Website migrations can be a great opportunity to fix website issues that have impacted SEO and been too difficult or expensive to fix. They can also be a chance to lose a lot of the value generated by previous SEO efforts and a botched migration can take a lot of time, effort and money to recover from. Involvement from a SEO migration specialist from an early stage can maximise improvements, avoid pitfalls and avoid double handling from having to make critical website updates later in the process, or post-launch.
When does a migration need SEO Support?
The sooner SEO input is included in an SEO migration the better. Timelines can then be set to allow for SEO work at key stages and sufficient time allowed for amends and retesting of the site in staging.
The key stages in a typical website migration are:
- Planning & Design
- Website development and updates
- Pre-migration testing
- Launch Day
- Post migration Testing
- Post migration monitoring
What counts as a migration?
Several times in my career a new client has come to myself or the agency they work in because they have lost significant traffic, often a migration of some sort has happened without them realising that the work should be considered a migration or other teams haven’t thought to inform them or realised the impact changes could have on SEO.
Types of website migration that require SEO support and input include:
- Migrations to new platforms
- Significant website template updates
- Migration to new URL Structure
- Migration to new domain or sub-domain (including consolidation)
- Changes to international setup of the site
- Major changes to site global navigation
- Projects to remove or consolidate large numbers of pages should also be treated in the same way as a migration
Why are migrations high risk for SEO?
Search engines such as Google build up an understanding of a web site over time, it is important that the website is considered holistically, as well as individual pages being analysed by Google. The authority, link equity, historic metrics, topical authority and more are all made up of the value of the site as a whole as well as considering clusters of topically related pages. Major changes to a site can have unforeseen consequences if search engines can no longer: find pages, crawl pages, crawl content on pages, see the relationship between pages and identify where important pages are now located.
The most common mistakes in website migrations impacting SEO include:
- Not implementing 1:1 redirects including
- No redirects
- Redirects to the wrong URLs (e.g. to the homepage)
- Creation of templates that are not fully crawlable/indexable e.g.
- Use of Javascript
- Content not visible on mobile
- Use of SPAs and Web Apps
- Creation of navigation that is not fully crawlable
- Changes to navigation that reduce vertical or horizontal linking
- Removal of pages with SEO value including:
- Pages with little traffic that have links or topical relevancy
- Consolidation of similar content that matches different keywords or different intent
- Consolidation of market specific pages
- Loss of or incorrect setup of Hreflang mapping
- Changing site structure to change relationships between URLs
- Other issues making the site, pages, or content within pages uncrawlable or unindexable
- Including issues for specific search engines such as Baidu
- Changing too many things at once, search engines will find it harder to reassess your site e.g.
- Deleting and consolidating pages at the same time as moving to a new platform
The value of involving an SEO Migration Specialist for support
In house teams may have never had to get involved with a website migration before and have had little specific training. An SEO migration specialist will have worked on many migrations of different types and on specific types of websites, such as e-commerce sites which have their own challenges.
While a lot of the work required can be performed by in house teams, or by Web-Devs with the right support or training having a migration specialist involved from an early stage will ensure every eventuality is considered and allowed for.
I am available to fully manage migrations including all testing and liasing with different stakeholders or can work on a limited support basis, getting involved at key points in the project and supporting (and training if required) the existing SEO team.