Site Migrations

What is site migration?

Site migration is the process by which a website is revamped, often times in areas that affect (or are affected by) visibility on search engines. These areas generally include design, user experience, platform, site location, and structure.

Site migration has its pros and cons. If executed well, your site is likely to have a cleaner interface, a new/improved user experience, an easier editing experience, and more. However, if executed poorly, your site could experience status code errors, bad SEO performance, and annoyed website visitors.

Why consider a website migration?

If you’re contemplating a simple website redesign or an SEO website migration, here are the reason you may consider the latter.

1. You’re moving your site’s location from one server to another

2. You’re changing the CMS platform your site operates on

3. You’re changing your domain name or URLs

4. You need to make major changes to your site’s architecture (beyond aesthetics)

Do You Need a Website Migration Specialist?

Not necessarily. SEO website migration can be done on your own or professionally. However, regardless of whether you plan to do it yourself or employ a professional, make sure you leave yourself time to prepare and execute the migration. Generally, migration specialists will require about three weeks for this task.

What Tasks Are Involved in SEO Website Migration?

Below, we’ll discuss the tasks that you must address during the website migration window (pre, during, and post).

Pre-Migration

1. Crawling the existing website

Use a website crawl to retrieve the URLs and markup on your site. It “sees” this information similar to how Google would and allows you to have a starting point for your URL mapping. If something gets lost in translation, you’ll be able to refer back to this list.

2. Recording your benchmarks

Sometimes analytics data can get erased during site migration. To avoid this, recording your benchmark in advance is a crucial step. You’ll also want to make sure you review your analytics to know how your users are currently navigating your site. This information will also reveal which pages are most and least valuable, which can inform your redesign decisions.

3. Mapping your URLs

If you’re making changes to the URLs on your website, you’ll need to create redirections to help both Google and website users from your old URLs to your new URLs. You can implement redirects by mapping your URLs in a two-column spreadsheet (one for the old URL and one for the corresponding new URL).

4. Making sure you’re retaining titles, meta descriptions, and markup

SEO website migration assists with website organization, so pages should be uniform and contain the same information as they did before. So, if a website undergoes a site migration, the content, and descriptions for each blog would have all the same information with a different look.

5. Trying out the new building on a test server (aka sandbox)

You may be able to see mockups or test your website in its local environment. However, this will not give you a complete idea of a new site’s functionality or implementation. For the most seamless transition, we recommend taking it online for a test drive before the official migration if possible.

6. Choosing the right date for the migration

When you select the proper date and time for your migration, you can avoid issues and hiccups. We recommend minimizing any potential challenges by selecting dates and times outside of your peak website hours.

During (Day of) Migration

7. Preparing to update the site’s DNS settings

If you’re moving your site to a new server as part of the SEO website migration process, then you’ll need to “point” to the site’s new location. To do this, coordinate with your web/IT team, and hosting providers (both new and old).

8. Launching the new site

On the day of the migration, launch the new site by setting up your forwarding redirects. Then you should unpublish and implement. If DNS changes were involved, then the site may be down momentarily. However, if you’re not switching servers or platforms, then the migrations should be quick and easy.

9. Crawling the new site

When your new site is live, crawl it to see if everything migrated as expected. Use the crawl report to find any anomalies. These may include duplicated errors and broken links. You should test out the new site by clicking around and seeing if there are any issues.

10. Checking for redirect chains

Once your site is migrated, you’ll have a lot of new redirects on your hands. If redirects existed previously, then chains may have already been created.

Here is an example of a chain:

if you were redirecting A to B before the migration, you may not be redirecting B to C. This creates a chain of redirects: A to B to C.

Having such a chain will slow down the site and impact your performance. You can avoid these issues by breaking the chains and redirecting A to C and B to C.

11. Ensuring Google Analytics and Google Search Console are implemented

Check to see that Google Analytics and Google Search Console are up and running to avoid gaps in data and reporting. You should also mark the date in Google Analytics as important to allow you to contextualize the data and measure performance pre-and-post migration.

12. Submitting site maps

Check to make sure your XML sitemap has no errors and submit the sitemap in the Google Search Console to invite Google to crawl the new implementation.

Post-Migration

13. Monitoring performance and running site audits

Monitor your performance to ensure nothing big was missed and run site audits using third-party tools to ensure your website is operating optimally.

14. Updating your platforms and backlinks

In all likelihood, you have ads, platforms, and backlinks running that’ll need to be updated. It’s best practice to use the freshest URLs possible. Add fresh links where possible or notify the publishers of your highest value links to make the swaps on your behalf.

Why Does SEO Website Migration Often Fail?

If you’re planning to undertake an SEO website migration, it’s helpful to keep in mind where others often fail. You can know the basic steps and hope to follow them, but if you don’t know the pitfalls, then you’re still likely susceptible to them. Here’s what you should keep in mind.

Poor planning

Website migrations must be well planned and executed. If you’re even entertaining the idea of an SEO website migration, then you must put together an action plan, education for your team, budget, migration checklist, etc. Get your SEO professionals and all other associated parties into a room and get aligned with what needs to happen next.

Lack of knowledge and awareness of risks

It’s vitally important to know that an SEO website migration can rock the boat in terms of rankings. While it can improve where you stand, it can also decimate your rankings if something goes wrong. Before you move forward, everyone (SEO team, copywriters, front-end and back-end developers, DevOps, project managers, legal, and management) must understand the implications and risks of this step.

A weak migration checklist

Above, we’ve outlined the basic steps of an SEO website migration. It contains both pre-launch and post-launch checks that allow you to thoroughly address all issues at hand. Use this list as your baseline and build it out with additional research before starting your website migration.

Final Thoughts

SEO website migrations can be tricky. If you’re considering one for your website, make sure you have a solid plan and checklist in place as well as all necessary parties on board.