Website Migration SEO: A Comprehensive Checklist

Website migration, encompassing domain changes, platform shifts, redesigns, or URL restructuring, presents inherent SEO risks. These risks include potential traffic loss, ranking declines, and indexing problems. A meticulously planned and executed SEO migration checklist is crucial to mitigate these issues and maintain online visibility. The following outlines key steps, based on available data, to navigate a website migration successfully.

Pre-Migration Planning and Audit

Prior to initiating a website migration, defining clear goals and conducting a comprehensive SEO audit are essential. The purpose of the migration – whether it’s a transition to a new content management system (CMS), rebranding with a new domain, or improving site structure – will shape the subsequent SEO strategy. An initial audit should evaluate the current website’s SEO health, utilizing tools to crawl all URLs and identify errors. Analysis of Google Analytics and Google Search Console data will reveal traffic patterns, top-performing keywords, and high-converting content. Documentation of existing technical SEO elements, including titles, meta descriptions, canonical tags, robots.txt files, and sitemaps, is also necessary.

Downloading the existing XML sitemap is a critical pre-migration step. This preserves the current site structure and allows for comparison with the new sitemap post-migration, ensuring all essential pages have been transferred correctly. Larger websites may utilize multiple sitemaps, all of which should be downloaded.

Creating a backup of the current website is also recommended. This provides a rollback option should issues arise during the launch of the new site. Coordination with web developers is necessary to establish a rollback plan.

Technical SEO Considerations

Several technical SEO tasks require attention during the migration process. Ensuring all canonical tags point to the correct new URLs is vital to avoid confusion for search engines. An unverified source notes instances where live sites incorrectly point canonical tags to staging environments.

Accessibility of the new site to search engines for crawling and indexing must be confirmed after launch. A common error involves inadvertently leaving a no-index tag active on the new site.

Monitoring Backlinks and Redirects

Backlink monitoring is a crucial component of a successful migration. Utilizing tools, such as Ahrefs, to identify backlinks pointing to old URLs allows for proactive management of referral traffic and link equity. Contacting webmasters to update links to the new URLs is recommended.

Implementing redirects from old URLs to their corresponding new URLs is paramount. The source materials do not specify a preferred redirect method (e.g., 301 vs. 302), but emphasize the importance of verifying the status codes of redirected pages.

Post-Migration Monitoring and Analysis

The work does not conclude upon the launch of the new site. Continuous monitoring is essential to identify and address any issues that may arise. This includes tracking keyword rankings, organic traffic, bounce rates, and session durations using tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush. Sharp declines in these metrics may indicate missed redirects or other technical problems.

Regular site crawls, ideally weekly and daily immediately after migration, can help identify emerging issues such as broken links or missing meta tags.

Rerunning a site audit campaign and comparing it to the pre-migration audit will highlight any changes in the number of issues detected. Investigating any “New” issues identified in the post-migration audit is crucial.

Monitoring reports within Google Search Console, particularly the “Page indexing” report, will confirm that new pages are being indexed and old pages are being deindexed.

Submitting an updated sitemap to Google Search Console ensures efficient crawling and indexing of the new site. Utilizing the URL Inspection Tool to request indexing for high-priority pages can expedite the process.

Addressing Issues and Optimizing Performance

Identifying and fixing missing pages resulting in 404 errors is a priority. Implementing redirects for any missed pages improves user experience and preserves SEO value.

Page speed and Core Web Vitals should be analyzed using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. Optimizing metrics such as First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) can improve loading times and potentially boost rankings.

The source materials suggest that temporary dips in performance are normal following a site migration. However, if specific pages underperform, further investigation is warranted to identify and resolve any underlying issues.

Utilizing SEO Migration Tools

An SEO migration tool, such as the one offered by Sitechecker, can assist in evaluating the success of the site relocation, verifying redirect status codes, and detecting errors. These tools often provide a unified dashboard for real-time SEO metric monitoring and support integration with other SEO tools. The tool’s features include site audits, rank tracking, backlink analysis, on-page SEO checks, keyword research, competitor analysis, content optimization, and performance monitoring.

Backlink Audit

After migrating to a new site, setting up a backlink audit tool is recommended to monitor incoming links. This allows for easy tracking of backlinks pointing to the new site.

Conclusion

A successful website migration requires meticulous planning, diligent execution, and ongoing monitoring. The data indicates that proactive identification and resolution of technical issues, careful management of backlinks and redirects, and continuous performance tracking are critical to minimizing SEO disruption and preserving online visibility. Utilizing available SEO tools and conducting thorough audits before and after the migration are essential components of a well-managed transition.