You have spent months building your new website. But ‘going live’ isn’t quite as simple as pressing one button.
Web Designer Depot have produced a great guide called ‘How to stop SEO disasters during website migration’. Read the full version on their website or have a scan of the main points below.
Website migrations are, broadly, defined as
- changing or moving domains
- structural website changes
- changing the content management system
- redesigning the website completely
- making significant content changes
- moving from HTTP to HTTPS
Before you start your migration, you should think about
- what is your strategy?
- who is going to be involved in the project?
- what professional help do you need, for example, SEO, UX or content consultants?
- how is the design going to look and work?
- who is going to test the different aspects of the website to make sure everything works?
- who is going to fix the (inevitable) bugs and problems
- when is the best / quietest time of the year to make the changes without affecting the majority of your customers?
Before you start your website rebuild
- Crawl all URLs using tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider and Sitebulb
- Compile a list of all the URLs and add traffic performance (visits, bounce rates, exit rates, conversion) to use as a benchmark post-launch;
- Eliminate any duplicate/low-quality contents by redirects or improving them;
- Check for broken links;
- Check for broken pages;
- Make sure all the relevant pages are accessible to search engines;
- Make sure all the pages are accessible to humans (blind users, mobile users, browser compatibility).
- Compile the list of the new URLs.
- Plan out your new URL structures and site hierarchy/architecture.
- Carry out keyword research for every single page.
- Compile a list of your top keywords and note their rankings.
- Update or create new content for the new pages and include relevant keywords.
- Map out the 301 redirects from old to new URLs (and avoid redirect chains) in a spreadsheet.
- Identify and compile a list of your most important backlinks.
- Measure the page speed using tools like GTmetrix and org.
- Set-up the new social media profiles if you are rebranding the name.
- Register and configure the new domain in Google Search Console.
- Carry out usability testing to prevent bad experiences from happening on the new site.
- Plan your relaunch campaign – “hey we launched a new website” should happen soon after the launch rather than later. Who can help you with that? Current customers/clients/suppliers/bloggers/PRs etc.
During the Redesign
- Block development site with meta noindex tag or robots.txt to prevent duplication issues on Google.
- Make sure web analytics are implemented and tested on all pages.
- Publish the new URLs and content on the development site.
- Add/update title tags, meta description and alt texts to new pages.
- Add Google Tag Manager.
- Add any necessary retargeting and remarketing codes e.g. Facebook Pixels and Google Remarketing.
- Set up and verify your new Google Search Console account.
- Remove or update internal links which are pointing to broken or removed pages.
- Update your XML sitemaps and have it ready to submit on Google Search Console.
- Update all canonical tags and self-canonicalize all new pages.
- Update all internal links.
- Update your robots.txt.
- Create a custom 404 page.
- Crawl the site and verify that all 301 redirects are working.
- Add the schema to create rich snippets opportunities.
- Add Open Graph fields for further rich media experience.
- Ask the relevant stakeholders to help with testing.
- When nearing the relaunch, attempt to organise usability testing for the small amount of traffic or by using focus groups to iron out any issues.
- Ensure the site is compatible on most popular browsers and mobile devices.
- Ensure the site is accessible to visually-impaired users.
After the Relaunch
- Submit a change of address via Google Search Console.
- Submit new XML sitemap.
- Update all social media bios with new URLs.
- Crawl the new site and check that the redirects are working, all internal and external links are working, and fix any 404 pages.
- Crawl the list of URLs that you have extracted originally and verify their redirects.
- Add annotations on Google Analytics to make sure you know when the site has relaunched and subsequent changes.
- Update backlinks with new URLs by contacting those who have linked to you.
- Continuously monitor the web traffic, engagement and conversion as well as page speed.
- Test the mobile-friendliness of your site using the Mobile Usability feature of Google Search Console.
- Benchmark those performance metrics against the old site.
- Reach to the authoritative sites that link to you and ask them to update the link to the new site.
- Monitor the indexed page count via Google Search Console and using the site: search on Google.
- Monitor your search rankings over time.
- Keep control of the old domain just in case of any issues.
- Organise new usability testing of the new site.
- Launch your relaunch campaign.
