A Step By Step Website Migration Guide

There are a variety of reasons a website migration might become necessary. For example, a business might rebrand and need a new domain name. You might need to merge the content of two websites. Or a site might require a significant overhaul. However, you risk damaging search engine optimization (SEO) and losing traffic when you migrate a website. So, whatever the reason behind the move, a website migration must be undertaken with care.

Steps to Consider for a Website Migration Plan

Here are the steps to consider when developing a website migration plan.

Pre-Migration Steps

The migration of a website can be challenging. But meticulous planning will avoid any mishaps and reduce the SEO impact. Here are some crucial pre-migration points to consider when planning a website migration.

Scope the Project

Step one is to ensure that you understand the scope of the project. So, you must have clear objectives in mind, and you will need to plan every step of the migration process. The goals should include minimizing site downtime, preserving search engine rankings, and maintaining visitor numbers.

Define Deliverables and Timeline

It will help keep a migration on course if each step of the process is mapped out with target dates for completion assigned. Particular attention should be paid to dependencies, too. You can’t, for example, move a redesigned site for the staging environment to the live server until the server is operational. The plan should also include who is responsible for each task. And it would be best to have periodic project review meetings throughout the project.

Evaluate Current Site

A site migration is an excellent opportunity to improve a website. However, you will also want to retain aspects of the site that are working well. Particular attention should be placed on maintaining backlinks and on-page SEO features. So, the current performance of the site will need to be evaluated. And that audit should include identifying pages that attract traffic and the keywords for which the website is ranked. It would be best to preserve pages that achieve high conversions, too.

Create a Site Plan

As a part of your pre-migration audit, you will need a complete list of current URLs (Uniform Resource Locators). And it will also help to identify the backlinks pointing to each of the pages. It is best for SEO not to delete any existing pages. Instead, set up redirects from unwanted URLs to the relevant replacement pages. The site plan will enable you to do this as part of the migration process. You will also need to set up redirects if you change the site’s domain name.

Consider Content Changes

Even relatively minor changes to content can impact SEO. So, it is generally best not to amend content unnecessarily. If any content needs changing, try to preserve heading tags, alt tags, and images where possible.

Plan to Fix SEO Current Issues

A site migration is likely to have a temporary negative effect on SEO. However, fixing existing SEO issues during the migration may mitigate this effect. You could search for and fix any broken links, for example. You might rectify any keyword density issues on crucial pages. And any bad SEO practices adopted in the past, such as keyword-stuffing Alt tags, could also be remedied.

Migration

Choose a time and date for migration when traffic is relatively low. When you are ready, the first thing to do is set the redirects. And then, you can unpublish the old site and switch over to the new one.

Post-Migration

Even with the best-laid plans, unexpected issues can occur. So, it is advisable to test the site post-migration thoroughly. Here are some of the crucial aspects to check after migrating a website.

Basic Functionality

The migration may have impacted some functionality. So, test forms, subscription opt-ins, shopping carts, etc. And test navigation aids, such as menus and search functions.

Conduct an SEO Audit

Conduct an SEO audit to check that search engines can find, crawl, and index the new site. You can use several tools for this purpose, such as the one provided by Semrush.

Check for Missing or Duplicated Content

Check that all the relevant content has migrated with the website and ensure there are no duplicated pages.

Check for Broken Links

If you have removed any content, you may have broken links within the website. So, run a test for broken links to external and internal pages. Again, several tools are available for this purpose, including the one provided by Ahrefs.

Implement A Site Map

Ensure that you have an XML (extensible markup language) sitemap implemented on the new website. A site map will help ensure that Google and the other search engines index all the pages on the site.

Submit Sitemap to Search Engines

The search engines will discover and index the new site in time. However, submitting the XML sitemap for indexing on the Google Search console will help to speed up the process. Other search engines, including Microsoft Bing, have similar sitemap submission tools.

Implement Google Analytics

Save the Google Analytics results from the old site and implement Analytics on the new site. Then, you will be able to analyze the impact of the migration on traffic. There will most likely be a significant drop in traffic post-migration. However, if you have redirected URLs and optimized pages, the traffic will return to normal in time.

Redirect Inbound Links

It would be advisable to modify any inbound links you have control over to point at the new site. It will also help to contact publishers of high-value links to ask for those links to be changed too. Publicizing the change to customers, partners, and subscribers will also help get more links pointing directly at the new site.

Conclusion

Migrating a website is a significant task. And it’s something that you don’t want to do too often. However, a site can be migrated without a significant long-term impact on search engine rankings. But meticulous planning is the key to success. So, hopefully, the above steps will help you plan a trouble-free website migration.