Organisations may decide to launch a new version of their website for many reasons. The design could feel outdated, the business may have evolved its offerings over time, or it may need to scale when the back end can no longer support the integrations and functionalities needed for growth.
Whatever the reason, unless it’s a simple reskin (which doesn’t change the site structure or functionality), there are a lot of considerations that need to be taken into account.
New businesses, with a website on a brand new domain are relatively easy to launch. There are no links, no domain authority, and no pages have been previously indexed. If for whatever reason the launch doesn’t go smoothly, as long you’ve left yourselves with ample time to deal with any issues before beginning to market your site, it doesn’t really matter.
However, websites which have been residing on the same domain for years while building their brand and traffic through numerous marketing channels are at serious risk of destroying all their hard work if a website migration is not managed correctly.
What to expect when migrating a website
Depending on the complexity, it can take months to complete the migration of a website to ensure it goes as smoothly as possible, from the initial designs being presented, to the site relaunching. When changes are being made to the structure of the website, what it’s built in, or the CMS, the project can quickly become more challenging from a technical perspective.
There are also often multiple stakeholders involved. If the redesign is set to be a major refresh, typically, a branding agency, designers, developers, internal product and marketing teams, and external agencies are likely to be involved. These teams need to work closely together, ideally from a single strategy document or project management tool, with tasks assigned to them and a timeline in place.
The first few weeks of planning may involve market research and user testing to see how the new branding resonates with the target audience. From there, after several rounds of revisions, work can finally begin on the new website.
The next stage sits with the designers and developers, who will be responsible for mocking up page designs, and proposing how the site should be structured. At this point, an SEO agency or in-house expert, as well as those working on UX/CRO should become involved, ensuring that the proposed structure of the site lends itself well to being scalable and crawlable, and is easy for users to navigate
Most importantly, pages that currently rank well and drive traffic to the site (or those that act as an important page in the conversion funnel) still need to be included, or have a similar alternative page that they can be redirected to in the new design.
Once the structure and functionality of the site have been agreed upon, wireframes and/or a sitemap have been produced, and have been approved, the site can move into development.
This is when teams managing all aspects of digital marketing, and in particular, SEO, need to start the bulk of their work.
What tasks are typically undertaken to migrate a website?
Before even looking at the new website, it’s important to understand how the current site is performing. The SEO audit and planning stage analyses the current site’s SEO performance both on and off page to inform the overall migration strategy.
This will include benchmarking performance from a technical perspective, as well as backlink analysis, competitor research, and taking a deep dive into analytics to understand which pages perform best, and why.
There are a lot of on-page SEO considerations, including keyword research and auditing content. As well as body copy, anchor text, meta tags, headers, alt tags, and other SEO elements, such as schema markup need to be checked for any new pages to ensure they are as well optimised as possible before the site is relaunched. It may also mean deciding whether to update, merge, or remove content which exists on the current site.
Creating a plan for redirecting old URLs to new ones is a crucial part of SEO migration. Not only that, the older a site is, the higher the chances there will be issues with redirects, such as redirect chains (where a URL redirects from A to B to C to D, instead of directly from A to D), or worse, infinite redirect loops (when a page effectively redirects to a page that redirects back to itself). Internal links should also be reviewed as even if a page redirects, it is better to replace the link with the new URL before launching the site.
Finally, things like existing integrations, tracking, forms, and plugins all need to be checked ahead of the site relaunching.
At least a few days before the site launches (providing it is 99% completed), it’s recommended to run a technical audit of the staging site. This allows any issues to be fixed prior to being launched, further minimising any potential issues with the migration.
Once the site is launched and redirects have been put into place, another technical audit should be carried out, with any issues detected being fixed as soon as possible.
Post-migration, it’s important to monitor the site’s performance and make necessary adjustments. This ongoing task could go on for several weeks or even months, depending on how well the initial migration was executed.
How long these tasks will take depends on the size of the site, and how much is changing.
What are the risks of not migrating a website properly?
Reduced search visibility
A poorly executed migration can lead to a sudden drop in organic search visibility and rankings, reducing your presence in search results and impacting market share.
Crawlability and indexing challenges
Search engines may struggle to discover, interpret, or rank your pages correctly. Pages not redirected properly will lead users to a 404 page in SERPs until those pages are dropped from search results, resulting in a poor user experience.
Loss of traffic
Without careful management, a migration may result in a steep decline in organic search traffic. Traffic from other channels – such as direct, referral, paid, and social – may also suffer if pages aren’t properly redirected or updated.
Leaving essential pages out of the initial migration, with plans to add them later, can cause a significant drop in traffic shortly after launch.
Technical SEO issues
Technical SEO problems, including broken links, blocked resources, rendering errors, or duplicate content, can lead to decreased visibility and lower search rankings.
Backlink and internal link preservation
Failing to retain both external and internal backlinks during migration can result in broken links, a reduction in referral traffic, and a decrease in domain authority. Misaligned internal links within the new site structure may also confuse users, disrupting navigation and diminishing the user experience.
Failure to optimise landing pages
If keyword research and SERP competitor analysis aren’t conducted prior to launch, landing page content won’t be optimised for search engines or user intent, leading to a substantial drop in visibility.
But it’s not just a poorly executed migration that can cause headaches. Even a well-managed website migration is likely to impact visibility for a while as new pages are indexed, which is why it’s so important to have a robust content and linkbuilding strategy in place to help recover from decreasing visibility post-launch.
With years of experience in website migration, from basic brand updates, to huge e-commerce site rebrands on new domains, if your business is planning to redesign its website, we can help ensure the process goes as smoothly as possible.
Too many organisations unintentionally throw the baby out with the bathwater, and while we’re always happy to help recover lost traffic and rankings, we’d rather be the prevention rather than the cure!
