Website Migration FAQs

If you’ve never engaged in a website migration, you might feel the entire process might be a bit foreign from your day-to-day.

You’re not wrong.

Migrations occur infrequently and, as such, the opportunities to build the skills for successfully migrating a website are limited.

This is even truer for brand managers who work with a single site that migrates.

Today, I’d like to share some frequently asked questions around website migrations.

These have been assembled based on conversations I’ve had with brands pre and post-launch.

My hope is that it provides some food for thought as you’re creating a case for including SEO as well as managing migration questions around SEO.

Lastly, I make reference to a fictitious brand, based on an actual client I’ve worked with – we’ll call them Acme Watch Co.

How many hours should I estimate for an SEO site migration?

To understand the hours needed for SEO, it’s going to be critical to understand the nature of the migration project.

Not all migration projects are the same and the hours needed for 2 projects may vary vastly.

Some migration projects are re-designs, others are infrastructural, and some move a piece of the tech stack that won’t even impact organic search.

If a migration project entails an overhaul of facets that have contributed to a brand’s organic performance – such as content or technical SEO – the need to loop in an SEO professional increases.

The first step in understanding how many hours are needed for a migration, it is critical to understand the goals of the migration project.

Let’s say, Acme Watch Co. is redesigning their homepage – just their homepage. Internally, the project is referred to as a “migration”. This may be true but it’s a migration away from the current style.

With the above, it’s only 1 page that is being affected.

As such, SEO may include tasks such as,

• Homepage Meta Data Review (4 Hours)
• Review Homepage Image Optimization (2 hours)
• Technical SEO review of Homepage (5 Hours)
• Content Review (4 hours)

Total hours for a homepage optimization would be 15 hours and based off the effort required for a single webpage.

However, let’s say Acme Watch Co. was redesigning their entire website with updated brand style guides, additional content blocks, and new webpages, across the entire site.

Let’s say the Acme Watch Co. is mid-sized e-commerce website with 30 – 60 category pages and ~10,000 – 15,000 product pages. We now have an understanding of the current assets that will be impacted.

In our scenario, we’re not just reviewing the same tasks as called out for the homepage redesign. We have to consider a larger effort.

I’m going to reference the website migration checklist found below to help us understand the various SEO tasks associated with the migration a site.

Take each task and decide what hour allocation it may require from you.

Redirects for the Acme Watch Co. may require 60 hours based on the pages you need to redirect and what technology will be building the redirect behavior.

Meta data may take you 25 hours hours because you won’t be rewriting all page meta data and will rely on imports and templates to drive page titles and meta descriptions.

The total hours needed for an SEO migration project will vary based on various factors – CMS (and your familiarity), total pages, technology, budgets, goals, etc.

That said, I’ve typically seen 150 – 180 hours be the necessary amount of hours needed for a migration project for a mid-sized e-commerce site, which includes tasks called out in the checklist above.

Lastly, I’ve noticed a trend around website migration hour allocation – redirects are the largest effort SEO task. In some cases, redirects make up 40% to 60% of an entire SEO migration project – it’s huge.

Yet, redirects are substantially de-prioritized and typically the driver of declining performance after launch – resulting in massive traffic and revenue loss.

From here, we need to communicate the hours needed to project sponsors / executives, from both the brand site and the vendor side, the risks to organic search without SEO looped into the project as well as what additional SEO resources will be needed.

What should we focus on for an SEO migration project?

Again, understanding what the migration entails will help you understand what needs to be done to preserve organic search performance.

With a typical re-platform, I’ve noted the below items are major milestones that need to be hit from an SEO perspective, to mitigate against risk to organic search.

• Develop 301 redirect strategy
• Meta data implementation
• SEO friendly URL review and recommendation
• Canonical tag review and recommendation
• Robots.txt review and updates
• Sitemap.xml review and recommendations
• Internal linking audit and review
• Update Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
• Monitor Google Webmaster Tools for any errors/issues
• Crawl and validate XML Sitemaps

A crux of this effort goes into redirect strategy; often as high as 60% of all SEO migration investment.

How does migrating a site affect SEO?

A wide variety of ranking factors may be impacted during a website migration and, as such, a migration can have the potential to impact SEO performance.

It’s significant to understand that organic search listings and their positioning are driven by ranking factors that assess whether the website provides a quality user experience. 

There are hundreds of ranking factors, ranging from content to usability to relevancy. Several of which can be impacted during a migration.

For example, let’s take Acme Watch Co…

Acme Watch Co. is re-addressing their customer journey to accommodate users who are eager to purchase a product from the brand. 

