An SEO website migration is one of those geeky website terms that get casually tossed around and end up meaning different things to different people. But no matter which definition you use, knowing how to migrate a website for seo a will help your team avoid breaking your website or hurting your hard-earned rankings.
That’s why so many marketing teams outsource their migration projects to SEO agencies like Geeky Tech. But if you’re planning to manage your migration in-house, stop what you’re doing and read this guide, where we’ve broken down the steps into simple tasks. We’ve also provided a checklist and examples of how we help our own clients.
What Is an SEO Site Migration?
An SEO migration’s mystique may be caused by the fact that its definition is a moving target and, depending on who you ask, it’ll mean something different. It’s more of an umbrella term to describe specific website scenarios than a single thing.
An overarching definition of an SEO migration is any mitigation strategy to avoid traffic loss during a major change to your website that could.
Types of Website Migrations
A handful of website activities fall under the migration umbrella. Let’s explore the various scenarios to see if what you’re about to embark upon falls into one of these categories:
How to Fix the Most Common Migration & SEO Issues
Migrations come in all different flavour combinations, but here are the most common problems and their solutions:
Problem:
Problem:
The developers, designers, and marketers are all working from different URL lists
Reason:
Knowledge silos and lack of planning and collaboration
Solution:
Plan early, collaborate, and communicate
Problem:
Pages are broken or missing on new site
Reason:
URL mapping stage is incomplete
Solution:
map out your URLs before you start working on new site
Problem:
The new site isn't showing up on Google
Reason:
The new site is still in testing mode
Solution:
Check your tags (your pages may still be set to noindex)
Problem:
Ran out of time and/or budget
Reason:
Some of the key stakeholders were left out of early conversations/planning
Solution:
Work with developers, designers, SEO experts, and other decision-makers early and often to communicate and manage expectations
Problem:
The new site is slow and full of bugs
Reason:
Not enough time or resources were given during testing stage
Solution:
Be realistic about how much time the testing phase actually takes and integrate it into your schedule
Problem:
Old pages are cannibalising pages from your acquired site
Reason:
URL mapping is incomplete
Solution:
Solution:
Merge content and redirect pages with the least amount of traffic to the better page
Most common website migration issues stem from poor planning and communication.
Or, to put a positive spin on it, let’s just say that the key to a successful website migration lies in the early stages, when your new website is but a twinkle in your eye.
SEO Migration Best Practices
We’ll show you the fundamental steps for a successful SEO site migration. No matter what kind of changes you’re making, this checklist works for every migration type. Follow these steps to keep your search engine rankings from falling off a cliff.
Build Your Migration Plan Well Ahead of Your Launch Date
As I mentioned earlier, the most common SEO website migration pitfalls happen because this vital first step either happens too late or not at all.
First, sit down with the right people and map out everyone’s roles and responsibilities, along with a realistic timeframe.
Who should be involved besides the marketer (you, I imagine) and the project manager overseeing this expedition? Your developers, web designers, content creators, and SEO agency.
How We Do It
We start by splitting the whole process into two major phases: pre- and post-migration. During this pre-migration phase, we cover all the bases, so everyone involved knows:
- The main goals of the migration
- How the website migration process works
- Any potential problems that could arise
We also use this opportunity to iron out everyone’s role. We book a pre-migration call as soon as possible, ask our clients a standard set of questions, and address any concerns and/or document them for later.
Take Stock of Your URLs & Map Out Your Links
Now that you’ve established what everyone is doing and when they’re going to do it, it’s time to create the *looks left, then right, then leans in* list.
What may seem like a simple spreadsheet to some is actually the key to your migration plan. It doesn’t have to be any fancier than an Excel spreadsheet, but it should be the one spreadsheet to rule them all.
What you’re going to do with this spreadsheet is list every single URL on your current site, or at least every URL that has received traffic in the last 12 months (you can find this out on Google Search Console).
