Planning a site migration?
Migrations are one of the more difficult – and often dreaded – SEO tasks.
To make it work, you need to avoid common pitfalls that can impact your visibility and result in lost traffic and revenue.
On August 11, I moderated a sponsored Search Engine Journal webinar presented by Cody Gault, Migration Services Lead at Conductor.
He shared the most common site migration issues so you can be prepared to handle them.
Here’s a recap of the webinar presentation.
There are plenty of reasons why brands decide to take on a website migration.
But regardless of the purpose, site migrations can be scary for most people, even for SEO professionals.
Done wrong, site migrations pose a lot of risks.
They can significantly impact your visibility and rankings in search results. Even worse, you can lose rankings and revenue.
Gault shared that the majority of teams they work with have zero experience with migrations.
Nearly everyone is worried about losing rankings and traffic and usually, there isn’t a full plan in place to mitigate risk.
And because most migrations take around 4-6 months on average, teams often feel rushed to complete it.
Common migration issues stem from:
There are plenty of site migration checklists out there, but some important items don’t come up frequently.
Let’s dive into some of them.
Roughly half the migrations Gault and his team at Conductor handle involve moving to a JavaScript framework.
If you’re working on React or Angular, remember the following:
Internal linking often slips under the radar during site migrations, but failing to take it into account can be harmful for SEO.
Here are tips to help preserve your internal linking structure:
These are the things you don’t want to miss checking before launching your newly migrated website.
Properly target redirects. Don’t mass redirect to the homepage.
Here are general tips and reminders to make sure your migration is as successful as possible.
If you can hold out on certain changes (such as content) and piece it out after the launch, it’ll be way easier to identify any specific issues
Migrations are bumpy enough without adding additional issues into the mix.
If a site is going to launch regardless of the issues, make sure to inform the client or your higher-ups of the potential fallout
Google updates make it hard to diagnose problems.
If one is coming up that they alert you to, pushing back the launch can make it easier to identify how the migration impacted things.
While Google now says they can handle phased migrations, Gault often sees problems with this approach.
Be especially wary of phased launches when dealing with international sites.
Test your redirects if possible – you’d be amazed how rare this is.
You’ll likely have mistakes that can be fixed with testing. Be aware of potential better redirect matches down the line.
Check when the site launches.
Check later that day or the next day.
Check a week later just to be safe.
Considering a website migration? Equip yourself with the right resources, knowledge, and expertise to ensure a smooth transition. Talk to Conductor’s team of experts.
Check out the SlideShare below.
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Image Credits
All screenshots taken by author, August 2021
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