Are you feeling overwhelmed by an upcoming website migration?
You’re not alone.
Website migrations can be a gargantuan effort, with different moving pieces including timelines, budgets, and diverse teams.
If you want to better understand how to migrate without losing traffic, this post is for you.
Today, I’d like to walk you through a website migration checklist, which includes SEO launch essentials, or projects and tasks I have found to be necessary in preserving organic performance during a migration. You can find a graphic of the checklist below.
I will delve into specific areas outlined above and also provide a spreadsheet you can use to track against website migration SEO tasks.
Let’s jump into it.
What is a Site Migration?
A site migration is the process of moving web technologies from one platform, structure, content or technology to another.
Although a site migration is typically undergone for the benefit of its users and search engines, the process can be complex and strenuous, and comes with its own set risks that can impact SEO and search engine visibility.
Why Undergo a Site Migration?
Redesign: Your site may have undergone a rebrand or you are consolidating content across your site that may require an update to your sites’ code base. In any case, there may be structural changes in addition to stylistic changes applied to your site that may impact whether web pages are going to retire or continue to live on, all of which have an impact on SEO.
CMS or Framework Update: It’s possible that your entire site is running on an antiquated content management system (CMS) that may be more of a hindrance to web performance. As such, you’re looking to migrate away from a legacy CMS to a better performing platform or Framework that is faster, mobile friendly, and runs on more modern technology.
Moving to a New Server: You might have been running into server issues that cannot handle the amount of traffic that your site is experiencing and as such you’re updating your server technology to suit your traffic needs.
Domain Movement: Based on the needs of your brand, you may need to either expand the number of domains into different ccTLDs (international domains), completely shift domain locations, or consolidate web properties either under a subdomain or subfolder.
Why Does a Website Migration Affect Search Results?
Website migrations have such an impact to search engine performance because migrations have the potential to affect various search engine ranking factors at once.
That is, if you’re migrating from 1 CMS to another, you might impact the below rankings factors in one foul swoop,
- PageSpeed
- URL Structure
- Domain Age
- ccTLDs
- Mobile Friendliness
- HTTPS
- User Experience
- Internal Links
With any of the above being affected, it will take time for Google to understand the new technologies and adjust your performance in accordance with the new experience.
The way I like to explain the after effects of a site migration to clients is as follows: your site is undergoing a facelift and Google will not fully recognize it until it’s had adequate time.
Depending on various factors, performance can fluctuate for an unknown period of time after a site migration. It can take anywhere from a week to several months to recover.
To help improve the rate of recovery and normalize performance, you’ll want to ensure to look out for the migration checklist items further below.
Coordinate on the Site Migration
To appropriately plan for a site migration, it’s crucial to understand the scope of the migration. As covered above, there are different reasons why migrations occur. Understanding what is being impacted by the website migration will help guide where SEO will be able to support.
Some cases may involve heavy SEO-involvement; others may require less.
To help convey how to properly plan, I’ve provided the below examples around what you might want to consider when planning a site migration.
Example 1: Redesign
If your client site is undergoing a redesign, it might be more aesthetically impactful than it is structural, so URLs and technology may not be affected. But, it might affect your client’s stylistic approach onsite, such as the use of CSS elements, content blocks and placement, which can in turn affect items such as header tags, specifically H1 Tags.
In a case like this, you may want to look towards working with the creatives on the team, whose input may guide the redesign. You’ll additionally want to work with developers who may build around the creative assets and the requirements based on the creative approach.
Example 2: CMS Migration
If your site is undergoing an overhaul of its CMS, it has the potential to impact a wide array of factors, as covered above. If you’re going through a CMS site migration, it’ll be important to hit the ground running alongside all the other practices: creatives, developers, PMs, AMs, etc.
Typically, when larger sites go through a migration, there is a discovery phase, where teams review the technical specs and creative requirements for an upcoming launch.
