Chapter 9: Website migration

Different people refer to different things as migration, so let me first write down how I define it.

If there are a LOT of URL changes, or a lot of structural changes to the website at once I call it a revamp. I usually see this happening for two reasons:

1. Revamping or rebranding: Companies often revamp their websites every couple of years. This could be due to changes in their target audience or their overall business strategy.
2. Changing domains: Sometimes, a company might also change its domain name. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it can be a lot of work.

You REALLY need to get SEO involved during migration

Migration is critical because messing it up can lead to huge problems. You could lose up to 80% of your traffic and leads and these issues are often very hard to fix. Very often, fixing these mistakes could take 3 to 5 years. It’s high stakes, and there’s no room for error. 

If you have someone in your internal SEO team that you can 100% trust with a critical project like this, go ahead. This is the one time I recommend hiring an experienced agency if you have even a shred of a doubt; you don’t want to wing this. 

We run migration sprints at Spear Growth. Because we do it all the time, we know what to look at, and most importantly, where. It generally takes up to 3 months to get this done and dusted. 

What your SEO team needs to do

If you plan to get your team to execute this, broadly, they need to focus on these areas:

• URL Structures
• Internal linking
• Managing existing backlinks
• Suggest pages to create based on SEO data
• Technical SEO, because it’s better to wrap this up now vs later
• Setting up redirects to ensure pages are mapped correctly post migration
• Optimize any pages being created for the right keywords (finding the right keywords is the toughest part in this)

Rough plan for migration

When planning your migration, divide it into three phases: Pre-Migration, During Migration, and Post-Migration.

Pre-Migration

1. New pages: Identify what new pages to create based on keyword research.
2. Page structure: Provide SEO pointers for page design to the design team.
3. URL structure: Suggest URL structures for SEO and clean analytics.
4. Footer & header links: Finalize the right set of links to add here. You’ll share suggestions for SEO, but you’ll also have to incorporate other stakeholders’ demands. 
5. Keyword-page map: Create a spreadsheet that clearly shows which page is optimized for which keyword so that you’re intentional about creating the pages and also, you can avoid cannibalisation.
6. Identify pages to delete: A lot of the pages you have in your existing website may be useless. Keeping them around only dilutes your topical authority and disperses your crawl budget.  Redirect File: “Delete”, in SEO, is usually “redirect”. Create a file to help developers set up redirects from old URLs to new ones.
7. 404 page: Make sure you have a good 404 error page in place.
8. Phase on phase plan: Most companies don’t (can’t) migrate the entire website in one go so break it down into phases. Help create this phase by phase plan for the team.
9. Talk to developers: Make sure your dev team isn’t making the most common mistakes that can easily be avoided now, but will become a problem later on.

During Migration (1 Month)

1. Development flow: Talk to your dev team to finalize the development timeline and staging process.
2. Review staging pages: Check the pages from an SEO perspective in staging before going live.
3. Go live: On the launch day, run a crawl to fix critical issues if you find anything.
4. Verify URLs: Make sure the correct URLs are used and redirects work properly.
5. Update backlinks: Change backlinks to point to the new URLs and plan outreach for those not in your control.
6. Check if tools are still working: Google Search Console for SEO and anything else you use.
7. Check tech issues in GSC: Look for any other technical issues you see popping up like 404s.
8. Check indexing: Monitor indexing and reindexing weekly.(Very important)
9. Resolve tech issues: Right after migration, start fixing any remaining technical issues you had deprioritised earlier.

Post-Migration

1. Drop report: Create a report one month after migration to track changes in traffic and leads.

What to expect after migration

When you migrate, there will be some changes. You might see a drop in traffic. This is normal, especially if there are many URL changes. Usually, the drop lasts from a few weeks to a few months. If you handle the migration well, your traffic should stabilize and might even improve over time.

In a lot of cases, you may even see the traffic go up because there may have been a lot of issues with the website that you’ve now resolved.

Migration from a business perspective

Here’s a link to a blog a client wrote after we handled a migration sprint. I especially love this blog because Advait covers everything that was going on in his mind as a CEO of the company, not just from an SEO standpoint.

Check it out here: https://www.advaitruia.com/p/how-and-why-we-acquired-our-com-domain