You’ve decided it’s time to move your website. You’ve planned the move, you know what content to take with you, and you have a migration checklist. But before you hit the big “launch” button, there are a few final things to check. And we’re here to help. Below is your comprehensive SEO website migration checklist. This list will help you make sure your new site is set up for search engine success. Follow these tips, and you’ll be well on your way to ranking high in Google and other search engines.
Why Is Website Migration SEO Important?
One of the most important, but often overlooked aspects of website migration is SEO. When you migrate to a new website, the goal is to ensure that your SEO efforts don’t go to waste. Everything that you’ve worked hard for in the past needs to be carried over to your new website. So that your site can continue ranking higher and generating leads.
That’s why a website migration SEO checklist is so important. It allows you to take a step-by-step approach to migrating your website. It ensures that you don’t miss anything that could hurt your SEO efforts.
Map Out Your Site Structure
Mapping out your site structure before you migrate is key. This will help ensure a smooth transition and prevent any hiccups down the road.
To do this, start by outlining your site’s current hierarchy. This will give you a good idea of how your pages are currently linked together. Then, create a new map of your site’s structure, using the same hierarchy as before.
This new map will show you how your pages will be linked in the new site. It’s important to make sure that all of your old links are still in place. And that the new map accurately reflects your desired website structure.
Optimize for User Experience
One of the most important aspects of a website migration is optimizing for the user experience. This means ensuring that your website is easy to navigate. The users can likely find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.
This starts with creating a comprehensive sitemap and wireframe. The sitemap will help you map out your website’s structure. While the wireframe will help you determine how each page will look and function. You’ll also want to make sure that all your links are working properly. And that your website is responsive on all devices.
Another key element of optimizing for the user experience is creating accurate and user-friendly titles and meta descriptions. These are the snippets of text that appear in search engine results. So it’s crucial that they accurately reflect the content of your page. You’ll also want to make sure that your images are properly tagged and that your website is SSL-enabled.
Check for Broken Links and Redirects
You’re almost there! After you’ve checked everything else, you also have to make sure that all the links and redirects on your website are working properly.
The reason this is important is that any broken links or redirects can mess with your SEO ranking. Google’s crawlers won’t be able to find the new pages, which means that your new content won’t even show up in search results.
So, go through your website and check for any broken links or redirects. If you find any, set up 301 redirects to make sure visitors are taken to the right page instead of getting a 404 error. You can also use tools such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider or Sitebulb to help you find any errors quickly and easily.
Update Content and Metadata
Now you’re ready to start making technical changes and updating content to ensure your website migration goes smoothly. Make sure to update any metadata, alt tags, and titles, while also ensuring that all of your URLs are correct and don’t contain any duplicate content. To be particularly thorough, you should double-check your content for accuracy and look for any dead links.
Don’t forget to optimize both the existing content and new content for the keywords you have identified. That way, search engines will be able to locate and index your fresh content more effectively. Additionally, make sure that you keep an eye on the internal linking structure of your website – this will help ensure that relevant pages are linked together.
Finally, make sure that the transition between old website and new is smooth for users—the last thing you want is for visitors to end up on a 404 page or get confused by changes in navigation. Once you’ve double-checked all of these aspects, you can move on to tracking!
Test Everything and Track Performance
You’re almost done. Now it’s time to make sure everything is working properly and track the performance of your new website. This is where the rubber meets the road, and where you’ll truly start to see the fruits of your labor.
– Make sure all links from your old website are redirected correctly to the new version. You can use a tool like Screaming Frog to crawl your old website and generate a list of URLs to check against the new version.
– Test that all images, videos and other media files are loading correctly without any broken links or 404 errors.
– Test all forms, including contact forms and lead capture forms, to make sure they are successfully submitting data
– Track website performance with Google Analytics to monitor page visits, bounce rate and other key performance metrics that indicate how people are engaging with your new site.
10 Effects Of Website Migration SEO Checklist
Below are some effects of SEO site migration! Check it out!
1. Domain change
It’s important to note that you should also change the domain name in your social media accounts and email signatures. You’ll want to do this so that people can easily remember what you’re called now, instead of having to look it up every time they see a link or mention your brand on Twitter or Facebook. You should also make sure that all of these changes happen at once (if possible) so that they don’t get lost somewhere along the way!