Then, sit with your marketing team and content creators to map out where the old URLs will sit in the new site. You’ll give this map to the developers so that they’ll know where to redirect the old pages when working on the staging website.
Decide What to Do With the URLs You Don’t Want to Keep
This might be the best time to audit the content on your website. Think of it as getting rid of your old junk before packing up your stuff in moving boxes. You may not want to take all your new pages with you from the existing site.
- Are you doing a merger-type website migration? You probably have to cull pages that are similar or irrelevant. To do that, choose the page with the most traffic as the main page and redirect the throw-away pages to the new page.
- Do you have pages on your site that will no longer be relevant to the new live site but are still getting a healthy amount of search engine traffic? Don’t kill them outright! Simply redirect them to the most relevant page for now.
- What about important pages with poor rankings? If you’ve noticed from your GSC data that your SEO pages don’t have as much traffic as they should, consult with SEO specialists to help you figure out what kind of SEO strategies are missing from the page and ways to improve your visibility.
- Are you doing an SEO domain migration? You’ll need to hold onto your old domain for at least a year before killing your old site; otherwise, this redirecting exercise will be pointless.
How We Do It
After the initial site crawl, we will prioritise your URL list in order of pages with the most traffic to the least. Listing your URLs this way makes it easier for our migration team to know which pages you should keep and which pages can be safely tossed or fixed.
We also make a similar list of all your third-party scripts, and we highly recommend you do the same to avoid post-migration issues. Alongside Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics scripts, we note any other platforms our clients use and want to carry over.
Take Your Test Site Out for a Spin
At this stage, the developers will take your URL list and start redirecting your pages to the new pages they’re building. During testing, your existing website should still be running, and your test site should be set to noindex.
Even though your dev/IT team has taken a front seat, it doesn’t mean that you should take your eye off the prize. Get involved in the testing phase as much as you can. The more often you test the staging site, the more confident you’ll be on launch day that the new URLs will work and that your site speed and performance meet your standards.
How We Do It
During this phase, Geeky Tech takes on an advisory role for clients who need URL- or SEO-related support, especially for technical SEO or site structure changes. Communication at this time is essential!
Launch Your New Site
Launch day is a time to celebrate. Pick any day other than Friday to schedule your launch, just in case something goes wrong and you need to sit at your desk and put out a fire. Mondays are probably best.
Now, make sure your old links point to your new links without inadvertently creating redirect chains—a URL pointing to another URL pointing to another URL pointing…you get the picture. There should only be one redirect between the first and final URL; otherwise, your rankings will be affected.
How We Do It
On the day our client’s site goes live, our SEO team verifies that third-party scripts work on the live website. We also double-check that all pages are set to noindex and request an address change in GSC.
If their migration includes a brand-new website, our technical team will also perform an SEO audit to ensure everything works and looks the way it’s supposed to.
Monitor Your Results & Move On
How do you know if you have a successful migration on your hands? You have to watch it. Your website may look flawless, but only time (and search engines) will tell if your migration project has retained your SEO value.
Keep an eye on your traffic and rankings over the next two weeks. You may see a slight dip in website traffic, but if you’ve followed these steps so far, your SEO visibility and traffic should return to pre-migration levels in no time. Be patient—search engines can be slow to crawl and index.
We recommend monitoring your site regularly for up to 90 days. You’ll know by then if your traffic has stabilised or increased. If, after the 90 days, your pages just aren’t performing as well as they were before your migration, ask your SEO agency to investigate or do a site audit.
How We Do It
We set up a Data Studio dashboard for our clients, giving them an easy-to-read view of the key stats they should watch post-migration. They’ll be able to see their stats 90 days before the migration and up to 90 days after, giving them the full scope of their SEO performance during the transition.
SEO Migration Checklist
Final Thoughts
If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a hundred times: the key to a successful migration is collaboration and communication. Working together with the right team as you go down the migration checklist and communicating your concerns and expectations as soon as possible will do most of the heavy lifting.
