How to Do a Website Migration Like a Pro + Checklist

New website in the works? Here’s how not to leave your SERP rankings out to dry during a site migration.

Your brand has likely evolved a ton since launch day, but your website might look the same.

Whether you’re opting for more security, getting a design refresh, or moving to a new CMS, there are plenty of reasons to take on a site migration. But this project is one that shouldn’t be taken on lightly.

Migrating your site is a technical, multi-step process. A misstep can result in broken links, a poor mobile experience, and loss of significant websiteSEO you’ve worked hard to build.

Don’t worry, though: All you need is a solid website migration plan. (And search engine marketing experts like HawkSEM won’t hurt, either.)

We chatted with HawkSEM account performance director and SEM expert Jessica Weber to learn why so many brands struggle with site migration, what risks are involved, and how to migrate a website without losing domain authority or data.

What is a website migration?

A website migration is a change to a website that can impact visibility, traffic, and user experience. The change typically refers to a redesign or any alteration to the site structure, UX elements, server, location, or other fundamental components.

The migration could be extensive and result in an entirely new website after some downtime. Or, it might be as simple as changing a few old URLs.

Some reasons to conduct a site migration include:

• Rebranding
• An acquisition
• New target audiences
• Outdated site structure
• New offerings

When you’re working on a site migration, you always want to execute and test everything in a staging environment before it goes live on your actual website. (Image: Unsplash)

Types of site migrations

Not all site migrations are the same. For example, site migrations with URL changes might result in more significant changes in traffic since Google regards a new URL as a new website.

Here are a few more types of site migrations.

• Site structure:This involves changes to how you organize your website content, including new landing pages, web page sequences, internal linking, and taxonomy (for example, changing internal link destinations and the user journey).
• Domain change:A brand might move to a new domain to reflect rebranding or a new company name (like moving babyproducts.com to babylifestyle.com).
• URL change:Your URL structure is similar to the domain but speaks to the web page that your domain leads you to.
• Adding mobile functionality: If your website looks clunky or unintuitive on mobile devices, your site migration might make your new website more mobile-friendly.
• Website redesign or new templates:Sometimes changes to both your website’s code and visual appearance are necessary, ideally to improve user experience (like switching from one WordPress template to another or adding new visual features to your homepage).
• Content changes:This migration means removing or adding new pages, or making content available in different languages (such as adding new content pages for Spanish blog posts).
• New content management system (CMS) or host:A particularly extensive migration can require moving to a new CMS or web host (for example, from WordPress to Squarespace).
• Migrating part(s) of a website:Migration combinations are also common, which refers to when two or more of any of the above migration types happen concurrently.

What are the potential downsides of website migrations?

The worst potential effects? Traffic dips, content loss, and lost rankings on search engine results pages, or SERPs.

Google’s algorithm is always watching. That’s why you’ll notice a traffic dip over something as small as an outdated blog post. So, it makes sense that large site modifications during web migrations will catch Google’s eye.

Weber explains that search engines reassess your technical SEO specs like domain redirection and indexing after any big change, which can result in lost URL equity and dipped rankings.

“After the initial dip at the time of migration, there should be a short ramp up period [of 1-3 weeks] while Google reassesses where the site will fall in search results.”

But after that? Weber advises we pay attention to plateaus or lower traffic:

“That could indicate an issue with the migration execution or inferior design, development, or content,” she explains, “if you updated your website outside of just the domain.”

Migrations can also result in a bunch of smaller technical issues that reduce traffic. For example, new or updated web pages could have longer load times, which will increase bounce rates and decrease traffic.

The biggest culprits are issues with the redirection plan, either at the server or page level.

How agencies can help with site migrations

Sure, maybe we’re biased. But we also know your site is too important to your business to just leave it in anyone’s hands.

Consult an experienced SEO agency throughout a site migration to quickly audit and implement a recovery plan. HawkSEM has supported plenty of clients during their entire site migrations.

When Kindbody acquired VIOS Fertility in a $1.2 billion merger, the HawkSEM team enacted careful measures outlined in a detailed Migration Checklist.

By keeping a close eye on the pertinent tasks required to maintain optimal site performance, such as mapping 301 redirects with a content audit, the user experience remained flawlessly intact.

The result? A 128% boost in organic visitors to the new site.

A site migration shouldn’t be catastrophic to your SEO. Ready for a breezy site migration without the headache? Here’s our play-by-play guide to ensure it goes smoothly.

How to migrate a website

Weber says the “before” stage is the most important phase of a site migration. Why? Because poor planning is often to blame for migration horror stories.

