Migrating a website is a little bit like moving house; whether you’re upsizing or downsizing your space, you’ll want to make sure you take everything of high value and only leave behind what’s not needed.
Building a new website is an exciting move and can have a lot of benefits, but it’s really important that you don’t lose any of the domain authority and SEO strength that you’ve established over years on your previous site. We can help with that.
Maintaining Content During Migration
If you miss any valuable pages or well-targeted content during your migration to you new site, it can cause a real downturn in your SEO performance, so we’ll ensure a smooth transition by employing the following key methods:
- Determining Migration Type: There are a number of different migration types to choose from, so the first step we’ll take is to determine which one makes the most sense for you, and then we’ll ensure that it is done with the utmost precision and care. You can choose from migrations such as a new domain, an HTTP/S migration or combining domains, each of which come with their own strengths, weaknesses and risk, so it’s important to have high-level technical expertise of the type we can provide.
- Analysing the Risks: Migrating your website can be a really positive move with a lot of long-term benefits, but you’ll need to ensure that it is done carefully so that there are no negative SEO impacts. We’ll take a detailed look at all of the risks involved and ensure that you’re protected during the key stages, which may include; domain transfer, URL restructuring and content changes amongst others.
- Monitoring Ranks: This is a key part of the process, where we’ll ensure we pay close attention to your ranks during the migration to see if any of them change noticeably during migration. A small rise or fall in the ranks for various keywords is, of course, to be expected from time-to-time, but if there are considerable drops in key areas during the migration, we’ll make sure to address those as soon as possible, as well as making sure to minimise the chance of it happening in the first place.
- File Redirects: This is another key part of the process, allowing us to signpost to the search engines where your content, pages and overall site has moved to. Doing this correctly is vital to ensuring link equity is passed on, communicating whether the redirect is permanent or temporary, and allowing Google to examine (crawl) the new site effectively. You’ll need expert guidance to decide between page-to-page redirects or page-to-root redirects, ensuring they are done in a way that protects your SEO.
- Sitemap Management: This is another in-depth technical aspect which allows us to best communicate with Google as it begins to crawl the new site. We can make sure that you have the right sitemap/s in place to help your new site thrive in SEO terms.
Efficient Migration
This process is, in many ways, as complex as it sounds, so it’s important to take on expert help to ensure that your newly launched site is on the best footing to reach new heights of SEO success.
Performing a poorly planned migration can destroy years of authority and ranking placements your old site may have built up, so it’s not to be taken lightly.
Contact our website support team today by phone, email or contact form and we’d be happy to talk over how we’d guide you through a site migration.
