Semalt Explains How A Migration Of The Website Affects SEO
Changing the website is a very important moment for business, especially in terms of presence on Google. Unplanned website migration can literally destroy the effects of several or even several months of work related to its positioning. In this article, you will learn how to avoid losing traffic after switching pages and use that moment to increase the number of inquiries from potential customers. You will also learn about the most common mistakes that can lead to a disaster, of course, with ways to avoid them.
Types of migration, or why are we changing the site?
There are many reasons why we change the site. Depending on the situation, these may even be two or more problems that you want to solve. To begin with, I will describe to you the ones I usually hear from our clients.
Refreshing the look/redesign
Trends in the way websites are designed change over time. Companies usually look for a contractor for a new website every few years. I consider this a huge mistake and a waste of potential. A professional website should follow an evolution rather than a revolution. When building a new page, the current one is usually forgotten and everything is done "from scratch". Due to this state of affairs, very often, companies abandon subpages that generated traffic in favor of simplicity and minimalism. A misunderstood minimalism in web design trends literally leads to a catastrophe and a drop in traffic - sometimes to zero.
Page change due to SEO issues
SEO is the only channel to reach the customer that has a direct impact on the construction of the website. All other channels, including paid advertising in Google Ads, don't even need a website. Whether the website will be able to fight for the top positions depends precisely on its construction. Two things are most important here: structure and content. The graphic design or layout is a secondary matter, but it is always these elements that we pay the most attention to.
Through this approach, customers build pages that literally have no chance of being ranked high on Google. In this case, it is even necessary to prepare a new website - this is what the vast majority of clients dealing with broadly understood services hear from us. Several times I have recommended changing the site (or restoring the previous one), even if it cost a lot of money to create it.
This is why it is very important to start the process of creating a new website with an SEO consultation. An hour-long conversation can literally save several to several thousand spent on design, implementation, audits and corrections.
Changing the page due to the speed of the page
Page loading speed is a very important element related to customer acquisition. The faster the page runs, the less likely a potential customer is to exit the page before even reading it. More and more businesses are aware of this and implement the necessary corrections. Unfortunately, not every page can be well optimized in this respect. The speed of the page thus becomes the reason to change the page to a new one.
Change of the CMS system
Changing the page due to the CMS system is not a common occurrence, but I decided to give this reason. Most often, conversations about changing the page in this case start with problems related to managing or adding new content. Usually, the current CMS is a tailor-made system and its modification requires a large budget and relies on the author's favors. In this case, switching to, for example, the SEO-friendly WordPress system involves changing the page to a new one.
Business changes
Business changes can also affect the need to change sides. At different stages of the company's operation, business goals may be different. If the website reflects the business (and it should), then changes to the website will be necessary. Changes in the offer, rebranding or directing services to a different target group may be the reason for changing the website.
Change of domain and/or hosting
Transitioning to a new domain does not involve a change of website, but at this point, you will also need an SEO specialist or an SEO agency. A new domain is about building visibility from scratch, but performing appropriate redirects and maintaining the previous domain will allow you to go through this process painlessly.
In the case of changing web hosting, the migration process is usually carried out by the new hosting provider. However, it is worth, at least to a minimum extent, consulting an SEO specialist who will assess the correctness of the implementation of elements such as the SSL certificate and associated redirects.
What should the website migration process look like?
You already know the root causes of page migration. I will now try to explain to you what the process of changing a page to its new version should look like.
Step 1: Assess the current situation
To begin with, you always need to start with an analysis of the current state. At this stage, it will be useful to perform an SEO audit, at least in the basic scope. The Dedicated SEO Dashboard (DSD) can help you with this. Indeed, the DSD is a real harvester. I think it is one of the best SEO tools on the international market. This evaluation is best done before you even start designing a new page. In fact, the ideal solution is to prepare an SEO strategy for your new website. In the event that we do such strategies for our clients, the migration process is very simple and pleasant - both for the client and the company that implements the new website.
It is necessary to know the current situation of the website and the future business plans related to switching the website. This step is best done before you even start thinking about your new website.
Step 2: Planning at the structural level
The structure of the website consists mainly of all subpages and the relationships between them (internal linking). These subpages are related to the content of the search results and also generate traffic. If you do not take into account the subpages important from the SEO point of view during the website migration - the traffic will decrease.
Knowing the current situation of the website and having a prepared SEO strategy, you can plan a painless transition that will not negatively affect traffic and positions. In fact, if the new website is planned in the right way, taking into account the principles of positioning, it can significantly improve the traffic from Google and the number of acquired customers.