Examples of how Acme Watch Co. will be enhancing user experience, includes, 

• Acme Watch Co. will be redesigning various aspects of their site, from product list page,  blog page, and product page layouts
• Acme Watch Co. will be implementing a shopping cart and checkout page that will help users finalize their shopping experience
• Acme Watch Co. will restructure their webpage content and place a focus on legibility and usability
• Acme Watch Co. will be investing in newer technologies that will drive a faster experience on mobile and desktop devices

The above are only 4 major benefits to users but nested within each are going to be ranking factors that will drive Acme Watch Co.’s organic performance after launch. 

For example, let’s take the below bullet,

Acme Watch Co. will restructure their webpage content and place a focus on legibility and usability

The above point would impact facets of a site including the below,

• On-page content
• Page Titles and Meta Descriptions
• URLs
• H1 tags
• Topic Clusters / Content Pillars
• Content Blocks

Depending on the size of a site, the above alone would be a major effort during a website migration with far reaching ramifications.

Why do you need an SEO Professional in a website migration?

BrightEdge reported that organic search traffic accounts for over 50% across different industries. That is a massive share of traffic.

However, SEO, which drives organic search, is a unique discipline that overlaps with other disciplines.

SEOers aren’t solely content writers, nor are SEOers developers.

SEOers are a hybrid of disciplines, whose focus falls on identifying ideal user experience amidst business requirements and technological dispositions.

A developer may have an idea of what would impact organic search technologically but their main discipline isn’t SEO-first and they may be unfamiliar with best practices.

A content writer would know how to speak to an audience but may lack the market data to support keyword trends and usage in their content.

SEOers however are able to identify where organic search issues or opportunities may exist throughout a migration project based on organic search best practices.

Let’s say Acme Watch Co. business analysts are hoping to retire all product pages and redirect them to the homepage. 

Reason being, the old pages will serve no purpose and the brand will be starting from scratch, despite the fact that relevant pages will be found on the new site.

As an SEOer, we understand that legacy product pages carry weight based backlinks and authority built up over time.

To redirect product pages to a homepage would create a less relevant user experience and, as such, the new page, would not perform as well as they could have.

What happens if you don’t include SEO in your website migration strategy?

If SEO is not included within a migration strategy, the risk to organic performance increases.

A new web experience may adopt best practices from other disciplines but this may have inadvertent effects on search engine optimization.

For example, I was involved in a migration project that required content blocks to be loaded via JS rather than initial load via HTML.

This was built as requirements across the whole site.

We caught the issue and backtracked on their initial requirements and stated content in such prominent areas shouldn’t be rendered via JS.

If left alone, such an approach would have hindered organic performance.

What’s more, as SEOers, we have insights into market trends and search data, which we can then extrapolate across content of a new site.

The goal isn’t to center an entire web experience around SEO; rather ensure that a site adopts quality user experience in parallel to SEO best practices.

Omitting SEO resources from a migration project can lead to dismal results; read “My Worst Website Migration Project…” to understand the severity.

How long Does SEO for a migration take?

No 2 migrations are alike and the duration of a migration project, from start to launch day, will depend on what is being overhauled.

From a resourcing and budgeting perspective, various nuances will impact a migration timeline.

Additionally, a migration can be seen as the actual update to a site; not the duration of search engine impact. Fluctuations within organic search from a migration will also vary.

Below are some rough estimates on timing based on trends for migration projects I’ve supported, please take it with a grain of salt.

• Website Redesign may take 9 – 12 months to complete
• Domain Name Update may take 3 – 6 months to complete
• URL Change may take 1 – 3 months to complete
• Website Merge + Consolidation may take +12 months to complete
• Web Framework Update may take 3 – 6 months to complete
• CMS Update may take +12 months to complete

To better understand the timeline of a migration project, read my post, A Timeline of SEO Launch Essentials or reference my ideal timeline below.

When does traffic return to normal after a migration?

I get this question a lot.

How long will it take for performance to normalize? It’s a loaded question and dependent on various factors.

I’ve noted it can take anywhere from 5 – 7 days, post launch, to 2 – 3 months for a website’s ranking fluctuations to normalize.

Below are 2 examples of how varying the time for recovery can be.

The above screenshot was the recovery trend for an auto parts I helped migration. Recovery took approximately 5 months from the launch date.

The 2nd screenshot reflects the recovery trend for golf apparel migration project. As you can see it took approximately a month to recovery and excel.

That said, normalization for a migration project will vary and, although it’s dependent on various factors, there are a few things that you can do to ensure you mitigate risk, post launch.

Monitor Keyword Groups

Looking at daily fluctuations across individual keywords can be more nerve wracking than looking at keyword groups.

