How to Build a Robust SEO Migration Plan

A site migration is one of the most significant and potentially disruptive events in the life of a website. Whether you’re moving to a new domain, changing your site’s structure, or switching CMS platforms, the SEO implications are real. Without a robust SEO site migration strategy, you could see dramatic drops in organic traffic, rankings, and ultimately, business leads.

In this post, we will guide you through the essential SEO best practices you should follow to safeguard your site’s organic performance during a migration.

What Are the Different Types of Site Migrations?

Before diving in, it’s important to understand the different types of migrations and the unique challenges they present to digital marketing and website teams.

Domain Migration

TLDR: Moving a website from one domain to another, such as transitioning from ‘www.oldsite.com’ to ‘www.newsite.com’.
SEO Challenges: Risks include loss of domain authority and broken backlinks. It’s crucial to implement 301 redirects correctly to retain as much link equity as possible.

Platform Migration

TLDR: Switching from one content management platform (CMS) or hosting platform to another, such as migrating from Squarespace to WordPress or HubSpot.
SEO Challenges: Different platforms handle SEO elements like URL structures, meta tags, and site speed differently. Choosing a SEO-friendly CMS platform and ensuring a smooth transition requires meticulous planning.

Structural Migration

TLDR: Changing the internal structure of a website, including URL hierarchy and site navigation.
SEO Challenges: This can disrupt internal linking and cause 404 errors if not managed properly. Careful planning is needed to preserve SEO value.

Protocol Migration (HTTP to HTTPS)

TLDR: Switching a website from HTTP to HTTPS for enhanced security.
SEO Challenges: Although beneficial for SEO, proper handling of redirects and avoiding mixed content issues are critical to prevent losses in organic rankings.

How Long Do Site Migrations Take?

The duration of a site migration varies based on its complexity and the size of the site, but here are the general phases:

Planning Phase

Duration: 2-4 weeks
SEO Involvement: SEO considerations should start during the planning phase of a website migration. Early SEO involvement allows for a comprehensive strategy that mitigates risks, sets clear goals, and aligns technical and on-page requirements with SEO best practices.

Pre-Migration Preparation

Duration: 3-6 weeks
SEO Involvement: This phase is crucial for preserving any historic data and making sure the migrated website has a strong SEO foundation. During pre-migration prep, a team will often develop redirect maps and perform other technical SEO audits.

Migration Execution

Duration: 1-2 weeks
SEO Involvement: SEO teams must be actively involved during the migration to ensure the proper implementation of redirects, sitemap updates, and error checks. This phase is where the groundwork laid earlier comes to fruition.

Post-Migration Monitoring

Duration: 3-6 months
SEO Involvement: Continuous SEO monitoring is essential after the migration to track traffic, rankings, and indexation. SEO issues can arise weeks or months after the migration, so ongoing vigilance is necessary.

Why Early SEO Involvement Is Critical

Involving SEO experts early in the migration process is essential for several reasons:

• Risk Mitigation: Early SEO involvement helps identify and mitigate risks such as broken links, loss of link equity, and technical issues that can lead to drops in rankings for your website.
• Seamless Transition: SEO experts can guide the technical and web development teams to ensure that critical elements like 301 redirects, canonical tags, and meta data are implemented correctly.
• Faster Recovery: If any issues arise after the site launch, having a dedicated SEO team involved ensures that issues are quickly identified and resolved, minimizing traffic and ranking losses.

Things to Consider for a SEO Site Migration Checklist

As you are considering a site migration for your business, make sure to incorporate these SEO action items into your team’s plan to maintain your business’ online presence throughout the process.

Get a Benchmark for Your SEO Data

Before starting the migration, it’s vital to benchmark your current site’s performance.  This includes organic traffic metrics, keyword rankings, and site structure data. Having a clear benchmark allows you to measure the impact of the migration accurately. You can pull this data from tools such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, SEMRush, Conductor, and Ahrefs.

Crawl your Website

Use crawling tools, like Screaming Frog or Deepcrawl, to capture the current state of your site’s URLs, metadata, and internal linking structure. This data will be crucial if you need to troubleshoot issues post-migration. This was actually one of the most significant parts of a website migration for one of our SEO clients, who had 35,000 ‘Soft URLs’.

Develop a Redirect Map

Improper or missing redirects can lead to significant organic traffic and ranking losses. Make sure you develop a robust redirect map with 301 redirects, which will pass the majority of the original page’s link equity to the new page. Every old URL not going live with the site launch should have a corresponding new URL mapped out before the migration.

Before going live, make sure to also test the redirects to ensure they work correctly. Even a few broken redirects can lead to substantial losses in traffic and user trust.

Perform Technical SEO Audits

Technical SEO is the backbone of a successful migration. Ensuring that search engines can crawl and index your new site without issues is paramount. At Knucklepuck we evaluate the following when performing our technical audits for clients:

• XML Sitemaps: We update and submit new XML sitemaps to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools immediately after the migration. This helps search engines discover and index the new pages quickly.
• Robots.txt File: We review and update our clients’ robots.txt file to ensure that search engines can crawl the right parts of their site.
• Canonical Tags: We advise our clients’ web teams to use canonical tags to prevent duplicate content issues, which can arise if the old and new URLs are both accessible.

Follow On-Page SEO Best Practices

On-page SEO should not be overlooked during a migration. Make sure that before a site launches, all meta titles, descriptions, headings, and content are optimized for the new structure and your target keywords. Proper internal linking within your content can also help distribute link equity throughout the site and improve the user experience.

Don’t Slack on Post-Migration SEO Monitoring and Reporting

After the migration, the work isn’t over. Ongoing monitoring and reporting will help you and your team identify and address any issues that arise. We recommend taking the following steps after a site launches:

• Monitor Traffic and Rankings: Keep a close eye on organic traffic and keyword rankings. It’s normal to see some fluctuations, but significant drops need to be investigated immediately.
• Error Reports: Regularly check Google Search Console for crawl errors, indexing issues, and any other alerts. Quick action can prevent small issues from becoming major problems.
• Re-crawl the Site: Conduct another full site crawl to identify any broken links, missing redirects, or other issues that could negatively impact SEO performance.

Conclusion: Don’t Forget SEO for Site Migrations

A site migration presents both risks and opportunities for your SEO. With a strong, well-planned SEO site migration strategy, you can not only protect your existing performance but also set the stage for future growth.

At Knucklepuck, we specialize in managing complex site migrations, ensuring that your SEO remains intact and your business continues to thrive. If you want SEO support during a website redesign or migration, reach out today!