Step 3: Scheduling URL Changes
Changing the page is very often associated with changing the URLs. It would be ideal not to change them, but it is rarely possible. The good side of this situation is the ability to plan new addresses according to SEO principles. The new page will be able to have correct addresses in terms of their content and structure. In addition, it is worth making the new addresses friendly to both users and search engine robots.
It is important to make one-to-one redirects. This means that each subpage must be redirected to its counterpart on the new page. Ideally, the current website and the new website should have the same content and SEO optimization.
Step 4: Making a redirect map
Knowing the entire structure (all subpages) of the current version and the plan for its new version, we can prepare a redirection map. This step is necessary if we are changing URLs. Google "remembers" our subpages under the previous addresses and should indicate new ones using 301 redirects (this number means the HTTP: Moved Permanently header, which indicates that the redirect is forever).
Such a procedure will help not only Google, thanks to which you will not lose traffic, but also your potential customers. First, links to your site may appear in various forums or groups on social media. After changing the URLs, people who click on these previous links will be immediately transferred to the right place thanks to redirects. A similar situation will be with people who have bookmarked one of our subpages. Thanks to redirects, in principle, no one should notice a 404 error page informing about the lack of a specific subpage.
Step 5: Building a new website
Only at this stage do we deal with the actual construction of the new website, i.e. we plan its graphic appearance and we deal with coding. The key here is to stick to the planned strategy and transfer all the subpages necessary for SEO along with their content. Without it, traffic will drop and its recovery may take time, which may harm the business and the number of leads (inquiries) obtained.
Step 6: Post-implementation verification
The last and very important step in changing the website is verifying the correctness of the implementation. This page check can be part of the post-implementation audit or you can do it yourself. A critical element of such verification is checking:
- the correct operation of 301 redirects;
- missing 404 errors; problems of errors with internal linking;
- transfer of basic SEO optimization (titles, descriptions);
- transferring the content of individual subpages.
The most common page change errors
During my many years of experience, I have carried out many migrations. Some were done correctly and gave businesses a chance to develop, others caused traffic losses and even business problems. Most of these incorrect migrations had errors which I will discuss now.
Implementation of a new website without a plan
Deploying the page leaving its front version without a moment's reflection is perhaps the biggest mistake and usually leads to a disaster from an SEO point of view - especially if the page already has traffic from Google. Building a new website and completely abandoning everything related to its previous version leads to the fact that Google treats it like starting a new business. With such a maneuver, you will lose everything you have invested in SEO. To avoid this error, just follow the process that I described in this article. This will avoid unnecessary pages and even take your business to a new level.
Meta robots from noindex
This is probably the most common mistake made by companies implementing new websites, fortunately, easy to fix. The error is that usually such companies install pages on temporary domains (to show the progress of work) and block such pages by Google. This is the right approach as it avoids many SEO problems, but it often happens that such a company forgets to unlock a new page after moving it to the target domain. The business owner then stays with the new page, which is indexed with Google!
The solution to the problem is simple. It is enough to make sure that the company, when moving the page to the correct domain, does not forget to unblock it by Google (meta tag or robots.txt file ). If, on the other hand, you are in such a situation with a page blocked from Google - just unblock it and wait for it to be indexed again. It will take a while, but everything should be back to normal.
Dropping content
Even a critical mistake is abandoning the content from the previous version of the page and rewriting everything from scratch. While it will not be a great tragedy if the new texts are similar in terms of structure and keywords, the problem arises when most of the content or entire subpages are missing.
You must be aware that content is what makes a page appear on Google. Specific texts are "responses" to queries entered by Google. If you take the answer from the website - your website ceases to be the carrier of information that Google considers important, and you disappear from the search results.
The solution to this problem is to plan a new website in a manner consistent with the SEO strategy, which guarantees even no loss of traffic or even its increase and leads to a situation in which the website starts to attract many more customers.
No redirects
Another major mistake is that redirects are not performed. If you do not do them, Google will have to "learn" new addresses on its own. It will take weeks or even months, so you will waste your time unnecessarily. In addition, all links that lead to you from the outside (other websites, articles, forums, social media, etc.) will show a 404 error. Customers, instead of finding a new equivalent of a given subpage, will see the error and quickly disappear without the possibility of submitting a query.
The solution to this problem is to create a redirect map that includes all URLs. The second element is the correct execution of these redirects, taking into account the correct code, in this case, it must be a 301 redirect.
No post-deployment testing
In most cases, the moment of implementing a new website is the last moment to focus on the migration aspect. Many companies forget to test that everything is working properly, which causes complications that become noticeable later - usually when it's too late.
Performing post-implementation tests will allow you to catch any problems and eliminate them regularly. Thanks to this, the website migration process will be carried out with much less risk.
If you need to learn more about the subject of SEO and website promotion, we invite you to visit our Semalt blog.