Website Migration Guide: How to migrate without losing SEO traffic
What is Website Migration?
The website migration is a process to minimise any adverse effect on existing organic traffic when changing your website domain or content. One of the myths in SEO world is that you always have to expect drop in traffic when you do the SEO migration. But if you follow the correct process you will expect the fluctuations at the beginning but eventually, maintain the existing website traffic levels or even improve the overall traffic.
Just redirecting URL’s won’t be enough?
Many believe, SEO migration associated with URL redirection only. But there are more things you need to check to avoid a drop in organic traffic. It’s important to do it correctly, as without the correct approach it can result in significant traffic and revenue loss, which can last from a few weeks to several months to recover. Or even not be recovered forever.
Guide to select best site migration type applicable to you
Domain Remains Same, Site Design & URS Structure Is Changing
Website Domain Change Only, Site Design And URL Structure Remains Same
Domain Name And New Design Of A Website
Platform Change Or Upgrade In CMS Version
Content Changes / Adding Or Removing Pages
URL Structure Changes Only
Design Changes Only
Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS
We have given the full process of website migration, depend on your requirement some of the steps you can skip. Click on the suitable section for you to know more about the guide for SEO migration.
Domain Remains Same, Site Design & URL Structure is changing
This change is the most common site migration type. Applicable for website design revamp and structural changes. The entire process is applicable except the domain redirects and domain change update in Google Search Console account.
Website Domain Change only, Site Design and URL Structure remains same
Most of the time this will be because of a change in the brand name and thus result in a domain name change. If you are not changing anything except the domain you do not need to do the content audits in the process.
Domain name change and new design of a website
This situation applicable when you re-branded your business and also want to improve your website design and structure. In this situation again, the whole process is applicable.
Platform Change or Upgrade in CMS version
Most of the time this can be
a situation you wanted to upgrade to new version of your CMS.
In some cases, CMS upgrade can change your internal site architecture. You need to investigate how the CMS update will change the URL structure and performance metrics like loading speed. Depend on the results you can skip a certain part of the guide but we always recommend to follow the full process.
Content Changes / Adding or Removing Pages
What you need to understand is every change in your content can have an effect on your organic traffic. It can increase the traffic also if you change existing content that was performing well then it can drop your traffic as well. The best option is to check whether you are changing the best performing content on the site or not. Our recommendation is not to remove such content always try to improve on it. Father, you need to make sure to redirect whatever the old you’re to a new URL with 301 redirect method.
URL Structure Changes Only
The perfect example of this type of change can be changed in the category or products URLs in E-Commerce sites. Most of the time we recommend to not to have a deep URL structure for e-commerce sites. In this step the entire process is applicable as the risk of losing traffic is high even though it’s just a URL change. Just a URL redirection will not cover some of the unknown scenarios you might not see if you didn’t follow the entire process.
Design Changes Only
This is applicable when you do conversion optimisation or you need a better look and feel. No change in the URL structure but there can be a change in layout and text content. In this situation, you always need to compare previous content on the site to the new content. Gaps in content can result in a drop in traffic.
Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS
If you migrate your site from HTTP to HTTPS, Google treats this as a site move with a URL change. Your rankings and traffic temporally can fluctuate. The best option is to use 301 redirection method and redirect HTTP to HTTPS and create a new profile in Google Search Console.
SEO Migration Process
1. Data Gathering
Before any website migration needs to gather important information as much as possible. This will help to compare with the new website in later part of the process. Below are the main steps and information you need to gather.
Website Full Crawl Need to get information about all links on the site. Recommend to use tools like SEMRush, DeepCrawl or Screaming Frog for this purpose.
Export top performing pages in Google Analytics Need to find out top performing pages on the current site. By drilling down the “User Behaviour > All content sections you can find out pages with the highest traffic. If possible, need to keep or improve these pages URL structure and content as much as possible.
Export Internal Linking Structure The best place to export the internal link structure is your Google Search Console. Go to the Internal links in Google Search Console and export all the links.
SEO Benchmark keywords ranking report If you have a set of keywords you are optimising already, make sure you get the latest report before making any changes to the site.
Loading Speed Report Can use tools like Google Speed Insights to know the current speed of the site. This will be helpful if you need to compare the new website loading performance against the old one.
Copy XML Sitemap This will be really helpful to compare the URLs with new website sitemap. Copy or simply save the XML sitemap to excel.
Identify growth opportunities Most of the people will ignore about this part. But if you have identified the issues within the current website and bottlenecks affecting the SEO performance this will be the ideal time to address those issues. By fixing the existing issues will help to boost your organic traffic.
2. Review, Comparison & Redirection Matrix
At this stage, we compare the design environment, staging site with the data we have already gathered before.
Review new Design UX/ Mobile UX issues This is the opportunity look at any possible issues within the UX. Check whether its mobile friendly and meet mobile optimisation requirements.
Review Staging Environment Make sure your new site block for Search Engines for crawling and indexing. But you may need to allow other crawlers you use to crawl the staging site.
Runs a Crawler on staging site By running a full crawl on the staging site, you will understand the new site structure and possible identify the issue and fix before launching.
Review SEO structure of new pages Review whether the structure of the page has a proper On-Page SEO structure such as H1 tag, subtopics and enough text content.
Review new sitemap compare with old sitemap This is when you can compare with your old sitemap with new website sitemap. Sometimes this might be not in the development yet, but better ask the development team about this as early possible.
Review Navigation, click depth and internal links structure Compared with old link structure, make sure new links click depth don’t go more than 3 clicks. If need to do any changes to the URL structure recommend those changes at this point.
Compare with top performing pages Now check the structure of your existing top performing pages. Do you have at least the same copy on the new pages. Are there any changes to the text content on new pages? If you lost some content as part of the SEO migration process you will lose the content authority and results in a drop in ranks. This is one of the most neglected areas in SEO migration.
URL Map & Redirection Matrix Then we come to the most common aspect of website migration. 301 URL redirection matrix. Need to identify the pages that no longer exists and any URLs change the URL structure etc and need to be redirected the appropriate new URL with 301 redirection methods.
Tip : Use this free URL Mapping tool to map URLs of two websites.
3.Launch Day Evaluations
Domain Redirect/ Changes in domain address if applicable in GSC This is applicable if you are only changing to a new domain. Create a new profile in GSC or update the domain change.
Remove “no index”, no follow codes Another most common point specially developers forget to update. Make sure you unblock Search Engines.
Check robots.txt file Make sure search engines can access the site without an issue, also block sections that you don’t want to crawl by Google.
Use fetch as Google to test crawling issues Just to double check, can use Fetch as Google option in Google Search Console account to check any issues in Google crawling.
Submit a new sitemap Submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console.
4. Post-Evaluation
New website full crawl After approximately 5-7 weeks, recommending running another full crawl audit on the site. Try to fix any issues identified within this crawl.
Compare top performing pages with new pages Compare old top performing pages traffic performance with new top pages. If there is no significant drop in organic traffic, that means you have done your part correctly most of the time. However, note that at this time the ranks can fluctuate. If its not too significant give more time and compare again.
Run SEO bench mark ranking report. Finally, run your organic keyword ranking report to check any improvements or drop in rankings. If there is more opportunity to improve continue to improve the site until you reach your goal.
Final recommendations when moving a site,
If can split your site move into small sections at a time. In this way, you can reduce the risk of total change or drop in traffic.
Do the migration within lower traffic periods. Most possible mid nights or during weekends.
If properly done, website migration actually can increase your organic website performance not the other way.