What Does SEO Support for Site Migration Include
When the time comes to revamp your website's design, change your CMS, or even change your website domain, getting an experienced SEO professional involved in the process as early as possible is key to the success of the endeavor.
Here's what he'll do to keep the risks of organic visibility damage to an absolute minimum:
Action plan during the migration
- We determine the scope of the migration (what changes are to be made to the site);
- We form a team that will work closely together throughout the process (Dev, Creative, SEO, PM…);
- We identify potential risks to the site and plan steps to minimize them;
- We create a list of specific tasks for each step of the migration;
- We choose a good time for the migration.
It is recommended that the structure of the new site be communicated in advance with an SEO specialist and according to research on the volume of searches for specific keywords, competitive analysis and analysis of user behavior. This ensures that the updated site will meet user needs as much as possible and subsequent optimization for organic results will be greatly facilitated.
Preparation before the actual website migration
- "Inventory" of the site's content (detailed analysis of the current structure and resources/pages) and saving a copy of it in the form of an export to a table);
- Plan for 301 redirects of the old addresses to the new ones;
- Track organic keyword and traffic positions and prepare a document for post-migration metrics monitoring;
- Technical SEO audits of the working variant - URL structure, metadata and h1-h6 structure, canonical URLs, bot crawl directives, pagination, language version optimization, 404 error page, and structured data.
Important checks after the migration is complete and the new site is live
- We manually test the most important pages to make sure they load correctly and have the right content;
- Using an SEO tool, we check the technical condition of the site to identify "broken" pages, non-working internal links and other problems preventing the correct crawling and indexing of the updated site;
- We check robots.txt and XML sitemaps, as well as crawl and index directives set via the Robots Tag;
- Checking for the correct redirection from the old to the new site;
- Checking all on-site SEO parameters - URLs, Title, Description, H1 headings, canonicals, for other elements from the dev version;
- Verification of the correct connection and operation of Google's analytical tools;
- We prepare analysis and recommendations for updating links from external sources (if possible, it is requested to replace old links with new ones to avoid bots and users going through the redirected page).
Why SEO Migration Support is Necessary
The involvement of an SEO specialist in the process of redesigning or completely revamping a website ensures that the migration will happen with minimal risk and that the changes to the site will follow the best practices of optimization for organic ranking.
FAQ
A migration is defined as any significant change that could affect the website’s visibility in search engines.
No. We could also provide SEO support for a migration done by an external DEV team. It is important to know that the involvement of an SEO specialist is recommended at the very first stage when planning changes to the website.
Yes. If you entrust the migration to CreateX’s WEBDEV team, they will work closely with the agency’s SEO specialists. In the detailed description of the site development service (completely new or redesign of an existing one), which you will receive with your offer, all SEO activities will be described in detail.
Why SEO Optimization by CreateX?
- teamwork of professionals in combination with individual responsibility for the performance of tasks;
- a clear strategy with specific deadlines for implementation;
- holistic approach with a focus on the success of your business.
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