This should be an “all hands on deck” situation; and SEO isn’t an exception. SEO should be included to minimize risk to organic performance and optimization but also capitalize and make the most out of the new CMS.
This scenario is very common among brands and the example is most relevant to the checklist below.
Example 3: web Server migration
If the site migration is updating a technology such as a host / server, it might require the site to be brought down momentarily. You should be looped in to monitor what effect the server change is having on performance, specifically, crawl stats. Most times the server continues to remain online, but you’ll want to be mindful of any unexpected outages that occur thereafter.
In these cases, you’ll want to work with your brand as well as any 3rd party partners that may partake in the migration.
As a change to a server can impact load time, you may be brought in to assess a site’s PageSpeed performance and monitor impact.
The above 3 are different scenarios but at its core it’s reflective of why it’s important for SEOers to understand what specifically is being affected by site migrations. Having a firm understanding of what’s changing and who is involved will make the process of optimizing a new experience for organic search much more easy.
Site Migration Risks
As a brand undergoing a site migration, you’ll want to understand where risks occur as they relate to SEO and why do you need an SEO Professional in a website migration. Below are some of the common pitfalls I’ve seen occur around SEO and site migrations.
Lack of SEO Investment
Everything costs money, including a site migration. You have to pay for every consultant you bring on board to the project. From project managers, developers, QA analysts, designers, and everything in between.
Everything has a budget and migration projects are no different.
Unfortunately, SEO is on the chopping block when looking to cut costs. If SEO is cut from an implementation project, then there goes the perspective needed to understand how certain features of the new CMS will impact search engine performance.
I’ve seen projects launch without SEO review or an SEO project plan and then plummet in organic search performance, all because SEO was seen as expendable.
Delayed SEO Involvement
Similar to the lack of SEO Investment, brands may go back and forth in negotiations and may not tack on SEO as a service until the final phases of an implementation project.
With an abbreviated timeline to review a website, SEO will then have to be accelerated and you run the risk of being in the final development sprints where developers implement and release code changes and development tickets to the staging / development sites. As launch day draws closer, your SEO changes run the risk of not making the final sprints.
Lack of SEO Migration Strategy
SEO partners might have a specialization in content optimization, link building, Local SEO, Technical SEO, and, yes, site migrations.
When undergoing a site migration, brands may look to their current SEO partner to assist in the effort. However, it’s important to understand whether the current SEO partner has a specialization in site migrations and can drive a migration strategy on the new CMS.
The strategy, itself, would align with the goals of the brand in parallel with the limitations and opportunities presented by the new CMS. That said, the checklists below will give you an idea of what to look for when migrating to a new platform but the strategy should be unique to each brand and its conditions.
Lack of SEO Testing
Depending on the level of SEO investment, you might be limited in SEO testing and, with a lack of an SEO resource that specializes in site migrations, there might be tasks that don’t get properly tested prior to launch. You might run the risk of not properly testing redirects, sitemaps, robots.txt and so forth.
Brands typically go into a regression testing phase prior to launch, where teams QA any and every single feature of a new site and where defects are tracked for fixing prior to launch. SEO should be included in this phase of testing, with an SEO resource cataloging and speaking to the impact of defects as well as their impact to launch.
Underestimating SEO Effort
In addition to SEO being seen as expendable, SEO is also seen as an area of cost-savings. Some brands may not take on consideration how much does a website migration cost, and may either not invest in SEO or invest at lesser rate than other resources.
With less SEO investment, there are less SEO resources that can ensure a site is optimized and everything is working as intended. If SEO is an area where less resources are funneled, it’s important to level set expectations arojnd SEO preparation in accordance with budget.
In other words, you get what you pay for.
These are harsh words but I’ve worked with brands who disinvested in SEO, and hadn’t been able to receive the proper support upon launch. Conversely, I’ve worked with brands who invested heavily in SEO and it made reaching the finish line much easier.
Pre-launch Checklist
Have you ever wandered what is the first step in any website migration project?