We’ll walk you through all the steps you need to take before, during, and post-migration. Let’s dig in.

Part One: Before the migration

1. Figure out your “why”

Why do you want a site migration? And if you’re conducting a combination of changes, determine the “why” behind each one.

Maybe you started your website with a minimal budget and now have the dollars to deliver a better user experience. Or, you might want to make your site more appealing to an international audience.

Even better? Perhaps you have a traffic goal you want your new website to help you reach.

Weber offers a few more solid reasons to migrate a website:

• New web design, user experience, or usability standards
• Business mergers or rebranding where different domains are more advantageous
• Rapid business growth driving a need for enhanced website capabilities
• New CMS required to replace unsustainable patchwork development

“Every five years is a good rule of thumb to stay up to date or relevant,” says Weber.

Think of your goals for the migration and discuss them with all relevant departments of your organization, including your sales, customer service, and IT teams. Once you have a clear set of goals for each change, it becomes easier to monitor your process and results.

Of course, humans can only take performance monitoring so far. That’s why our team of dedicated SEO and SEM experts leverages our proprietary tech, ConversionIQ™, to assess conversion and revenue data across different web pages and time periods.

Clear on the why? Now, let’s take care of a few housekeeping tasks before you start that migration.

2. Outline a project plan

We’re talking goals, tasks, responsibilities, budgets, and timelines. Document everything you want to accomplish and how you plan to do it before you get started. You’d be surprised how important timing becomes for a project like this.

Weber tells us that a successful website migration could take months of preparation, depending on the type of migration and scope of site structure, content, and design changes:

“Are you only migrating to a new domain or to a new website design, too? A domain migration can take a short period of planning while a website redesign requires a larger amount of preparation to execute.”

If you plan to launch a site migration during your industry’s peak season, expect higher priorities to overshadow the new site and cause delays. Truthfully, you should always plan for delays anyway—a little wiggle room never hurts.

Your project plan should also outline clear benchmarks. What do your metrics look like now, and where do you want them to be?

This is where an SEO digital marketing agency can really come in handy. We’ll help you prioritize the most important tasks in your site migration plan, execute them, and assess progress so you can focus on your day-to-day operations.

There are endless reasons why site owners may see SEO changes after migrating a site, regardless of the type of migration. (Image: Unsplash)

3. Create a site mapping document

Plan on changing your domain name? Or replacing old URLs? You don’t want to lose the authority you’ve built over the years. That’s why before you migrate any part of your site, it’s a good idea to keep track of all your URL redirects in a site mapping document.

Google recommends checking the following places to ensure you’ve captured all your URLs:

• Sitemaps, which contain your most important URLs submitted via the Google Search Console
• Server logs and Google Analytics
• Your CMS

The goal? Your new URLs should reroute from your old URLs to prevent dead pages, bad redirects, broken links, or 404 errors.

4. Record all your metadata

Every piece of web content, be it a service page or blog, has metadata. These are the title tags, meta descriptions, and meta keywords you optimized your pages with before you hit publish.

A website migration can throw all that metadata in the trash, reversing the history and authority you built with it on Google’s SERPs. We recommend making a copy of all your metadata so that you can compare your new website with it post-migration.

Now that we’ve covered the prep work, you’re ready to migrate. So, what comes first?

Part Two: During the migration

5. Promote your web migration

It’s one thing to tell Google you have a new site, but telling your customers is a whole other task. Let’s say you changed URLs, but your existing customers know you on the old URL. This is a huge reason behind traffic dips post-migration.

Prepare them for the change and minimize traffic dips with these tips:

• Place a “Coming Soon” page on the page with the new URL.
• Create buzz for your new website via email newsletters, news releases, and social media.
• Share your goals for the migration and gather feedback from your clients and customers.
• Set up a PPC campaign to rank for your old site’s keywords.
• Publish a page on your new site that ranks for keywords with your old URL name to capture all potential customers who missed the memo.

6. Update canonical tags

You’ll want to update all the canonical tags on your new, old, and other sites, if applicable. If your site has a page that can be accessed via multiple URLs, Google will view it as duplicate content—this is where canonical tags come in.

According to Google, the search engine’s bots “will choose one URL as the canonical version and crawl that, and all other URLs will be considered duplicate URLs and crawled less often.” So make sure the canonical URL you’re directing to is the one that already has the most site equity.

Pro tip: Google offers a Change of Address Tool for sites migrating from one domain or subdomain to another. However, this isn’t the tool to use for changing from “http” to “https,” redirecting pages on your site, removing “www” from your domain, or moving without making user-visible URL changes.

