SEO Website Migration Guide to Support Your Team
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an integral part of every digital marketing campaign. Every brand and website, no matter its size and business domain, looks to leverage the search engine space to drive organic and high-quality leads.
SEO takes time. But consistent efforts in the right direction yield results for sure. However, over a while, especially when it is time for a website to undergo a significant update to the website, business owners fear losing the hard-earned existing rankings and may have to reinvent the wheel.
But as an experienced website development company and SEO company with expertise in SEO strategies, we recommend companies undergo SEO website migration. Now, what is SEO website migration? And what should be done while planning and implementing it? Here’s a guide that discusses these aspects.
What is SEO Website Migration?
SEO migration is part of various SEO strategies. Technically speaking, it involves transferring search engine ranking authority and indexing signals to reflect a significant change in the website or its URL structure. SEO migration is a surefire technique of not losing the website’s existing search engine visibility while migrating a website.
Website migration usually is done with utmost care. While experts ensure that a website doesn’t lose its search engine rankings, existing traffic flow, and visibility during migration, SEO migration safeguards the website’s current standings.
As an SEO company, we devise SEO strategies and recommend our clients and prospects undergo SEO migration so that when they reappear with the new website, they don’t have to start everything from scratch.
But what about the time required to plan and execute SEO migration? It depends on the website’s existing size. And the pages to be moved and the content volume. In some cases, it could take as much as three to four months to plan and execute the project.
We reckon you check the exact time with your SEO and website development company to plan your resources accordingly.
Website SEO Migration Checklist – Recommendations from an Expert SEO Company
As an SEO company and website development company, we’ve helped companies SEO migrate their website and retain their current rankings. It is part of our SEO strategies to update a website to stay competitive. If you also plan for website SEO migration. Here’s an overview of the checklist of the elements you will have to take care of.
Migration Date: Ideally, select a date when your website usually has a low engagement and traffic rate. Refrain from planning the migration on weekends. Plan to have an afternoon or early evening launch if unforeseen issues or troubleshooting extend. It to the morning or early hours when the traffic is low.
Sections to be Migrated: If you want to move large sections of your website Consider chunking. The activity up in stages instead of moving everything in go.
Website Backup: Create a backup of your old website to be able to use it again if the migration is technically interrupted or takes longer than expected.
Duplicate or Staging Website: Build a duplicate version of your website that the users cannot see. It is here you can test changes when you will make the site live.
Website Health Check: In case of domain migration, check the domain’s health to which you are moving. It can help you identify potential problems like past penalties, irrelevant backlinks, etc., to be prepared for them.
Website Crawling: Crawl your website to get a full URL and the site’s content inventory. You will use it to fix issues on your staging website . And map old URLs to new ones in the 301 redirect map.
Site URLs to be Redirected: At the outset, crawl your site to pull all URLs live on the domain and then compile the data about the URLs. It is to ensure that high-priority URLs be accounted for in the redirect file and to identify the content that requires updates, consolidation, and removal.
301 Redirects: Build a comprehensive 301 Redirect map according to your SEO migration scoresheet and execute it on your website. It ensures that the old website URLs redirect to the new URLs and that the internal links redirect well.
Internal Link Updates: Once you update your new URLs and have their inventory. Test your website and update the internal links to avoid having broken links.
Custom 404 Page: Create a 404 page that helps users navigate to your homepage or your site’s other pages.
Some Additional point
GMB Update: Update your website link to the new domain in GMB (Google My Business). Optimizing your GMB listing is crucial to your local SEO strategy. Google uses the data to verify your business and for what searches your website ranks.
XML Site Update: Ensure your new URLs are accounted for Build a new sitemap XML, which you can attach to your website. It helps the search engine find your significant service and business information pages. Or product pages so that you can index and return your new URLs in search results.
Domain Change Update: Use the Change of Address feature in Google’s Search Console to inform Google you’ve changed your domain and that the search engine can find it at the new domain URL.
Schema Migration or Addition: Schema implementation can help increase rankings and leads to rich snippets, resulting in a higher CTR.
Robots.txt Update: Update your robots.txt to let Google know which of your website’s parts to crawl and which ones to avoid.
Backlink Update: Your old website would have backlinks pointing to it, especially if have value-driven location pages and documents. Go to the backlink tool you use to learn which pages are collecting backlinks, approach websites that link to your website, and update the backlinks to collect the backlink equity.
Old Domain Control: Do not leave your old domain. Keep it to ensure all backlinks pointing to it redirect appropriately.
Post-Migration Audit and Performance: Conduct an SEO audit with the help of an SEO company before and after you migrate and launch your website. While auditing, run a crawl, conduct a mobile test, check analytics, ensure the working of all integrations, update social media profiles, inspect broken links, etc.
Connect with BrainMine, an SEO company and website development company you can bank upon for the best SEO strategies. Our experts will help you keep your website updated and your SEO performance. Please email us at info@brainminetech.com to learn more about our SEO strategies and proposition as an SEO company.
