SEO migrations are a lot like moving to a newer and better home: You can’t wait to be settled in, but you’re not looking forward to the move itself. I’m going to let you in on a small secret:
SEO migrations don’t have to be as painful as moving.
If you’re shocked by this statement, just know that I meant every word of it. I’ve consulted on enough migrations to know this much is true. The issue is rarely ever the migration itself, but what happens in the days and weeks leading up to it.
And, just like that move to the better house in the better neighbourhood, the thing that makes it a smooth transition is what happens before the van shows up and starts to load your precious items.
In an attempt to soften the daunting migration task that may lay ahead of you, I’m going to break down SEO migrations into the most manageable chunks possible. I’ll also show you how we help our clients through their website migration projects.
I promise you, you’ll be glad you kept going.
What Is an SEO Migration?
An SEO migration’s shady reputation may stem from 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 SEO or website migration is when you make a major change to your site that could, in some way, impact your current rankings, and so you put in place specific measures to mitigate or avoid potential traffic loss.
Types of Website Migrations
There are a handful of website activities that fit under the website migration umbrella. Let’s explore the various scenarios to see if what you’re about to embark upon is considered a type of migration:
Common Website Migration Issues & How to Fix Them
Site migrations come in all different flavour combinations, but here are the most common problems and their solutions:
Problem:
The developers and designers and marketers are all working from different URL lists
Reason:
Knowledge silos and lack of planning
Solution:
Plan early 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:
Merge content and redirect pages with the least amount of traffic to the better page
Most of these common site migration issues are caused by 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.
The Basic Building Blocks of a Successful SEO Website Migration
I’m going to show you the fundamental steps for completing a successful SEO site migration. No matter what kind of migration you’re doing, this SEO migration checklist will basically guarantee that your rankings won’t fall off a cliff.
Plan Well Ahead: It’s the Secret Ingredient to a Smooth Migration Process
As I mentioned earlier, you’ll notice that the most common SEO website migration pitfalls happen because this vital first step either occurred way too late in the game, or not at all.
The first thing to do is sit down with the right people and map out everyone’s roles and responsibilities, as well as 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 job. We book a pre-migration call as soon as possible and 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 get to work to create *looks left, then right, then leans in* the 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 XL 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 old 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.
What to Do With Old URLs You Don't Want to Keep
This might be the best time to audit the pages on your website. Think of it as giving away your old junk before packing up your stuff in moving boxes. You may not want to take all your new pages with you to the old site.
- Are you doing a merger type of 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 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 Google Search Console data that your SEO pages don't have as much traffic as they should, consult with your SEO agency to help you figure out what kind of SEO strategies are missing from the page and ways to improve your visibility.
- Are you doing a 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 this as well to avoid post-migration issues! Alongside Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics scripts, we take note of any other platforms our clients are currently using that they 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 the testing phase, 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 the staging site is tested, the more confident you’ll be on launch day that the new URLs will all 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, particularly anything to do with 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, you want to make sure that your old links are all pointing to your new links without having inadvertently created 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 their third-party scripts are working on the live website. We also double check that all the pages have been 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 that everything is working and looking how it’s supposed to.
Monitor Your Results & Move On
How do you know if you have a successful site migration on your hands? You have to watch it. Your website may look flawless, but only time (and search engines) will tell if your site migration project has retained your SEO value.
Keep an eye on your traffic and rankings over the next two weeks. You may experience a slight dip in your website traffic, but, if you’ve followed these steps so far, your visibility and traffic should be restored to pre-migration levels in no time. Be patient—search engines are slow to crawl and index sometimes.
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 dashboard in Looker Studio for our clients to give them an easy-to-read viewing pane of the important stats they should keep an eye on post-migration. They’ll be able to see their stats 90 days before the migration and up to 90 after to get the full scope of their SEO performance during this transition period.
Final Thoughts
I’ve said this plenty of times already, but it’s so important to work collaboratively with your teams when going down the site migration checklist and to communicate your concerns and expectations as soon as possible.
Everything after that is good, old-fashion, search engine optimisation.
After we helped Duck Creek complete its site acquisition, it received a 1141% increase in traffic in just three months.
Frequently Asked Questions About Site Migrations
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.
I hate to be super vague about this, but we can’t really give anyone the cost of website migration without knowing more about what type of site 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 rankings. But your developer or IT team have 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 their ideas of 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 made. An open approach to your migration considers all these factors simultaneously.
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 answer sort of depends on what your migration involves, but key metrics to keep an eye on are Clicks in GSC or Views in GA4.
Having a high volume of backlinks from other credible websites is a significant Google ranking factor. The last thing you want to do is start removing 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 site migration process I’ve laid out in this post.
But why set yourself up for the heartache? Give us a shout if you need migration help.
Yes, this would be considered normal. Even a successful SEO migration may result in a slight tremble in your 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 negatively affect your SEO by providing a poor user experience, wasting what we call a crawl budget (the amount of time crawlers spend on a page), and kill link equity. High levels of 404 errors are usually considered negative ranking factors…so, yeah…not so great for SEO.
