Website migration is often an inevitable step in the development of a business. The reasons can vary—from rebranding to transitioning to Cloud infrastructure for easier scaling of the website. Although migration might seem simple on paper, a single misstep can lead to serious SEO problems such as 404 errors, loss of search rankings, loss of content, or even revenue.
1. Communication Plan
The first step should be creating a communication plan, especially if multiple stakeholders are involved. This plan should include:
- Internal communication detailing the migration, timelines, and affected teams.
- External communication informing clients and customers about the planned migration and potential downtime.
2. Pre-Migration Planning
Using tools like Screaming Frog to inventory pages is crucial. It’s important to have a list of all pages for verification after the migration. Additionally, analyzing website traffic and avoiding migration during peak times is advisable. In this step, it is also useful to create an annotation in Google Analytics to record pre-migration data.
3. Setting Up Hosting Environment and Backups
Backing up the website and database is critical. Ideally, a staging version of the site should be created to test the migration and identify any errors. This step also includes setting up the new hosting environment, DNS, CDN, and email parameters.
4. Creating a List of Redirects
It is necessary to have an overview of all existing redirects and prepare new ones if changing the domain. If needed, AI tools can be used to expedite the redirect mapping process.
5. Reviewing SEO Structure
It is essential to check SEO specifications, including crawlability, custom URLs, alt texts, canonical tags, robots.txt, sitemaps, internal links, structured data, URL structure, and mobile setup.
6. Benchmarking
Conducting benchmarks before and after migration provides comparative data important for analyzing site performance. This includes page load speed, indexing rates, crawl errors, and keyword rankings.
7. Analyzing Key Pages
Key pages are those that generate the most traffic and revenue. These pages should be carefully analyzed and monitored after the migration.
8. Rerunning Site Crawls
After migration, rerunning site crawls is crucial to identify potential issues like broken links, missing metadata, or incorrect redirects.
9. Auditing the Site
The audit should include checking redirects, internal links, server response times, and correct indexing settings.
10. Setting Up Webmaster Tools
If changing the domain, it's important to update Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, submit XML sitemaps, and verify site ownership.
11. Usability Testing
Testing the functionality of the website is crucial to ensure that the user experience is not negatively affected. This includes testing all key website features on both mobile and desktop devices.
12. Post-Migration Monitoring
Post-migration monitoring is necessary to identify and resolve any errors or issues, such as 403/404 errors, missing metadata, or broken internal links.
Website migration is a complex process that requires careful planning and execution. Following the outlined steps and continuously monitoring post-migration are key to ensuring success and minimizing negative impacts on the site's performance and SEO.