Everything after that is good, old-fashioned search engine optimisation.
+1000% More Traffic: How We Helped Duck Creek Pull Off the Most Perfect Acquisition-Type SEO Migration
FAQs
There is no set schedule (at least from our end) for migrating a website. But from a ranking and monitoring perspective, allow for at least three months from launch day to gather enough data and allow your traffic to stabilise (or improve) before considering it a success.
We hate to be vague, but we can’t give anyone the cost of a website migration without knowing what type of migration it is. But if you’re already working with a search engine optimisation specialist, then the cost of the migration should be included in your monthly retainer.
Imagine your site’s top-ranking page. To you, keeping the page the same is crucial because you don’t want to change something and potentially mess with your search engine rankings.
But your developer or IT team has a different idea, because their main goal is to take advantage of the new CMS’s features (for example) that will improve the page’s performance and speed, which may also give your designer ideas for tweaking a few page elements to boost user experience. And somewhere in the background (or the corner office, more likely) is your boss, who has just been told that the new acquisition means that your services are about to merge, which means that your current page needs to add more content and change the branding.
Believe it or not, these types of conversations happen independently of each other, which is where the problems start, even before any SEO migration strategy is set or website changes are made. An open approach to migration considers all these factors at once.
GSC and GA4 are already integral to your search engine optimisation activities, but when you’re conducting a website migration, you’ll need these tools to:
- Carry out a pre-migration site audit
- Submit an updated XML sitemap
- Monitor your rate of indexation
- Keep an eye out for indexing issues
- Check that your pages have been redirected properly
- Track your search performance
And more. Chances are, you already have GSC and GA4 running in the background, but if you want help setting up your tracking, give us a shout.
This depends on what your migration involves, but key metrics to watch are Clicks in GSC or Views in GA4.
This depends on what your migration involves, but key metrics to watch are Clicks in GSC or Views in GA4.
A high volume of backlinks from credible websites is a significant Google ranking factor. The last thing you want is to remove all your hard-earned SEO juice by not pointing your backlinks to your new pages.
While the purpose of a migration isn’t to improve your SEO but to make a major website change without losing your traffic or rankings, any activity that consequently boosts a site’s performance, speed, functionality, user experience, or keyword focus will inadvertently improve your site’s SEO rankings.
In a word: no. But many companies only realise they need an SEO agency’s help well after the fact (and usually once their rankings have fallen off a cliff, as was the case with our friends at Avantra).
If it can’t be helped, at least follow the migration process we’ve laid out in this post.
But why set yourself up for the heartache? Give us a shout before you pull the switch.
Yes, this is normal. Even when following migration SEO best practices, you may see a slight dip in search result rankings and traffic. Search engines need to crawl your website before indexing, which can cause an initial blip. Another reason your migration could cause SEO issues (at least from a ranking perspective) is that it takes time to transfer link equity from old URLs to new URLs.
But if you follow this SEO website migration checklist, you should see your rankings start to level out to pre-migration levels within 90 days (usually much sooner) of your migration.
This is not just a migration-specific issue, but a general SEO sin. Broken internal links can hurt your SEO by creating a poor user experience, wasting what we call crawl budget (the time crawlers spend on a page), and killing link equity. High levels of 404 errors are usually considered negative ranking factors…so, yeah…not so great for SEO.
Yes, this is avoidable; you’ll need to make sure that redirects are in place so that search engines and users don’t get lost. As long as you haven’t removed the important keywords from your URL, you shouldn’t see any major movement in your rankings.
Beware of major content changes to high-ranking pages. By changing your content, you could remove vital keywords or valuable internal links that are driving your rankings. What you remove and what you add will affect your rankings. Alternatively, you can boost your results by improving the content!
The simple answer is no.
However, the main hosting factors are server location and speed. If these things improve when you move hosting providers, then your rankings could see an improvement, too. Of course, if you move to a more affordable option, you could see a decline.