I would like to break down the checklist by Pre-launch, Launch Day, and Post-Launch phases.
Although a migration can vary brand to brand, the below lists have remained relatively consistent as items I monitor and review before, up to, and after go-live for an optimal website migration.
I’ve accompanied a Google Spreadsheet that outlines each of the below tasks. The goal of the spreadsheet checklist is to allow you to follow along with progress during your CMS migration project.
1) Build a Redirect Map
Over time, URLs accrue search engine authority. Despite being from a legacy CMS, you’ll want to ensure you retain search authority for your old URLS when migrating to its new site.
That’s where building a 301 redirect map comes into play.
A redirect map is a 1:1 map, syncing a legacy URL / location with its new location, on a new CMS.
With a redirect map, you’ll be triggering mass 301 (Permanent) redirects, which tell search engines that URLs have permanently moved and as such, they should transfer all search authority to their new locations.
I’ve found building a redirect map can be the most time intensive task, I place this item as an SEO priority and call it out immediately at the onset of a migration project.
Depending on a site, it might require substantial effort to gather all URLs. I’ve worked with websites that had a dynamic URL structure, making the task of identifying all site pages more difficult. If you find yourself unable to crawl all pages of a site, think about prioritizing URLs by traffic, revenue and gathering data via Google Search Console, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Analytics, etc.
I’ve seen brands fail to build a redirect map prior to the end of a migration and, by the time a site launch occurs, all legacy URLs 404 and any authority that an old URL had is no longer being used efficiently. With it, Google begins to decrease rankings and drop organic performance.
2) Optimize Metadata
As you’re undergoing a site migration, you want to remember to account for metadata such as Page Titles and Meta Descriptions. Both elements play a role in how you perform within SERPs and how you’re able to convey relevancy between your site and search trends.
It’s pivotal to understand whether the new technology can support metadata and to what capacity.
That is, is it easy to upload custom and optimized meta data?
If you have a vast amount of content, a large category tree or product catalog, is there an opportunity to programmatically build metadata?
As you’re moving technologies, you want to minimize risk to SEO and improve the likelihood of positive performance – optimized metadata can help mitigate launch fluctuations. A site migration is a great opportunity to review or revamp existing metadata and ensure that going into a launch, your site remains as relevant as possible to current search trends.
Build a process that works with the various teams to help efficiently upload optimized metadata. It could be uploading metadata one by one, it could be programmatic, or a bulk upload. In any case, you’ll want to ensure you’ve accounted for metadata optimizations going into launch.
3) Optimize URL Structure
With a site migration, you may have to maneuver configurations that impact your URL structure.
With an archaic CMS, it may have been difficult to generate SEO friendly URLs – you may have had to lean on the use of parameters, unnecessary subfolders and strings, etc.
With a new CMS, you might have an opportunity to adjust the URL structure to a point where it is completely SEO and user friendly.
That being the case, understand how your URLs are generated. Is it driven by a category taxonomy? Is it fully customizable? What flexibility and limitations exist?
A forward-thinking strategy would allow you to prepare an SEO friendly URL structure but can also impact your redirects, as new URLs will eventually become the targets within a redirect map.
Take time and ask yourself, how are URLs going to be optimized and what limitations exist for your new site.
4) Review Canonical Tags
You might find yourself needing to revisit how your canonical tags are generated.
A canonical tag consolidates search authority across duplicate pages. It identifies a single page that is meant to accrue search engine authority. Without it, search engine authority becomes splintered and opens your site to duplicate content penalization.
In my experience not all CMSs use an optimal canonical tag. Some use a mixture of HTTP and HTTPS, relative URL paths (e.g. /example-folder/) rather than absolute (e.g. https://www.site.com/example-folder/), or are completely devoid of any tag.
That being the case, you’ll want to ensure that you are using canonical tags across your site. This may require support from developer resources.
5) Build a Robots.txt File
A site migration to a new CMS may mean having to deal with a new internal linking structure that you may not want to be consumed by search engines.