Keyword groups are like-groups of phrases that your brand monitors in ranking software.

Looking at keyword group performance will give a glimpse of trends at a higher level and allow your brand to more easily weave through areas that need support.

For example, let’s say Group A rankings are in decline but Group B is not. Something may have been missed in Group A that was caught in Group B.

You can now revisit Group A pages to assess what’s amiss; possibly content, redirects, technical SEO, etc.

Monitor 404’s

I encourage you to review site 404s regularly. That is, review which URLs are broken and need a redirect put in place.

You can gather data around 404s that are being generated by looking at your web server log files.

You can export these files and run against Screaming Frog to ensure they are truly a 404 experience.

If they are generating 404s, you’d want to revisit and understand if they are tied to performance declines and build redirects for any that are pivotal to performance.

Monitor KPIs

Reviewing your KPIs, not just rankings, can shed some light on where bleeding post-migration may be coming from.

That is, is traffic in decline across the entire site?

Are conversions limited to a specific piece of content, or the checkout page?

Where is the bleeding coming from and where can it be patched?

If you’re experiencing volatility and think something in your migration may have been missed, I encourage you to read, “Working Backwards From A Messy SEO Migration Project…”.

How much does a SEO migration cost?

The cost of a migration project will vary depending on various factors.

Size of site, product catalog, migration needs / requirements, resourcing, timing, etc.

Overall, migration projects can range from 6 – 7 figures, that is $300,000 – $1,000,000.

SEO budget should be carved out and accounted for alongside other disciplines in a migration project.

SEO investment during a migration project can range from $25,000 – $75,000.

Based on complexity, planning, and quality of execution these costs may increase over time.

How do you measure migration success in SEO?

Measuring success from a migration within an organic channel is dependent on your business goals; this might be traffic, revenue, lead generation, etc.

Below is a great breakdown of KPI’s by sales funnel from Link-Assistant.

It’s not uncommon for brands to decrease in traffic but increase conversions through a well thought out migration strategy. 

This occurs when a web experience reshifts its focus from all / generic traffic to qualified traffic. That is, traffic that truly affects the bottom line.

Measuring migration success from SEO will require you to understand your true KPIs and goals at the onset of the project.

From there, you build around those metrics and benchmark as the launch comes and goes; what’s more, you can track against these goals and conversions in your analytics package – Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, etc.

You can report on performance using tools such as Google Data Studio or PowerPoint. 

Google Data Studio is one of my favorite website migration tools, as you can connect various Google data aggregation tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics; from here you can connect your conversion metrics into a benchmark report.

How can I migrate my website without losing SEO?

There are various launch essential tasks you can take on during your migration project that mitigate risk to organic search.

You can read which tasks I recommend tackling using the 2 guides below.

• Website Migration Checklist
• A Timeline of SEO Launch Essentials

In essence, there are 8 major tasks during Pre-launch,

1. Build a Redirect Map
2. Optimize Metadata
3. Optimize URL Structure
4. Review Canonical Tags
5. Build a Robots.txt File
6. Optimize an XML Sitemap
7. Perform an Internal Linking Audit
8. Gather Benchmark Metrics

3 major tasks during Launch Day,

1. Engage in a Launch Call
2. QA Redirects, Robots.txt, and XML Sitemaps
3. Verify Google Search Console + Bing Webmaster Tools

3 major tasks during Post-Launch,

1. Monitor Search Console, Google Analytics, & KPIs
2. Monitor Ranking Performance
3. Build and QA Redirects

How do you tell Google about a site migration?

One of the major pre-launch tasks you will embark upon is creating a redirect strategy, from which a redirect map is built.

With support from your WebOps team, the redirect map would toggle on various 301 Permanent redirects, pointing from a legacy location to its new location.

The 301s will tell search engines that a page has moved and they should begin to allocate all search engine equity to a new location.

Fluctuations to organic traffic will ensue. 

Normalization and volatility will ensure and is dependent on your website.

I’ve seen brands recover as quickly as 5 – 7 days and others recover 2 – 3 months.

Additionally, if all your URLs are changing, keep your old sitemaps in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Reason being, the search engines are aware of these files and will follow the URLs therein, following the redirects put in place.

If your domain is completely moving, you can use Google’s Change of Address tool, which allows you to directly Google that an old property has moved to a new location.

The Change of Address tool will then tell Google to focus crawling on the new site rather than the old.

Summary

Thank you for following along thus far.

I hope that this FAQ guide has proven to be very helpful. 

If you feel as if I missed a frequently asked question, please feel free to reach out!

Happy migrating!