What do you need to know before migrating a website?

Whether it’s a redesign, a complete platform migration, or a single site domain change, there are two basic rules to remember.

The whole equals the sum of its parts

Search engines are not people, and the expression “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” does not apply when talking about site migration.

Your website’s ranking score depends on various factors and each web page:

created content
internal links
structured data
page speed
user experience

Each web page’s ranking determines the website’s overall ranking score and performance. Therefore, what you don’t transfer to the new website will result in a loss of overall ranking.

Unfortunately, a poorly planned and executed migration could lead to a drop in organic impressions, clicks and potential conversions. We’ve migrated hundreds of online stores with organic traffic of more than 1,000,000 unique visitors monthly. That’s how we know the specific steps needed to avoid such complications and how to help your business succeed.

The web page contains its own history

Google indexes every web page based on its URL address and ranks it according to its content, relevance and user activity. The page’s performance depends primarily on these three factors.

However, many other internal and external factors could affect it. That’s why every new page starts to rank again and is affected by the overall website ranking score.

If you change a web page’s address (URL), it will begin the ranking process all over again unless you redirect it to its new address (typically with a 301 redirect, which is a permanent redirect, as opposed to a 302, which is temporary).

The same goes for replacing created content or changing how users interact with the page (UX).

How can we contribute to a successful site migration?

We’ve migrated hundreds of online stores with an organic traffic of more than 1,000,000 unique visitors a month thanks to our technical SEO specialists – developers with years of experience in the field.

We will consult and help you throughout each step of the migration process to minimize the possibility of negative effects of each change you want to make.

We often receive inquiries from customers whose online stores have suffered from an unsuccessful migration. Unfortunately, in most cases, it’s too late to plan the necessary SEO tasks and course of action if the migration is complete.

Our team of technical specialists is ready to plan important tasks in a timely manner before the migration begins and help you preserve as much of your existing organic traffic as possible.

Before site migration

We perform a technical audit of the current/existing website:

We find existing site errors.
We collect data regarding its current status, performance and ranking.
We register the entire URL address structure.
We pull the data from Google Search Console (GSC).

We perform a technical audit of the new website (demo site or staging) before migration (after it’s ready but before it’s replaced):

We check if the entire content is transferred.
We check if the URL structure from the previous site is preserved. If there is a new structure, we check if all the necessary redirects are made so that there are no broken internal/external links and no loss of content.
We check the HTML code of all page types and if there is something inside that could harm the rendering process.
We check Structured Data (Markup) for all page types and ensure that Google can identify them the best way and present them through the best-looking Rich Snippet, which would increase their CTR (click-through rate).
We check if GA/GA4 (Google Analytics/Google Analytics 4), GSC, Facebook Pixel, Google Tag Manager and other APIs are configured correctly.

Post-audit migration support

We work directly with the client’s web developers to fix any errors or gaps found during the technical audit of the staging site before the site goes live.

We perform a keyword analysis:

We analyze the performance of each URL address currently shown in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
We analyze the performance of each keyword that the website ranks for and the connection between the URL addresses and the keywords.
We analyze the competition for each keyword.

Building a semantic core

We analyze all the phrases crucial to your business goals but not included in your current strategy.

We present them in a document together with potential opportunities:

Brainstorm keywords
Core and Semantically Related Keywords
Topically-Related Phrases
Question Graph User Asked Questions on Google
Keywords grouping by classificators and modifiers
Keywords grouping – User Intent
Co-occurring phrases
Competitors keywords / low-to-high level competition
Google Search Console – Keyword Analysis (Basic Analysis)
Local /city, country/ queries
Topics & Concept matching

We develop a Content Marketing strategy:

We develop the strategy based on which we will have complete information about every current URL of your website.
We provide instructions regarding the correct approach toward the different language versions of the website based on the current ranking for each country.

Semantic analysis of the content

We will perform a semantic analysis of the entire content that will be created according to our strategy (rewritten or new).

Several elements comprise the semantic analysis:

Semantic analysis
Grammar analysis
Cannibalization analysis
Plagiarism analysis
AI-generated content analysis and more

After site migration

Post-migration technical audit

We perform a new technical audit immediately after the migration is complete to ensure the migration is successful from a technical SEO point of view.

We analyze various factors:

We check if the site is NONDEX after the migration – meta tags/robots.txt
We check if all the www/non-www/HTTPS/non-HTTPS redirects are made.
We check for any broken internal links leading to their URL addresses in the DEV environment (demo site/staging) that might have occurred after the site transfer
We check for any post-migration changes in the URL structure and if the redirects are made correctly.
We check the website’s integration with GSC, GA (GA4) and if it’s configured correctly;
We check the XML sitemap in GSC and update the address if there’s a difference in the URLs.
Initial performance check of the new website’s speed and particularly of the metrics related to Page Speed/CWV (Core Web Vitals).

We monitor site performance after the migration:

We observe the website’s behavior in GSC and SERP.
We observe how the tasks are performed and assist your team if there’s a performance decline in the SEO metrics.
We monitor any page index changes – 404/not indexed/redirects type 301 and 302.
We monitor any new Rich Results errors in GSC and if individual web pages are getting the right snippets.

Do you have any questions? See more in our blog or give us a call.

Don’t risk losing the organic traffic you earned over the years if you are about to migrate your website! Instead, seek professional assistance to guarantee a successful migration.

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