Migrating a website or part of a website is a delicate project because it involves transferring the positioning of existing URLs to new ones and, even if 301 rirects are implement for all of them, this does not guarantee that the process will be transparent. In some cases, these projects are undertaken with the aim of improving positioning in the mium or long term, even if a certain loss of traffic occurs over a period of time. In other cases, these projects are necessary when there is a change in content management or technology.
When to deploy the migration
Depending on the number of URLs to be migrat and the percentage of rirects that can be implement, the migration will be more or less risky. If we are fac with a migration project in which we know that there will initially be a certain percentage of traffic drop, it will be better to do it at a time when traffic trends are lower .
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Sometimes this is not possible to avoid, so you ne to consider additional investment in advertising campaigns to compensate for the lower amount of traffic so that the business continues to operate at the same pace. Therefore, you will have to plan all this before carrying out the following tasks, which we will separate into 3 different phases: before, during and after the publication of the new URLs.
Pre-production tasks
This phase contains all the tasks from when we have the new URL syntax clear until the new portal is publish . It is important to carry out a series of analyses and checks so that the site is ready to be publish.
Evaluating the new URL syntax
This is our first contact with the new development, and what we are most interest in is analyzing how the URL syntax changes with respect to the current development. Sometimes it is us to categorize URLs host directly in the root of the domain, remove obsolete file extensions (for example .html) or those dependent on the programming language (for example .php), or generally make the site’s URLs more user-friendly.
Depending on the case, we can migrate more or less URLs and with greater or lesser difficulty. Some cases are usually the following:
The best case scenario is when there is a common pattern that can be address with a single dynamic rule . For example, if we move from URLs ending with a file extension like html would become the pically, when the same pattern changes occur we can implement them with a single rule that will rirect 100% of the URLs on the site minimizing the impact of the migration.
An intermiate scenario is usually when there is still a common pattern of change for a high number of URLs and the rest of the URLs change differently .
What are we going to be able to migrate?
If it is possible to migrate 100% of the URLs we will not ne to perform this analysis, but if the number of rirects is limit we will have to check if all the rirects include landing pages with:
The more URLs of this type are includ in the rirects, the more successful the migration should be. If the rirects ne to be static or one by one, we will try to include all these URLs in them. It is also useful to have a list of URLs that we can migrate and the corresponding URL in the new development.
Implementing rirection rules
The implementation of the rirection rules for the migration will be the responsibility of the portal’s technical team. Technical SEOs usually help in their implementation with two objectives:
Migrate as many URLs as possible.
Migrating each URL should be done with as few 301 rirects as possible. Ideally, you should do it with just one 301 rirect.
Once the rirects have been implement in pre-production, it is necessary to check that all the rirects work and meet the intend objectives. To check them en masse, we will use a crawler such as Screaming Frog, in which we will enter the URLs in the old format, and we will test in pre-production if they return a 301 rirect to the intend URL.
Indexability checks
In addition to checking rirects, it is necessary to check the main SEO tags that URLs contain , such as:
Canonical link tags .
Internal linking.
Structur data .
Alternate hreflang link tags (if any)
Etc.
For each of them, it is check that the definitive URLs have been implement and that there are no crawling errors. In the case of internal linking, it is common that not all links have been able to be updat, so an assessment is usually carri out for their subsequent update.
Rescuing popularity
In addition to on-page SEO, we must take into account off-page SEO , since many of the URLs we change will receive a significant number of links that will help the positioning of our site. It is important to have tools that allow us to detect which links with high authority are linking to us. On small sites or those where the necessary investment cannot be made, we can use the Links feature of Google Search Console, but if we have the possibility, tools such as Majestic or Ahrefs can tell us which are the most important links we receive and which pages of our site they point to.
We have already check that we will rirect the URLs that receive the most links, but, once again, only if we have the possibility, it would be interesting to ask for these links to be chang to the new URLs . In general, it is difficult for them to make this change. It is usually easier on sites that we own, sites that are part of a group, relat sites or agre links.
Copying the sitemap in old XML format and generating the new one
We’ll make a copy of the old sitemap in XML format and prepare it for upload to the server at the time of publishing. This file will serve to signal to Google the ne to continue crawling these old URLs in order to carry out their migration, as well as allowing us to track the progress of the migration.
The new sitemap will also be generat in XML format as in any other properly optimiz site, which will help the new URLs to be index quickly.
Pre-migration SEO metrics report
When the time comes for migration, just before proceing, we must take a snapshot of the status of the site in terms of:
Coverage status, both indexing status and errors.
Site-specific, technical and business KPIs.
Indicators of authority.
To do this, we will set up a control panel with the status and trend of these indicators that will help us monitor the migration once it has start. At this point, we will be able to evaluate the success and detect problems in advance.
Tasks for publication
This phase of the migration will be execut immiately after the new site is publish. It involves re-running the checks made in pre-production, but this time in production.
Reviewing how rirects work
After publishing, the correct functioning of the implement egypt telegram data rirects is check again in production . We try to check as many old URLs as possible, prioritizing those with the highest traffic performance. If erroneous rirects are detect, we will have to report them immiately so that they can be implement as soon as possible. Remember that for each URL test, the ideal is to produce only one 301 rirection to the plann URL.
Checking indexability
A crawl or sufficiently significant sample of the site ao lists is perform with the goal of detecting URLs that have not been updat and, as a secondary objective, also identifying any indexability problems that may arise after publication.
Checking analytics settings
We mainly check that the Google Search Console configuration remains correct after the migration, including sending a sitemap file in XML format, configur profiles, etc. Remember that we will send the sitemap with the old and new URLs to be able to monitor the migration progress.
Other configurations made in web analytics or SEO tools are also check.
If the migration is to another domain, the Search Console address change will be request to inform Google which domain the site is moving to.
