EXAMPLE: How to Increase Your Website Visibility on Google Search

Types of Website Migrations

First, it’s important to understand which type of site migration is right for your unique situation.

There are plenty of options, and occasionally, circumstances call for a hybrid approach.
Here are the most common types of site migrations, sorted into the two categories used by Google, with examples of each:

Background

• Domain Name

  Common in rebranding, when your site needs to reflect a new business name


• Subdomain or Subfolders

  Moving a ccTLD into subdomains or subfolders


• Top-Level Domain

  When limiting your site to a particular country; alternatively, launching internationally


• Protocol

  Moving from HTTP to HTTPS


• Site Structure

  Changing your site’s layout or architecture, typically impacting URL structure and internal linking

Follow a Phased Approach

Although an SEO migration is a considerable undertaking, breaking the process up into clear stages will make it seem less daunting and help you stay organized. Be sure to cover all your bases, and don’t miss a step.
While every migration will be different, these are the typical stages most companies follow in their project.

Your website is a crucial part of your business, and you can’t afford to let your SEO or UX slip.
However, every business will likely move domains, rebrand, or make other substantial structural changes at some point, which means an SEO website migration is almost inevitable.

Just as moving to a new home can be an intense process, so can an SEO site migration. But if you plan ahead and work with an experienced technical SEO team, you can migrate all of your content, links, search rankings, and metadata with minimal disruption.

This guide will give you an overview of the website migration process from an Organic Search perspective.

This SEO migration checklist will help you better understand:

• What a website migration does

• Why it’s essential for revenue growth, search rankings, and Organic Search visibility

• The various steps and stages that are critical to success.

A website migration is a broad term that describes significant changes to a website that can affect its search engine visibility.

A website migration can have significant benefits or devastating consequences, depending on the execution, so it’s not something to undertake on a whim.

Companies choose to migrate their website for a few different reasons. These could include rebranding, switching domains or subdomains, changing platforms, updating content, or adding or removing entire pages.

These changes can significantly impact the way search engines crawl and index the site. If you rush your migration, your site could experience significant disruptions, costing you rankings and traffic. Recovering from this kind of setback often takes months.

That’s why you need a rock-solid plan before you begin. Approach the project like you would any large-scale endeavor in stages, with every step mapped out on a timeline.

Your website is a crucial part of your business, and you can’t afford to let your SEO or UX slip.

However, every business will likely move domains, rebrand, or make other substantial structural changes at some point, which means an SEO website migration is almost inevitable.

Just as moving to a new home can be an intense process, so can an SEO site migration. But if you plan ahead and work with an experienced technical SEO team, you can migrate all of your content, links, search rankings, and metadata with minimal disruption.

This guide will give you an overview of the website migration process from an Organic Search perspective.
This SEO migration checklist will help you better understand:

• What a website migration does

• Why it’s essential for revenue growth, search rankings, and Organic Search visibility

• The various steps and stages that are critical to success.

A website migration is a broad term that describes significant changes to a website that can affect its search engine visibility.

A website migration can have significant benefits or devastating consequences, depending on the execution, so it’s not something to undertake on a whim.

Companies choose to migrate their website for a few different reasons. These could include rebranding, switching domains or subdomains, changing platforms, updating content, or adding or removing entire pages.

These changes can significantly impact the way search engines crawl and index the site. If you rush your migration, your site could experience significant disruptions, costing you rankings and traffic. Recovering from this kind of setback often takes months.

That’s why you need a rock-solid plan before you begin. Approach the project like you would any large-scale endeavor in stages, with every step mapped out on a timeline.

Identify Strategy and Scope

Before you do anything, you need to fully understand the purpose and scope of your SEO site migration.

During the Strategy and Scope phase, you’ll put the project in perspective and evaluate where your primary focus should be and any issues or opportunities you should address during the move.

Consider Opportunities and Risks

Because website migrations are complex and feature many different variables and moving parts, a lot can go wrong. If you fail to proactively address these risks, you’ll inevitably encounter them without a plan to mitigate them.

From lost traffic to a drop in rankings or revenue, the list of potential hazards is virtually endless.

This goes to show that SEO is anything but dead. As a matter of fact, SEO is more important than ever even with the rise of AI Overviews and other advanced SERP features.

Because a site migration is complex, you have a chance to address other site issues that you’ve put off for far too long.

More often than not, an SEO site migration is the perfect opportunity to fix legacy issues. This work could involve updating URL structures, correcting old redirects, consolidating subdomains, and more.

Set Clear Objectives and Goals

Along with opportunities and risks associated with the project, you need to determine the goals of your migration. What do you hope to accomplish? What would a successful website migration look like, and how will it help your business?

Communicate your goals and objectives with all relevant stakeholders so everyone is on the same page.

Prepare Your Plan

Before you can begin development, you need a plan detailing the entire scope of the project.
List every phase of the project with dedicated tasks assigned to their respective owners (SEO Consultant, UX Consultant, Web Developer, Content Editor, etc.) along with clear due dates to keep the project moving forward without missing any crucial steps.

Develop Your Pre-Launch Strategy

With the big picture of your migration in perspective, it’s time to strategize so the project hits your goals and meets your projected timeline.

The pre-launch phases are the most important because they can impact how well your site performs post-launch, so take your time and ensure you hit all of these points.

Review Best Practices for Site Migration SEO

The ROI of SEO and ranking in Google search is substantial. When SEO is done right, it can deliver exponential growth that endures far longer than any PPC campaign ever could.

Audit your site and check for any existing or potential SEO or UX issues at this early stage. You can’t fix what you aren’t aware of, so make sure to check and double-check the content on your site—including images—and any proposed changes to the copy or design.

Compile and provide all of these SEO changes and requirements into an SEO Specification Document for your web developers. To speed up the process and avoid any mistakes, write this document with actions in mind.

You want it to be easy for your devs to understand and implement these actions, so be thorough and clear in your directions and action items.

Identify Priority Pages

Your priority pages are critical to the success of your website migration. These are the pages that drive the most traffic, have the most links, or convert the best. If you forget to transfer these pages or do it incorrectly, you could negatively affect your site’s search rankings.

You can check within your Google Analytics 4 property or Google Search Console to identify your priority pages based on the following:

• Organic Visits in the last 12 months

• Revenue

• Conversions

• Conversion Rate from the previous 12 months

• Clicks during the last 90 days

• Top linked pages

Identify which pages have the highest values in these categories and ensure they exist on the new site. If your URL structure is changing, you will need to place a 301 redirect to prevent major indexing issues once you migrate your site.

Identify Your Current Rankings

To determine whether your migration was successful, you’ll need to compile a pre-migration ranking report of your legacy pages so you can accurately compare pre- and post-migration rankings.

In addition, your pre-migration rankings report will help you diagnose any problem areas of the current site along with any underperforming pages that need special attention during the website migration process.

Review the Staging Environment

Before you make the new site available in a staging environment, ensure that search engines are blocked from indexing it.

To do this, you can make the site only available for specific IP addresses, protect staging area access with a password, or edit the robots.txt file to prevent search engines from crawling the new site.