7. Test everything in a staging environment

Imagine publishing a blog post with typos and inaccurate information. That’s what the preview button is for—to catch any issues before your readers do.

The same idea applies to a web migration. You should test every change you want to implement in a closed staging environment. This will help you catch any potential effects on your web traffic, SEO rankings, and user experience, so Google can’t penalize you for jumping into things live.

We also don’t recommend testing everything during an on-peak season in your industry, holidays, or periods of assessment related to investments or partner stakeholders. Busy seasons take up enough time and attention, and you don’t want to risk missing anything that could cost you in rankings.

Sites like WordPress can walk you through creatingproduction, staging, and development environments.

Here are a few things you should look at in the testing stage.

• Site architecture: Is your taxonomy missing any important web pages?
• Search features:Type in a few key queries into your website’s search bar. Can you still find those web pages easily?
• Internal links:Update your internal linking to ensure they all redirect to new URLs.
• Backlinks and external links:Reach out to contacts that own your highest-quality backlinks and request an update to your new URLs. Then, update external links you can control, like Google Business Profile, social profiles, analytics, and citations.
• Site speed time:Did you know bounce rate can increase by 32% if your site’s load speed goes from one second to three? Compare site load times pre-migration to your current test. If anything looks too slow, consult web developers or SEO experts to help you speed things up.
• User experience:How do you feel navigating your site? Is content still logical, digestible, and engaging with breaks for visuals?
• Metadata:Remember that record of metadata you took in step #4? Compare it with all your new web pages’ metadata.

Pro tip: Involve multiple people in the testing process to minimize costly errors slipping through the cracks.

Part Three: After the migration

8. Launch and monitor your site’s progress

You’re ready to go live! After your new site is up and running, continue monitoring 404s and Google Search Console to make sure everything is tracking properly.

You should also watch your performance and keyword rankings. Remember those goals and benchmarks you set pre-migration? Now’s the time to use them so you can assess the new site’s performance and address any issues immediately.

Finally, you should track web traffic pre- and post-migration on both desktop and mobile devices.

Sounds like a lot to remember, right? Well, it is! Even for us SEO experts. That’s why we leverage ConversionIQ to give us eyes and ears on every piece of data—including traffic, conversions, user behavior, and more.

Now, fast forward a few weeks post-migration. Are your rankings worse? The same? If they’re anything but better, it’s time to conduct an SEO audit and see what might’ve gone wrong.

Common web migration pitfalls

If you follow all the above steps, you’ll minimize your risk of rank tanking. Even so, the reality is that tons of brands still face SEO challenges post-migration. Here are a few common culprits behind web migration horror stories:

• Waiting too long to start the site migration process
• Launching before you’re ready
• Not comprehensively redirecting the proper way
• Not updating canonical tags
• Deciding to launch new sites that are not as optimized as old sites
• Not making a copy of the old site
• Failing to transfer your disavow file that tells Google which of your backlinks should be ignored
• Not completing and saving a crawl for reference (you can crawl your site with a tool like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb)

Pro tip: Website crawler tools allow you to crawl your websites’ URLs to better analyze and audit your technical and onsite SEO.

Website migration checklist

Never miss a beat and ensure a seamless transition with this site migration checklist.

Determine goals, objectives & benchmarks

Map out timelines, budgets & responsibilities

Create site-mapping document

Build URL redirect list

Conduct tracking code and XML sitemap updates

Record your metadata

Build new site promotional campaigns

Update canonical tags

Conduct testing

Launch!

Monitor performance for traffic and conversions

Compare mobile and desktop performance

The takeaway

If you feel overwhelmed, that’s completely normal. Site migrations aren’t just another marketing brainstorm or everyday project. They require a ton of planning, adaptability, testing, and SEO expertise to ensure your brand retains its SERP status and authority.

You don’t need the stress of lost SEO progress after launching a new site. Weber’s advice? Give yourself peace of mind. Start by following each of our steps closely to ensure total optimization, and cover your bases by consulting an SEO agency like HawkSEM.

According to Weber, “There is nothing more harmful to a business than to launch a new ‘beautiful and improved’ website and cause months of lost revenue because of a lack of planning and poor execution without help from search engine professionals.”

We’ll assign you a dedicated account manager to help you keep tabs on the many site migration tasks and mitigate the negative impact on SEO.

Ready to launch your new site? Do it with confidence. Book a consultation with an SEO expert today.

 

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This article has been updated and was originally published in January 2020.