5 must-do things before you migrate a website
Understand the reasons why you’re migrating
Make sure your SEO resources are planned
Migrating a website is a major project and shouldn’t be undertaken lightly. On the surface, it may seem like it’d be a straightforward case of just switching CMS or URL with a few clicks. But the reality of a website migration involves making your way through multiple stages to ensure you don’t lose out on the SEO you’ve already built up. Not doing this properly could quite literally tank your website’s visibility in search.
The good news is that proper planning can avoid migration disasters. This article will take a holistic approach to preparing for a website migration rather than getting too technical. We’ll be going in at an introductory level for those of you looking for more information about migration but may not be SEO experts. However, this article can also be used as a sense-checking resource for SEOs before starting a big migration project.
Before we go any further, we want to clarify why website migration prep is so important. It’s always more costly to migrate and get it wrong without SEO support than to spend money on SEO support to come in and help maintain traffic. Website migration preparation will save you many resources in the long run.
On that note, here are the five must-do things before you migrate to a website.
1. Understand the reasons why you’re migrating
This is a simple step but an important one. Understanding the purpose behind your migration will help you plan and anticipate challenges specific to your website, brand, and business objectives. Each migration type brings its own risks, nuances and complexities.
Here are some common ways businesses want to migrate their websites. We’ve shared some pointers on what to consider for these types of migration, but it’s important to dig into why your business wants to do this and incorporate this into your larger migration strategy.
- You want to change your domain name. In this case, you’ll need to prepare to map URLs and redirects, which will be a big part of your work.
- You want to launch a new sub-folder. In this instance, you must prepare for things like Hreflang and/or similar changes to ensure technical SEO is still on point. Unlike changing domain name, you’ll be less likely to need redirects.
- You want to expand your website to target different global regions. For example, you have a co.uk domain but want to target mainland Europe. If this is the case, you must consider Hreflang, local signals, and so on in your migration plan. A lot of this could depend on how your website is initially set up, so thinking about how to structure this as part of your migration plan is crucial.
- You want to do a CMS migration. This is a backend migration, unlike the other migrations we’ve discussed so far. Your business is typically chosen because there’s a need to update the systems you’re using to access more functionality. If so, you must ensure all existing and new capabilities are available post-migration.
- You want to do a complete rebrand. This can easily go pear-shaped, so you must do due diligence before you hit go on this type of migration. There are things like server redirections, historic domain signals of new domains, redirect mapping, etc. All of this requires a lot of forward planning and preparation.
In rebrand migrations, stakeholders who don’t understand the SEO implications are also more likely to be involved, which can present added difficulty levels regarding buy-in for SEO resources. Anticipating and preparing for these types of conversations is all part of the success of a migration project.
2. Make sure your SEO resources are planned
Having a roadmap before starting a migration project is essential, which includes allocating SEO sources. SEOs might be biased toward getting involved from the start – we understand the implications a website migration can have on search performance – but we need adequate SEO support, as well as prepare against any potential roadblocks, being on hand to handle any hurdles and migrate successfully. The intentions can be there, but things won’t be plain sailing without the right resources.
Therefore, SEO concerns need to be prioritised as soon as possible. This may involve stepping out of your comfort zone and vocalising why SEO is integral to a successful migration project. Remember, SEO should be leading the charge with migration projects. This may also involve cross-collaborations with dev teams and/or design agencies, so make sure any concerns are raised with them. It’s important to reaffirm positive relationships with all the teams you’ll be working with, especially when it comes to working towards a shared goal.
The bottom line here is that SEO needs weight from support across teams—it shouldn’t be a minor consideration! No business wants to pay more after the fact to recover traffic if the migration all goes wrong. Think of it as a preventative measure.
3. Ensure you have a staging site set up
Having either a staging site means you can make changes, test what you want to test, find bugs, and so on without worrying about these experiments and workings going live. We can’t overemphasise how important it is to test your website regularly in a migration project, as it’ll help you check that it all works before going live.
However, this all comes with a caveat. You don’t want your staging site to be indexed, so ask devs to block crawlers with disavow rules and no indexing. Otherwise, you could end up with a rather frustrating, wonky situation where your staging site appears in search. We also recommend using a crawling tool on your staging site to double-check that it isn’t being accidentally crawled. This will flag if anything is being indexed and allow you to rectify it quickly. This will also help reaffirm testing and implementation. Remember, it’s better to be safe than sorry!
4. Have a go-live date agreed to
A go-live date doesn’t have to be firm and exact. However, migrations can take longer without a deadline. Working towards a specific goal is good practice in general, and having an approach like this helps to streamline and focus projects. Otherwise, it becomes easy to get sidetracked. You don’t want to be in a position where a website migration becomes something that just churns in the background.
Another benefit of having a go-live date is that you can become more aware of what is happening in a migration project’s background. This can help push resources through, especially during a time crunch.
5. Have performance benchmarks
Basically, you need to prove to stakeholders that a migration—and subsequent SEO efforts—are worth the effort and resources with performance benchmarks.
This doesn’t have to be complicated. You can note when things have changed, gone live, showcased value, and so on. These don’t just work as vanity metrics – comparing before and after can support the case for sustained SEO efforts. For instance, you can check revenue to see if it is still the same or improved.
Benchmarks also help gauge any challenges a migration project has, making problem-solving much easier. Finally, they can offer a good testing opportunity and be a way to report back to stakeholders on the progress of a project. The benefits of having performance benchmarks are tenfold.
Conclusion
If there’s one thing we encourage you to take away from this article, it’s the importance of planning for a migration project – no matter what type of migration you’re undertaking. That, and making the case of accessing the SEO resources that such a project requires. Remember, it’s much harder to backtrack from a not-so-successful migration than to start off with a solid foundation. Things go wrong when there’s no SEO support and poor planning.
SEO support is paramount for a website migration to go as smoothly as possible. You need someone to be responsible for SEO, even if it’s just in a consultancy role. This can equate to a couple of days a month to outline what you need – think competitor research, alternative solutions, key areas to be aware of, etc. To sum it all up, SEO support and resources will result in a successful website migration.