A robots.txt will help you better control what search engines will be able to access on your site. By building a robots.txt specific to your new site, you’re able to better control search engine crawling behavior, making the most out of your crawl budget / allowance.
CMSs may retain certain paths for certain resources, such as JavaScript, CSS, image libraries, etc. You may find that you’ll want to negate access to customer sensitive pages behind a login. These are areas you’ll want to block with your new site’s robots.txt.
6) Optimize an XML Sitemap
You’ll still need to ensure that you’re able to effectively communicate all your new site pages to search engines with the use of an XML sitemap.
Generating a XML sitemap file and crawling against it will help ensure you can efficiently communicate all the new pages of your website to search engines.
You’ll want to ensure that all URLs within the XML sitemap file are 200 status code URLs and are devoid of any 301s, non-canonicals, and any broken pages.
7) Perform an Internal Linking Audit
Crawling all internal links for an up and coming site, possibly through a staging or development environment, will allow you to gauge whether you’re making the most of your internal linking structure. That is, you’re linking out to 200 status code pages, you’re not housing any broken or redirected links. Capturing these before you go live will ensure that the site is efficiently passing on authority to other pages on your site.
What’s more, you’re able to emulate Googlebot and crawl against your optimized robots.txt. This way you can ensure you see what Googlebot sees.
You can perform an internal linking audit one of the many website migration tools. I recommend Screaming Frog as my de facto SEO crawler. The great thing about Screaming Frog is it can crawl behind a login; perfect if your Staging or Development site is not open to the public and needs credentials to access.
8) Gather Benchmark Metrics
You’re going through an overhaul of technologies and a site migration is going to impact your performance. There’s no doubt about that.
To assess the health of your site pre and post launch, gather benchmark metrics to ensure you can measure against the success of the launch. By gathering key performance indicators (KPIs), you’ll be able to better assess where issues persist post-launch.
The metrics will vary depending on your goals but they can include,
- Clicks via Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools
- Impressions via Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools
- Sessions via Google Analytics
- Revenue via Google Analytics
- Time on Site via Google Analytics
- Bounce Rate via Google Analytics
- Conversion via Google Analytics
- Rankings via Google Search Console, rank tracker (e.g. SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz, etc.)
Launch Day
The day has arrived where your site is publicly released. You and your teams are taking it from a staging / development environment to a production environment, or pushing it live.
1) Engage in a Launch Call
This isn’t really universal but it’s going to be crucial to understand how your development and client teams are intending to walk through the launch. If it’s a larger CMS migration, it’s likely you’ll be on a launch call with various stakeholders including developers, project managers, and client stakeholders and their 3rd party partners.
If they hadn’t requested you join a launch call, verify whether you’d be able to join. I find that being on-call ensures that you can answer any questions teams have but allows you to also QA various items that are in the above pre-launch checklist. Given you’ll have everyone’s attention, you can bring up issues and get it fixed immediately rather than later as a post-launch item as more stakeholders are present.
2) QA Redirects, Robots.txt, and XML Sitemaps
Upon launch of a new site, it’ll be important to ensure that all the items you’ve QA’d against – redirects, robots.txt, XML sitemap – are found in a live environment.
You should have a redirect map that’s composed of top performing URLs from your legacy site. Be sure to crawl against it using a crawler once the site is live; similar to how you would have crawled against it in a staging environment.
3) Verify Google Search Console + Bing Webmaster Tools
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are site hygiene tools that allow you to view organic performance for Google and Bing search engines, respectively.
I’ve had clients undergo site migrations, only to have themselves be booted from their Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. It’ll be important to ensure you have a method for verifying both portals post-launch so you can continue to monitor the health of your site and ensure that all is well on the organic front. See here for Google Search Console and Bing Search Console verification.
Post-Launch Checklist
After the launch day, you’ll be finding yourself reviewing your new site and assessing where potential gaps and opportunities continue to exist. Things may normalize but in some cases, performance may continue to fluctuate. Be sure to weed out any gaps with the below process.