2. New URLs/Moved URLs
One of the most common reasons for a website migration is because you’ve moved to a new domain name or moved your site to another location. If this is the case and you’re looking to improve search engine rankings in Google, it’s important that your old URLs are 301 redirected so they still point directly at their intended destination while redirecting all other traffic. You can also consider adding canonical tags on both pages, which will help ensure that Google knows which version should rank higher than others based on user intent (i.e., which page was meant for what purpose).
In addition, if there are any duplicate content issues across multiple URLs within your site hierarchy—for example, if one page has been copied over onto another one and isn’t properly marked up as an article—then we recommend removing them and creating new ones instead with noindex tags added so that Google doesn’t penalize any content by mistake when crawling through them later down the line!
3. No Redirects
Redirects are used to tell search engines that a page has moved or been removed. This is important because Googlebot will try to follow the redirects, which can cause further problems if you have multiple pages on your site (such as contact us pages).
4. Mismatched 404 or 5xx errors.
Mismatched 404 or 5xx errors are a sign that your website may be suffering from broken links. A 404 error is when someone visits an old page and gets a message saying there’s nothing there, while a 5xx error means that the server was unable to process the request because it was not found on its server. This can happen if you move any pages from one directory to another, or make changes to your site’s structure (such as moving menus around).
To fix these problems, you’ll need to use 301 redirects—a permanent change in URL where all references point back toward their new location. This way, users will always know how to navigate around your site without having any problems with broken links or internal server errors affecting them negatively!
5. Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is one of the biggest issues for SEO. This can be a problem if you don’t have the right tools to fix it, but it’s also easy to do manually.
6. Internal linking changes
Once your content has migrated to the new site, you should re-evaluate your internal linking structure. Make sure that all links within the same page or post are updated. This should be done by clicking on each link and checking that it points to the correct URL. For example, if there is a link in an email newsletter that links back to one of your most important blog posts (or even another resource), make sure that this link is changed so that it now links directly back to where it used to direct users before moving over from their old website/blog/etc., rather than having them click through multiple pages before reaching their destination once again!
You also need to make sure any articles on social media platforms have links pointing back here instead of elsewhere; otherwise people won’t know where else they can find more information about what interests them most!
7. Indexing issues
Indexing issues can cause a drop in rankings. When migrating content to a new site, ensure that the new site is indexed and crawlable. You should also make sure that both sites have all of the same content as well as any updates or changes made by Google.
8. Crawlability issues on the new website
Crawlability problems are the most common issue you’ll encounter when migrating your website. These issues can be caused by a number of things, including indexing errors and duplicate content.
To check for crawlability issues:
- Check whether or not Googlebot is able to access your site. You should see an HTTP or HTTPS address in its results (usually something like [www.]example-domain-here). If there’s no such thing as an HTTP or HTTPS address, then perhaps it’s only showing up as a link!
9. Website Speed and Mobile Friendliness
Website speed and mobile friendliness are two of the most important factors to consider when moving your site. If you’re not able to check these now, don’t worry! We’ll go over how to do so in just a second.
Website Speed: This is easy enough to check for; just open up Google Chrome or Firefox and type in the URL of your website at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/. The results will appear on top of the page with information about its load time, among other things like number of requests and latency (how long it takes for them all). If this number is too high for your liking, then you should consider going through our checklist again or contacting us directly with questions about performance issues related specifically to SEO migration.
10. Mixed HTTP and HTTPS versions of the website
A migration can take a long time, so it is important to consider the impact on your SEO efforts as well. The reason for this is that if you do not plan for it, your site may have negative effects on your SEO when it comes back online after being migrated. For example:
- If there are any broken links or 404 errors in a URL (or any other kind of error), these will be visible when people try accessing them from their computers or mobile devices.
- You may also see some duplicate content issues where multiple pages share information with each other because they are hosted by different servers.
How Long Does SEO For Site Migration Take?
A site migration typically spans 6 to 12 months on average, contingent upon the size of the website undergoing migration. This duration may extend if the website employs different technology. Additionally, if you’re a seasoned SEO professional keen on mentoring beginners and sharing motivational Spotify podcasts, explore platforms like SpotifyStorm to reach a vast audience.
Conclusion
So, make sure to go over our website migration SEO checklist to make sure your migration is as smooth as possible and that your website continues to rank well in search engines. And as always, if you have any questions or need any help, don’t hesitate to reach out to us for support.
