- Secure your accounts before you give notice, not after.
- Get an inventory of what was done and what is in flight. Half-finished work is where damage happens.
- Overlap by two weeks if you can. A cold handover loses context that costs months.
- Do not let the new agency rebuild everything in month one to prove a point.
Switching provider is routine and usually beneficial. The losses come from the handover, not the decision, and they are avoidable with a fortnight of preparation.
Before you give notice
Everything that follows is easier while the outgoing agency still wants a good reference. Once notice is given, cooperation becomes optional, so the ownership work comes first.
- Confirm ownership. Domain registrar, hosting, DNS, analytics, Search Console, Google Business Profile, ad accounts, CMS admin. Each should be in an account you control, with your email as owner.
- Export the history. Analytics data, Search Console performance, rank tracking history, all reports and audits delivered. Access disappears the day the relationship ends.
- Check the contract. Notice period, ownership of deliverables, and anything about content licensing.
- Take a baseline. Current positions, traffic, enquiries. Without it you cannot tell whether the transition cost you anything.
Ownership is the one that catches people out. Being an administrator on an account someone else owns is not the same thing, and the difference only becomes apparent on the day access is withdrawn:
| Asset | What you need | What is not enough |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | Registrar account in your company name | The agency "manages" it for you |
| Hosting and DNS | Your own account, your own billing | Access through their reseller panel |
| Analytics | Owner on the property and the account | Editor access they granted you |
| Search Console | Verified owner, ideally by DNS | Delegated user they can remove |
| Business Profile | Primary owner | Manager, which the owner can revoke |
| Ad accounts | Your account, your payment method | Their MCC with your card on it |
| CMS and code | Admin plus the repository | A login with no way to add others |
| Content and assets | Files, and the licence in writing | It exists on the live site today |
| Third-party tools | Subscriptions in your name | Seats on their agency licence |
The handover to ask for
A written list of what was done in the last twelve months, what is in progress, and what was planned next. The keyword research and content plan. Any redirect maps, technical documentation or custom code. Login details for third-party tools you paid for. And the links they built, so the new agency does not spend a month rediscovering them.
Agencies that behave well here are common; those that do not usually delay rather than refuse, which is why the ownership check comes first.
The first month with the new provider
The first month sets the pattern for the year. Two failure modes are common, and they pull in opposite directions:
Everything is declared broken, the site is restructured in week two, and any drop afterwards is impossible to attribute. Ask what they intend to keep before you ask what they will change.
Three weeks of "onboarding", a discovery document, and nothing shipped by week eight. Diagnosis is not a deliverable if it never becomes a change.
Resist the rebuild. A new agency has an incentive to declare everything broken, because it justifies the fee and resets expectations. Some of it will be broken; not all of it. Ask for a diagnosis with evidence before anything is changed, and specifically ask what they intend to keep.
Protect the content that ranks. The most common self-inflicted loss during a transition is a new team rewriting or restructuring pages that were performing, because the pages did not match their template.
What to watch for eight weeks
Four numbers, taken weekly from the baseline you recorded before notice:
| Signal | Normal during a transition | Stop and diagnose when |
|---|---|---|
| Indexing coverage | Small movements as pages are cleaned up | A whole template moves to not-indexed |
| Top twenty positions | A dip in the first fortnight | Still below baseline after six weeks |
| Enquiries from organic | Flat, with weekly noise | Down two weeks running with positions stable |
| 404s in the server logs | A handful after any restructure | Rising steadily, or any old URL with links |
Indexing coverage, positions for your top twenty queries, enquiries by source, and 404s in the server logs. A dip in the first fortnight during a technical clean-up is normal; a sustained decline is a signal to stop and diagnose rather than to wait politely.
“Almost nothing is lost by changing agency. A great deal is lost by changing agency without owning your own accounts first.”
Frequently asked questions
Should we overlap the two agencies?
Two weeks if the outgoing one is cooperative. It costs a fraction of a month's fee and saves far more in lost context.
What if the outgoing agency owns our domain?
Start the transfer immediately and in writing, before notice. If they resist, the registrar has a dispute process, but prevention is far cheaper than that route.
How long before a new agency should show results?
Diagnosis in weeks two to four, first fixes shipped by week six, measurable movement by month three. If month three looks like month one, the same conversation is due again.
Do we have to tell the outgoing agency why we are leaving?
No, but a specific reason usually produces a better handover than a vague one. "We need more shipped work" is easier to respond to than "we are going in a different direction".
Can we keep the content they wrote?
Usually yes, but check the contract before you assume it. Where licensing is unclear, ask for it in writing while the relationship is still cordial.
Should we pause work during the handover?
Pause new publishing, not maintenance. The Business Profile, indexing checks and broken links still need attention during the gap, and a fortnight of neglect is easy to avoid.
Thinking about switching?
We can review the current work first and tell you whether the problem is the agency or the brief.
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