A website migration can be one of the most stressful situations that an SEO will encounter. There are so many things to consider and so many potential issues that it can be daunting. These slides are from a webinar hosted by SiteVisibility in which Marcos Alvarez (Senior SEO Analyst at SiteVisibility & BrightonSEO trainer) and Rachel Pearson (Digital Marketing Manager at SiteVisibility and Founder of Brighton Digital Women) run through each of the aspects that you'll need to consider from an SEO perspective when working on a web migration. They discuss the different types of migrations and provide a road map of all the activities that should take place before, during and after the launch, from redirect maps to setting up the new platform. You'll learn: - What a website migration is - The different types of web migrations - The pre-migration activities you'd need to undertake (Staging site, benchmark, URL mapping...) - The activity you need to undertake during the Migration (Redirect implementation, speed up indexation, initial tests...) - The post migration activities you'll need to check off (Compare benchmark, regular checks...)

1. 60 Minutes to Website Migration Success
SiteVisibility Webinars

2. 1. Introduction
2. What is a site migration?
3. Types of migrations
4. Planning for a migration
5. Pre migration
6. The Migration
7. Post migration
8. Questions
Contents
2

3. Introduction

4. 4
Who are we?
Marcos Alvarez Martin - Senior SEO Analyst & BrightonSEO
Trainer
Rachel Pearson - Digital Marketing Manager & Founder of
Brighton Digital Women

5. © Copyright 2020 | SiteVisibility | All Rights Reserved
5
Who are SiteVisibility?
• Full-service Digital Marketing Agency
Founded in 2001
• Google Partner
• Founder members of Wired Sussex
• RAR Recommended Agency

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Our Growth & Network
6
We’re proud to be the co-founders
of the world’s largest search
marketing conference and the
hosts of one of the world’s most
popular marketing podcasts.

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Our team has grown traffic, leads & revenue
for these brands and more...

8. What is a Site
Migration?

9. 9
What is a site migration
A website migration is a large change
on a website that impacts the way in
which that website looks or works and
the way search engines perceive it.

10. Types of migrations

11. 11
Types of migration
Type of changes Risk
Platform Medium
Server Low
Design High
Content Medium
URL High
Domain Very High
Acquisitions/Mergers Variable
Every migration comes with a risk, but it’s always good to know what the implications are
before starting a website migration project

12. Planning for a
Migration

13. Planning Pre Migration Migration Post Migration Success
Consider SEO when
creating your new
website and identify
stakeholders.
Prepare the new
website before launch
and retain the
strength of your old
website.
Activities to complete
on your launch day.
Regular checks and
post launch activity
Measure success and
plan for the future
Migration process
13

14. Planning

15. Migration
PPC
Measurement
Other Marketing areas
SEO
Social Media
Analytics
15
Consider impact for all digital marketing areas

16. 16
Create specs of your new website
SEO should be involved in the initial conversations about the
new website to identify both the risks and opportunities.

17. Team communication
17
SEO
Developers
Agreed plan &
scope of work
Who should be involved
Communication channels
Regular updates

18. 18
Time migration for minimal impact
Choose a period when traffic and conversions are traditionally low to
minimise the impact of the migration

19. Pre Migration

20. 20
Set Staging Site
Live Site Staging Site

21. 21
Set Staging Site
● Authentication
○ Passwords
○ Whitelisting IPs
● Noindex tag
● Blocked by robots.txt
Staging Site

22. URL Mapping
22
A URL Map should consider all the live URLs from the old
website and pair them to URLs on the new website.

23. URL Mapping
23
Keep authority from the old pages Redirect users to the new website

24. URL Mapping
24
Crawl
Pages receiving
links
Indexed
pagesPages with
traffic on Google
Analytics
Shared in Social
Media
URL Map

25. URL Mapping
25
Page 1 Page 1
Page 2 Page 2
Page 3
301 Redirects

26. 26
Benchmark
Gather a picture of current performance:
● Page Speed
● Indexed Pages
● Google Analytics Traffic & Conversions
● Engagement Metrics
● Any other relevant metric

27. Audit
27
The new website needs to be audited on the staging site to
ensure it follows SEO best practice before going live.

28. Audit
28
Things to review include:
● URL Hierarchy
● URL Formatting
● 404 Error Response
● 404 Page Design
● Soft 404 Errors
● 5xx Server Errors
● Broken Internal Links
● Redirects
● Robots.txt
● WWW Canonicalization
● Home Page
Canonicalization
● Page Load Speed
● Inbound Links
● XML Sitemap Plan
● Outbound Links
● Duplicate Content
● Heading Tags
● Thin Content
● Content Optimisation
● Duplicate Title Tags
● Long Title Tags
● Missing Title Tags
● Duplicate Meta Descriptions
● Long Meta Descriptions
● Missing Meta Descriptions
● Structured Data
● International SEO
● Local SEO

29. Audit
29
Ideally, you should plan in advancethe
requirements for your new website to avoid unexpected
surprises.

30. The Migration

31. 31
Implement Redirects
Page 1 Page 1
Page 2 Page 2
Page 3
301 Redirects

32. Initial Tests
32
Crawlable Indexable
Robots.txt in place XML Sitemap in place

33. 33
First Crawl
Once the initial checks are positive, start crawling the site to ensure everything is
working as expected and to identify any possible errors.
Because the new site has already been audited at the pre-migration stage, a full
audit will only be necessary in extreme cases.

34. Ensure Measurement is in Place
34
Ensure Google Analytics/Google Tag Manager tracking is in place and test it in
Real Time Analytics. Make sure your goal tracking still works.
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools should also be verified and
reporting fresh data

35. 35
Speed up reindexation
Once your new site has migrated successfully, spread the
word to help with its reindexation
● Submit Sitemap to GSC and Bing Places
● Request indexation of key URLs in GSC
● Change external links
● Social Media

36. Post Migration

37. 37
Compare with benchmark
Use your pre migration benchmark to compare the performance of the new
site compared to the old one and make adjustments where necessary.

38. 38
Compare with benchmark
● Page Speed
● Indexed Pages
● Google Analytics Traffic & Conversions
● Engagement Metrics
● Any other relevant metric
Use your pre migration benchmark to compare the performance of the new
site compared to the old one and make adjustments where necessary.

39. Regular checks
39
● Performance (Indexation, traffic, impressions…)
● Errors (Client errors, server errors, XML sitemap…)
● Page Speed
● Structured Data

40. 40
Update business information
Once your new site has migrated successfully, spread the
word to help with its reindexation
● Social Signals
● Google My Business
● Bing Maps
● Apple Maps
● Review listings
● PR

41. Questions

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Don’t forget to download our accompanying
SEO Website Migration Checklist!
You can find it on our website:
https://www.sitevisibility.co.uk/seo-website-migration-checklist/

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Need help with your website migration?
We’ll be following up any questions after the webinar, but if there’s anything
you’d like to ask us, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
You can email me marcos.martin@sitevisibility.com with any migration
questions.
Alternatively, if you’d like to book in a 30 minute call to discuss your migration
you can do so here: https://calendly.com/bruce-bignell/30min
(we’ll share this link around, along with the slides after!)

44. Thank You