SEO Migration Services

Yes, website migration can increase SEO traffic. However, although properly done migration can improve your site’s visibility and bring in more traffic, it’s worth keeping in mind that there is a lot of risk associated with the process. It must be carried out entirely correctly so that you don’t experience negative aftermaths such as decreased traffic or visibility.

For this reason, it’s advisable not to perform SEO migration, unless you’re sure you know what you’re doing, or have the support of professional developers and SEO specialists.

Website migration can be a real challenge SEO-wise. To prevent decreases in your visibility, you need to have the right plan. These are some of our tips:

• When planning a website migration, consider the seasonality of your business and choose a moment when it’s not busy. Don’t do it before Christmas, or Black Friday if you run e-commerce.
• Remember about the 301 redirect map.
• Remember to submit your updated sitemap to Google Search Console.
• Keep all analytics and SEO-related data (e.g. titles) for historical analysis.
• Take your time! It’s better to perform one task at a time. We described the exact steps of SEO migration earlier on.

The migration process itself shouldn’t take long but the preparation for it and website analysis afterwards is a completely different kettle of fish. Depending on the size of the website, the entire process can take up to several weeks.

The key audit checks and stages of SEO website migration include:

• planning
• data collection
• staging environment
• the launch day
• post-launch website analysis
• monitoring and review

Apart from these stages, you should avoid the most notorious migration mistakes and take care of:

• creating 301 redirects,
• transferring all content, including blog posts and other pieces,
• modifying internal linking,
• remembering about SEO titles and meta descriptions,
• transferring the entire assortment.

Website migration considers major changes done to your website and its setup. Small tweaks and updates that you frequently do on your site are usually not regarded as full site migration, as they will not change its structure and affect your SEO.

Website migration SEO services can include things like changing the URL, localization, restructuring the CMS, changing the design, mobile optimization, moving from HTTP to HTTPS, and more.

Characterizing the Types of Website Migration

Here is a brief explanation of some of the major reasons for migrating your website:

• URL changes — You might want to change your domain name because you got a chance to use a better URL. While it might seem small, this is an impactful change, so think about it before making a decision.
• Merging the site content — Perhaps some of your pages have low traffic and poor content, thus not contributing to your website properly. You might want to consider revamping your page structure and merging the content from several pages into one.
• Site architecture changes — Sometimes, you may decide to go for better site architecture, thus creating a more cohesive internal linking scheme to fully utilize your link juice or equity.
• Website redesign — Doing cosmetic changes to your websites is also a site migration category. While it might seem like this has no impact on your SEO, your site developers and SEO specialists should be in constant communication to create an SEO-friendly design.
• Merging different websites — If you feel like two of your websites can be more effective if they join forces, you can merge them under a new domain while updating your internal links, creating 301 redirects, mapping the new URLs, and doing other necessary stuff.
• Switching from one script to another — If you’re switching from HTTP to HTTPS for security reasons, you need to redirect all of your site pages, together with all internal and external links.
• Changing the CMS — Moving to a different CMS is another type of site migration. But this is a rather big move that requires a lot of thinking and strategizing.

Theere are 8 elements of an effective website migration strategy:

1. Set the goal and think it through — What are you trying to achieve with your website migration? Once you can answer this question, you can start thinking of the best path to go about it.
2. Find all the URLs to take care of — For this, it is best if you get assistance from one of the link building tools. This way, you will find your most valuable links and know-how to adjust them to your website migration.
3. Prioritize & Plan — The more you plan, the less time you will spend fixing all the potential mistakes. You should also prioritize some of your pages and decide on the order of your migration.
4. Chop the process into stages — Website migration shouldn’t be done all at once. Instead, you should consider dividing your site migration into several stages, thus minimizing the risk of ranking drops.
5. Smart redirecting — Creating new pages means that your old pages no longer work. The easiest way to fix this is to redirect all of your old pages to new ones, wherever possible.
6. Don’t let go of the content — Many people who migrate their websites for the first time tend to make their new sites look minimalistic with less content. However, this is not the best strategy from an SEO standpoint, which is why you should keep the effective content as is, fix its links, and optimize it with new keywords if necessary.
7. Test the new version of the website internally — Once you are done with website migration, you need to test it before the site goes live. Check to see if your redirects work and fix any potential bugs that may have appeared during the redesign of your website.
8. Monitor the new website performance — Lastly, you should continually monitor your new website’s performance to see if your migration strategy worked. You can do this by installing a tracking code to Google Analytics and creating a Google Search Console account.