How to Plan SEO Migration Strategy for Websites
Soubhik Chakrabarti
Business Management Instructor | SEO and Business Consultant | SaaS Writer | AI Prompt Engineer & Tutor
Migrating a site, primarily based on search engine optimization or SEO, is in no way a quick or easy job that can be done without the right research.
SEO migrations need elaborate planning, detained research, proper implementation, and finally rigorous monitoring.
But before you begin to plan or strategize any migration, you will need to understand all the basics and intricate matters related to website migration, SEO migrating, and ultimately its risks and benefits.
1. What is a website migration?
A website migration refers to a significant modification or transformation in your website that is so vital that it affects the website's configuration, traffic, execution, and rankings.
The most applied and familiar kind of website migration is shifting from one domain to a different one. However, changing from HTTP to HTTPS and rewriting your URL pattern are also considered to be varieties of migration.
Here are some of the different ways in which a website migration can be done:
Once the distinct forms of migrating methods are known, the first question that comes to mind is why you should change your website migration. The reasons are:
Now that all the basics of a website migration are covered, the next step is to understand all the aspects of SEO migration.
2. Understanding SEO Migration
An SEO migration is a strategy of transporting search engine rankings, authorizations, and classifying signals to reproduce a prominent modification in your site or website's URL configuration.
An SEO migration ensures and safeguards that any of your website's search engine views, like rankings and traffic, will not be lost when a website migration is being performed and executed.
3. Why You Should Include SEO in Website Migration
Over time, your website has accumulated organic visibility and resources that have helped it attain certain rankings based on keywords and searches that your users, clients, and prospective customers employ to locate your website.
When you remake your URLs, scope, and all-around website, you alter what search engines recognize about your site and the metrics they pertain to formulate the rankings. The primary objective and purpose of any site migration is to do that while making sure the loss of traffic and search rankings does not happen.
So, what exactly happens if you do not have a good search engine optimization migration strategy? As you can gather from understanding the main goal of SEO migration, without it, the chances of losing your website's rankings on search engines, leads, and traffic increase exponentially.
The truth is that a large number of companies relaunch their site just feeling excited and needing a change but frequently forget about SEO. The outcome, of course, is disastrous as it significantly lessens the website's search engine visibility, rankings, and traffic.
Finally, possessing a strong website migration scheme can support your website in keeping its existing search engine results page (SERP) statuses and also begin changing course towards the right path to success.
4. How to Plan SEO Migration Strategy for Websites
The whole planning process of SEO migration consists of several steps. There are a lot of factors to consider and think over before you can launch a new look for your website.
Based on the purpose of the migration and the amount of time you have, each checklist element can be used to guarantee a successful SEO migration.
4.1) Planning the Migration
Before beginning any project, the first step is always to plan and strategize - for an SEO migration properly, it is the same as well. The factors that you will need to consider before launching the migration include:
These are the preliminary measures to take before you launch a good and well-planned migration.
4.2) Backing up the Website
The next thing to do is develop a backup for your site if the entire thing goes haywire.
Consult with your marketing and web designing unit to formulate an extensive backup agenda if you need to return to the former website to figure out all the tiny details for a successful site migration.
4.3) Making a Staging Website
Developing a duplicate or replica model of your site is the ideal way to test out the changes without users stumbling upon the half-made project.
It gives your company the chance to try out the new content with a considerable amount of time at hand. By reviewing the ideas in the duplicate site, you will be able to choose the changes to make in the new version wisely.
4.4) Migrating in Phases
In the case you are changing more than one or two things on your site, dividing it into a few phases is the best strategy.
It makes the entire workload more manageable and leaves less room for mistakes.
4.5) Doing a Health Check and Backlink Audit
Before you move to a whole new domain, make sure to check out its organic heath. It will give you an indication of the things that you will face in the future.
This way, you will find out if the domain had content related to things on your website and also avoid spam at the same time.
4.6) Crawling Your Website
This step will provide you with a complete inventory and URL of your site.
It will also help you choose and prioritize sections of content to move over and determine which of the internal links need an update to express the new URL system.
4.7) Implementing 301 Redirects and Updating Internal Links
The implementation of 301 redirects will ensure that the former website URLs will redirect without errors to the new website URLs.
