How To Retain SEO Value When Migrating Your Website

Has your business started growing rapidly over time?

Do you think your current website is not enough to acquire new customers?

Well, it’s a known fact that when your business grows with time, it is also supposed to undergo the migration process eventually. Basically, migrating a website is a tedious and hefty project which if not dealt properly can cause high percents of loss of revenues and traffic on the new site.

Not only you have to deal with umpteen number of issues on the website which subsequently result in compromise of the traffic on the website, ranking and also the performance. This is nothing less than a nightmare!

So it is of utmost importance that you safeguard your site even while migrating.

First and foremost let us understand what is a website migration. It typically means that switching the website from one digital entity to another can heavily affect your search engine.

Now let us have a look at the key points to consider while migrating your website which is divided into 3 stages.

PRE LAUNCH
LAUNCH DAY
POST LAUNCH

To attain more knowledge about this topic ,Watch this Video

Table Of Content

● PRE LAUNCH

1. Determine if you really need to migrate

There are pros and cons for every project and this is no other. But in this case, the cons outweigh the pros. If you have serious problems with HTTPS then it is vital to migrating but if it shows constant growth, traffic, and optimum support then it might not be necessary

2. Set up a test environment

This step includes testing your site’s framework template-by-template or page-by-page. Test how Google is behaving on those new pages, make any adjustments needed, then roll out the framework migration fully.

Create a “Coming Soon” page on your existing page and then use a test environment of this new domain to work on the migration.

3. Crawl your new site

It’s important for you to crawl your new site before launching it so as to detect all the errors and take the required preventative measures accordingly. You can use segmentation earlier created by you to ensure the smooth working of your top-performing and strategic pages.

4. Block access to your new site

While the new site is still in progress make sure you block it so that it doesn’t act as a competitor to your new site. You can protect your website with a robot.txt file or password to initiate the block. And very importantly don’t forget to unblock it so that your pages get indexed as soon as possible.

5. Compare your new site’s server performance with the old one

Always keep a check on your new site that migration hasn’t negatively impacted your new site. Compare the speed of your new site and the old site to find out if the performance of your new website is better than that of the old one.

● LAUNCH DAY

When you are just about to make your website live these are the steps you need to pay attention to while doing so.

1. Remove temporary blocks on the website

Make sure you unlock the temporary blocks on your website and if you are using a testing environment or landing page then this step is not for you.

2. Verify your internal links

Run a report check to make sure that all the links have been updated correctly if you find any casualties as soon as possible.

3. Configure your web analytics

With this not only you can keep an eye on and track the traffic on your site but also it’s also helpful to add an annotation to your analytics platform. This is a simple way through which you can determine changes in your traffic that correspond to the date of interest.

4. Submitting your new XML Site map

To easily verify that your website doesn’t have any errors you must upload your new XML sitemap to your new property in Google Search Console.

5. Enable and test your redirects, if applicable

The perfect time to test and enable your redirects is the time when you are switching your domain or your site has new URLs that don’t match with your old site. To make sure that there aren’t any 4xx errors then complete an audit and compile a list of 301s. Check the 301 redirects list to make sure all pages are matched to the correct URL.

● POST LAUNCH

Now that your official site is live you would keenly observe the activities on it and the traffic, progress, and well-being of the site. For that make sure you keep an eye on these steps.

1. Make sure you Audit your site

Make sure your team takes an overview of the site and makes the necessary changes if any. The quicker you make those changes the better chance you have to make it into the SERPs ( Search Engine Result Pages).

2. Keep an eye on your site’s performance

The speed of your new site is equally important as it was for the previous one. The faster Google can access your pages or URLs the better for you as well as for your site.

3. Have new external links updated

Provided your links have changed due to a new domain, you’ll want your partners, influencers, and anyone else driving traffic to your site to update the external links they’re using. You have the option of reaching out to them directly to ask that they update the link for you. In such cases, you usually have access to your company’s profile and can make the changes easily

4.Monitor how your new URLs are ranking and getting traffic

To track traffic and ranking activities monitor both site versions. Over a period of time, you can afford to pay lesser attention to the old URLs and work more on the new ones.

5. Take the help of Botify

There are numerous stats that can favor you and help your website and you can take it to your advantage of Botify to see what’s successful following the migration and what still needs your attention. Viewing it from a visitor’s perspective can help you to a great extent.

Conclusion

As we said earlier that site migration is no joke but a serious task but we hope that our blog has helped you to some extent and reduce the risk element in the same process.

← What is Voice Search Seo? Top 10 Free Digital Marketing Tools List →