1) Monitor Search Console, Google Analytics, & KPIs
Review the Google Search Console Coverage reports to assess how Google is processing your new pages.
You’ll want to ensure that any issues that arise within the reports are reviewed and assessed. If there are any errors, you’ll want to ensure that they’re redirected or taken care of post-launch.
Google Analytics helps assess how you’re performing from a traffic standpoint but also from a conversion and an engagement perspective. Although traffic may remain consistent, users may be behaving differently when a new site has gone live.
You’ll want to ensure that you monitor both Google Search Console and Google Analytics as traffic and performance should begin to normalize.
2) Monitor Ranking Performance
I call this out from separate KPIs because depending on how you’ve tracked keywords, you’ll be able to assess any issues with your new site.
Ranking fluctuations are expected, however, in the long term, you’ll want to ensure that keywords that have remained on a downward trend are investigated. There might be issues with the page that used to rank for a specific keyword (group). Issues may include but are not limited to,
- Broken URLs / no redirect
- Lack of optimizations
- Less relevant redirect target
3) Build and QA Redirects
Based on your constant review of Google Search Console coverage reports, you might find URLs from your legacy platform are not properly redirecting to its new location. If that’s the case, you’ll want to investigate and work towards building 301 Status redirects and following the QA process.
Similar to how you built your original redirect map, you’ll want to check data aggregators such as Google Search Console, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Analytics, etc.
Additionally, you can lean on your log files and pull in the most recent URLs that have generated errors.
You’ll want to crawl the pages and assess if they redirect correctly, similar to how you QA’d prior to launch.
Website Migration Checklist
I’ve consolidated the items above into a website migration checklist, which you can download via Google Spreadsheet here and view below.
In addition to each task outlined above, I’ve also included additional columns that display further information / transparency that help move the project forward.
They include,
Phase
It’s crucial to understand when certain tasks will take place during the CMS migration project. I’ve found clients and their stakeholders like to be reassured that tasks are accounted for. By placing a task within a phase, you assure a brand that you’re cognizant of what needs to be done and in what sequence. As noted above, I recommend dissecting tasks into 3 tiers: Pre-launch, Launch Day and Post-launch.
Lead
There may be several partners engaged in a migration project. Understanding who owns what helps clear any ambiguity and ensures a task gets complete. Additionally, it holds partners accountable and distributes responsibilities to those who may be most well-equipped to manage.
Start Date & End Date
Migration projects heavily depend on dates – when does an aspect of a project kick off, when is it set to be complete, etc.
By assigning start and end dates to each task called out above, we make the migration project much more tangible. We tell our clients that we’re trying to adhere to a timeline and, based on level of effort and priority, we can shoot for a specific timeframe.
Please note, that SEO is highly dependent on other groups – such as designers and developers. The dates I’ve typically baked into a migration project around SEO tasks are flexible but you should attempt to adhere to what you can. And, if something isn’t feasible, it’s worth a conversation to understand where a blocker exists and what it would take to resolve.
Status
The status of an SEO task helps convey its level of completion; which in turn, tells brands where SEO is as a whole. We’re able to denote what’s been started, what’s in the queue, what’s complete, and what’s a blocker. The 4 preceding pieces of information have helped brands fully understand how the SEO portion of a project is currently trending and what’s outstanding.
Updates
All the previous information is great but they don’t compare to actual progress.
Providing regular updates, with dates, allows you to keep track of milestones and details on specific tasks. Giving clients this level of detail reassures them that you, their SEO partner, is fully aware of every possible nuance of the project.
What’s more, as milestones are hit and details logged, they serve as historical context if and when required.
Final Thoughts
A site migration is very exciting but it’s not without its risks and concerns. Performing your due diligence, with the help of the checklist above, should ensure moving to a new CMS or incorporating a technology onto your site is as smooth as can be.
Happy migrating!
