most significant risks during migration is disrupting URL structures. Contentful requires you to model content differently, and this change often alters how slugs, folders, and hierarchies are handled.

If these changes are not mapped carefully, it can result in broken links, orphaned pages, or inconsistent URL patterns. From an SEO perspective, the danger is immediate, as rankings tied to specific URLs may decline, and organic traffic to those pages can drop sharply.

Redirect chains that are set up poorly or inconsistently also increase crawl inefficiency, which limits how effectively search engines can index your site.

Takeaway: Always perform a full URL inventory before migration, map redirects on a one-to-one basis wherever possible, and test them extensively before launch to ensure that equity is preserved.

Metadata and “SEO Fields” Transfer

Meta titles, descriptions, canonical tags, and Open Graph tags are often overlooked during migration. While these may seem like minor fields in a content model, they carry major SEO significance. If they are not migrated correctly, your site risks losing click-through rates because titles and descriptions are incomplete or duplicated.

Without canonicals or hreflang tags, search engines may struggle to identify the correct version of a page, leading to duplicate content issues or localisation errors. Over time this weakens your site’s authority and relevance in search results.

Takeaway: Define SEO field requirements in Contentful from the start, ensuring each content type includes mandatory SEO fields. Run a comprehensive audit after launch to confirm that metadata is complete, consistent, and aligned with best practice.

Internal Linking & Navigation Structures

Internal linking is the backbone of crawlability and authority distribution. When moving to Contentful, it is easy to break these connections if relationships between posts, categories, or product pages are not modelled explicitly.

The risk is compounded in large websites where internal linking strategies are complex and play a big role in ranking. If links are lost or redirected incorrectly, search engines may no longer find important pages, or link equity may be diluted.

Takeaway: Rebuild internal linking logic in Contentful content models, test link relationships thoroughly, and validate crawl paths with a site crawl before and after migration to ensure no important connections are lost.

Structured Data (Schema Markup) Loss

Structured data is an essential component for rich search features such as FAQs, reviews, or product listings. During migration, schema markup can be lost if it is not integrated into the new content models.

For example, structured fields for product details or article metadata may disappear, leaving Google without the information it needs to serve enhanced results. The impact is both immediate and visible, rich snippets risk not appearing, making your listings less competitive.

Takeaway: Reimplement structured data in Contentful models and validate using Google’s testing tools. Where possible, automate schema generation based on content types to maintain consistency at scale.

Asset & Media Migration Issues

Migrating media assets such as images, PDFs, and videos introduces another layer of complexity. File paths often change during migration, leading to broken image links across the site.

This not only disrupts the user experience but also reduces image visibility in search results. On top of that, unoptimised reuploads of large assets can increase page load times, directly harming Core Web Vitals and user satisfaction. Search engines will notice slower speeds and rankings may suffer as a result.

Takeaway: Audit all asset URLs before migration, ensure they are redirected properly, and use optimised formats for performance. After launch, test pages for broken assets and verify that all references resolve correctly.

Performance and Technical SEO Risks

Contentful’s headless nature means your website is only as good as the front-end framework and infrastructure you integrate with it. Frameworks like Next.js or Gatsby provide flexibility but also add dependencies on APIs, caching strategies, and build processes.

If these are not set up correctly, page load speeds can deteriorate, and Core Web Vitals may decline. Search engines consider these performance signals when ranking pages, so the technical implementation directly affects visibility. Poor caching or misconfigured CDNs may also make your site harder to crawl efficiently.

Takeaway: Leverage Contentful’s CDN, configure caching at the edge, and test Core Web Vitals before and after migration. Address performance issues promptly to ensure both users and search engines receive a fast, accessible site.

Content Gaps and Migration Errors

No migration is immune from errors, and content gaps are one of the most common problems. Pages can be missed, truncated, or duplicated, especially when automated migration scripts are used.

From an SEO perspective, this can mean losing entire sections of indexed content overnight. These gaps are often only noticed once organic traffic drops, which is far too late.

Takeaway: Compare XML sitemaps before and after migration, run sitewide crawls, and validate that all priority pages have transferred correctly. Build in quality assurance at multiple stages of the migration process to minimise risk.

Governance and Workflow Risks

Beyond the technical build, Contentful changes the way teams work. Editors need to understand how to use new content models and, critically, how SEO-related fields work.

Without this training, errors will creep in over time: duplicate slugs, missing metadata, or inconsistent canonical usage. These issues often do not appear immediately but can erode SEO performance over months or years.

Takeaway: Provide training for content editors on how to handle SEO-critical fields. Implement guardrails within Contentful, such as validation rules, to ensure slugs, metadata, and structured data fields are always entered correctly.

Conclusion

Migrating to Contentful can unlock new opportunities, but SEO must remain a top priority throughout the process. From preserving URLs and metadata to maintaining structured data, internal links, and performance, every detail matters.

A migration is not simply about moving content; it is about protecting the visibility and authority your site has built over time. With careful planning, detailed audits, and proper training for teams, the risks can be managed effectively and the long-term benefits of Contentful can be fully realised.

If you are planning a website migration to Contentful, make SEO part of your strategy from the very beginning. Get in touch, and we can help you plan the SEO migration aspect of your move to Contentful.