Migrating to a new SEO site for the first time might be confusing. Often when people hear about SEO site migration, they start to panic. And I can understand this reaction. If you invested a lot of time and effort in SEO, you don’t want to lose your results in a blink of an eye.
What will happen to your guest blogs, internal link-building, or backlinks? What if you used some professional service to buy links, like
linksmanagement? Will you have to start everything all over again? These are a lot of questions. But no need to worry. In this blog, you’ll find the best practices to make your SEO site migration as smooth as possible.
SEO Site Migration: The Basics
Before we get into our instructions, let’s cover the basics.
How Long Does SEO Site Migration Take?
The whole process, including SEO domain migration, usually takes up to three weeks. So start preparing in advance.
Does Site Migration Always Impact SEO?
Yes, it does. Migrating to a new SEO site supposes multiple critical changes. That’s why it will affect your search engine optimization. But it isn’t a bad thing. Google favors user-friendly and fast pages. So, your website improvements might even boost your SEO performance.
When Is Migrating to a New SEO Site Necessary?
There are several reasons why site migration might be necessary. For example, hosting change, SEO domain migration, or a new CMS. You also need to migrate your website in case of restructuring, as it’s a serious tweak to your site’s architecture.
What Are the Types of SEO Site Migration?
There are many different forms of site migration. Yet, we could divide it into 5 groups according to the nature of the tweaks:
● Location changes: SEO domain migration, mobile setup (AMP, PWA), protocol change (HTTP to HTTPS), etc.
● CMS changes: moving to a different platform, doing substantial updates, etc.
● Structural changes: tweaking navigation, changing the sitemap, etc.
● Content changes: optimizing pages, adding/removing content, etc.
● Design changes:
UI libraries, media integration, visual alterations, etc.
The last two groups are often less impactful as they don’t suppose core changes in the website’s structure.
Actionable Step-by-Step Guide to SEO Site Migration
Now, let’s get into the most important part. Where do you start when migrating to a new SEO site? The process should begin long before the migration day to avoid SEO issues. For convenience, we divided all the procedures into 3 phases: before, during, and after.
What Should You Do Before SEO Site Migration?
The pre-migration phase is arguably the most critical part of migrating to a new SEO site. There are several steps you should take into consideration:
1. Define objectives and create a plan. This is a step you can’t skip. Understanding the risks and opportunities of each SEO site migration is essential. During this phase, you might need to consult with SEO experts, web developers, UX specialists, etc.
2. Analyze your website’s current metrics. SEO site migration is a great opportunity to fix some issues on your website. That’s why take your time to analyze the traffic, visibility, backlinks, and search rankings. This way, you can adjust what’s needed.
3. Crawl your website. This is essential to get all the critical data from your website. If something gets lost while migrating to a new SEO site, you will recover it much faster.
4. Work on URLs. Crawling also allows you to map your URLs. Check all your links and decide whether you want to redirect them. You can learn more about the meaning of status codes
here.
5. Create technical SEO document. You should craft a comprehensive summary of what your website structure should look like. Make it as complete as possible. Then, pass it to developers to ensure they know what to do.
6. Make a backup copy. Just in case, save a copy of your website. If you follow the best practices for SEO site migration, everything should be fine. But better safe than sorry.
What Should You Do During SEO Site Migration?
1. Ensure 503 server response. While migrating to a new SEO site, your webpage might be temporarily down. You should try to keep the downtime to a minimum. Yet, when it happens, your server should respond with a 503 (service unavailable) status. Otherwise, the search engine crawl will stop, negatively affecting your visibility.
2. Launch your changes. Now, it’s finally time to get going and implement the changes you’ve wanted.
3. Crawl right after the launch. This is an important step to identify the state of your website after migrating to a new SEO site.
4. Resolve the issues. After the crawl, you understand what links require your attention. Fix any errors, duplicate content, and broken links.
5. Make sure the analytics tools are running. Ensure your Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics work as they should.
What Should You Do After SEO Site Migration?
1. Regular monitoring and site audits. After migrating to a new SEO site, you should pay special attention to website monitoring. You never know what can go wrong. Some issues might cause traffic drops and affect your SEO rankings. But you can always
learn more about using links to increase your traffic to the new website.
ating to a new SEO site for the first time might be confusing. Often when people hear about SEO site migration, they start to panic. And I can understand this reaction. If you invested a lot of time and effort in SEO, you don’t want to lose your results in a blink of an eye.
What will happen to your guest blogs, internal link-building, or backlinks? What if you used some professional service to buy links, like
linksmanagement? Will you have to start everything all over again? These are a lot of questions. But no need to worry. In this blog, you’ll find the best practices to make your SEO site migration as smooth as possible.
SEO Site Migration: The Basics
Before we get into our instructions, let’s cover the basics.
How Long Does SEO Site Migration Take?