Once you revise your new URLs and develop an index of what they are going to be, return to your test site and start updating internal links to prevent internal redirects or broken pages.
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4.8) Creating a 404 Page
Making a 404 page is a necessity for all websites so that the users can navigate back to your homepage easily.
Without the 404 page, the viewers will encounter a blank page that is not navigable. This will lead them to leave the site completely.
4.9) Updating Google My Business, Bing Places, and XML Sitemap
Without updating your website's data in Google My Business or Bing Places, your business data will not be verified by Google. Therefore, optimizing your site's details in the listing is a fundamental factor of the SEO scheme.
After making sure that all the site's URLs are accounted for, develop an XML sitemap that can be linked to your website. This enables Google and other search engines to locate your significant product or trade data pages so that the current URLs can be categorized and included in search results.
4.10) Telling Google Console About Your Changed Domain
This will let Google know that you have updated your domain, thereby letting it locate your site with the new domain URL.
You should also inform Bing about the changes, as only then will it be able to begin ranking your new URLs.
4.11) Building a Mobile-friendly Website
Creating a mobile-friendly site that works appropriately across various devices and browsers guarantees that your site ranks suitably. Google and other search engines look for responsive format, so don't make a wholly different mobile site.
If you are unsure if your site is mobile-friendly or not, Google offers a mobile-friendly tool that evaluates your site and gives suggestions to improve the mobile experience, boosting your site's visibility in the procedure.
4.12) Migrating or Adding Schema
Even though schema migration is not believed to be a direct aspect of rankings, research indicates it can improve rankings and lead to better click-through rates.
4.13) Updating Robots
Keeping robot.txt files updated ensures that Google can easily sort out segments of your site to crawl or not crawl.
Furthermore, also put your current sitemap XML URL there so that Google and other search engines can easily discover it.
4.14) Updating the Backlinks
Undoubtedly, your previous site has backlinks referring to it, particularly if you maintain site pages or data of value. Go to your Search Console or whichever backlink tool you use to view the pages that are compiling backlinks.
After that, communicate with the sites connecting to your website and update the backlinks so you can obtain the whole backlink equity. As this process will take a lot of time, have somebody keep track of these backlinks.
4.15) Performing QA and SEO Audits
To successfully do a pre- and post-QA and SEO audit, you will have to do the following steps:
Once you have thoroughly checked all these points before and after relaunching your site, you have to assess the website's performance after launch.
Keep an eye on Google Analytics as well as your keywords, their visibility, and overall rankings.
4.16) Troubleshooting
Once you have completed all the steps and successfully launched the site, all that remains is to troubleshoot.
If you lose traffic or your conversion ratios drop, even as bounce and exit rates keep rising, you will likely have to alter your strategy. Sadly, it is not invariably technological errors that result in such trouble.
There is also the chance that your users are not happy with your new website. Try to find out what they are looking for, create content, and offer services accordingly.
Conclusion
Performing a site migration along with SEO viewpoints is no short or minor feat. It requires a lot of planning, study, strategizing, undertaking, and finally, performance to be thriving.
After the launch, you will have to evaluate and assess several factors to protect and improve your organic visibility. Make sure to take the time to execute the steps above, and you will be rewarded with great visibility and ranking out of your SEO endeavors during your website migration.
FAQs
If you have further queries, try reading the answers to the most frequently asked questions on website and SEO migration.
1) What is website migration?
A website migration is a significant modification of your website that is crucial in influencing a website's configuration, traffic, execution, and rankings.
The most known kind of website migration is switching from one domain to a new one.
2) What happens if you do not have a good SEO migration strategy?
If you do not have a decent SEO migration plan or strategy, the possibility of losing your site's rankings on various search engines, leads, keywords, rankings, and traffic grows exponentially.
The SEO migration protects and ensures that all of your site's search engine data and analyses, like rankings and traffic, will not get lost when a website migration is launched.
3) How can you plan an SEO migration strategy for websites?
Based on the motive of the migration and the quantity of time you have, all of the checklist components can be used to guarantee a successful SEO migration by following some simple steps.
The ideal SEO migration strategy planning includes planning, backing up old and current data, having a skilled team for designing the new concepts, communicating with Google services about the changed domain and site, performing launch audits, developing a mobile-friendly website, and proper troubleshooting.