Thinking about Migrating your site?
Without having a website migration plan in place, all your hard work improving organic traffic could drop significantly if not implemented correctly. Before you decide to launch your new site or start changing your site structure, there are several elements you will need to make sure are in place.
If you’re, for example, changing the URL structure of your site, then you will need to be mindful that there will be fluctuations in site performance whilst search engines figure out the change in the URL structure. Therefore, it would not be a surprise for some terms to move up and down a few places once your new site is live.
- Website migrations can temporarily impact organic search visibility and rankings, but they usually recover over time (if SEO is done properly).
- Don’t rush a website migration. It’s a complex process that requires careful planning and execution. Mistakes can have long-term effects.
- Clear, measurable goals will guide all aspects of your migration strategy, from planning to execution to evaluation.
There are different types of site migrations
Some of these do overlap – or multiple things are done at once.
Rebrand and new website design
Changing or upgrading to a new CMS
HTTPS Migration
Merging multiple sites together
Changing site structure, navigation, and page layouts
It can be a long painful road if the migration goes wrong
If done wrong, it could take much longer to fix and recover organic traffic and cost you so much more money.
Missing Redirects
If you don’t correctly map out the old URLs to the new URLs (if the URLs are changing) then your organic rankings and traffic may suffer.
Pages Removed
If pages have been removed from your site which received organic traffic then you need to make sure the necessary pages have been 301 redirected so they can be crawled and indexed.
Tracking Issues
Make sure tracking is working and setup correctly using the existing GA account as opposed to creating a new one. This will allow you to gain access to historical data to review organic performance.
Change in Strategy?
If your SEO strategy has now changed, what impact could this have on organic performance post-migration. For example, re-optimising all page title tags could have a negative impact on rankings.
Avoid to many changes
This depends on the site, but avoid making too many changes such as changing URLs, altering all content, or removing pages unless it’s necessary. This is important because introducing multiple changes at once elevates the intricacy and potential risks linked to the migration.
Crawl old and new sites
To review performance, it’s important to crawl the current site to compare with the new site. Tools like ScreamingFrog and SiteBulb are good solutions for this.
Communication is imperative during the migration
All site migrations should include relevant teams, including site developers, designers, content writers, project managers and others. Every team needs to be aware of changes to avoid any potential issues after the site launches.
Test Everything
Before launching your new site, we need to ensure the site is error-free, navigation and links are working correctly, test 301 redirects, pages are responsive, forms are working, content is optimised and reads well to users. This is most likely done in a staging environment.
Every website migration is different
The pre/post migrations amends will help you to cover all the necessary bases and ensure things go smoothly. However, it also depends on the size of your website and how long it takes for search engines to crawl and discover those pages. This can take a few weeks in some cases.
Every website migration is different
The pre/post migration amends will help you to cover all the necessary bases and ensure things go smoothly. However, it also depends on the size of your website and how long it takes for search engines to crawl and discover those pages. This can take a few weeks in some cases.
I'll provide you with a migration plan
During any site migration, there’s a list of checks to carry out and follow. Which is why I’ll provide a migration checklist that works just for you. If you’re moving to a new design, changing site structure, or want to migrate over from HTTP to HTTPS then I’ll prepare this for you.
My full attention & dedicated support
Communication and setting expectations are crucial to a successful migration, which is why you’ll have my 100% dedicated support and trust. I’ll be with you every step of the way if that means working at your offices or working with your developers remotely.
Carry out post-migration checks
Once the site is fully live and has been migrated across, the site migration isn’t over just yet. I will need to carry out the final post-migration checks to make sure all the URLs redirect correctly, all the content is rendering and present, test if tracking is working, and check any website configurations are updated.
Review organic performance
Once I’ve carried out the post-migration checks, I’ll then review performance for both Mobile and Desktop. This will include a full website snapshot to benchmark performance. I’ll then review organic traffic, rankings and landing page performance to assess how the website migration went, what’s improved, and flag any issues I need to eradicate.
Organic traffic increased by 68% post-migration
Here’s an example of a site migration that had a complete site redesign, improved site navigation, and site structure. There was a PR strategy in place as part of the site launch, however, organic traffic continued to improve long after.
Organic traffic increased by 40% post-migration
Here’s another example of a site migration that had a complete site redesign, technical fixes before launch, content restructure and improvements in line with Google’s E-E-A-T to improve the user experience.
Sound Good?
Migrating your website is a lot like moving home and can be stressful at times. Let us eliminate the stress for you with proven successful migrations at a fraction of the costs.
Sound Good?
Migrating your website is a lot like moving home and can be stressful at times. Let us eliminate the stress for you with proven successful migrations at a fraction of the costs.
Starpowa SEO Migration
Discover how I significantly boosted Starpowa’s organic traffic and revenue by implementing a comprehensive SEO migration strategy that saw them rank above Tesco, Holland & Barrett, and Amazon, all with zero links.