You should consider website migration if you are making changes in content management systems, website design, hosting provider and URL structure. Mistakes during the process of website migration can damage your business in an online market. Poor migration of the website will result in a decrease in keyword rankings, traffic and quality scores. Digital Marketing Boy would like you to follow the migration checklist:
A. New Website Structure Analysis: An SEO expert needs to create a visual chart displaying the structure of the new website. Be sure that you know the new URL naming structure of web pages.
B. Redirection of Old Web Pages: A digital marketer should 301 redirect all your old web pages to respective pages on the new website. Digital Marketing Boy suggests you remove low-quality web pages and let them return a 404 error. This will help you to improve your search engine optimization (SEO). A web page that has quality backlinks pointing to it and ranks well for keywords should be considered for 301 redirections to the new website.
C. 301 Redirect Sheet: Create a detailed 301 Redirect sheet to measure the performance of your SEO website migration. You can easily migrate old website URLs to the new website by maintaining this sheet. Share the sheet with your digital marketing team so that they can track the new URLs.
D. Content Update: Do not lose the work by forgetting to update the new website with information such as Meta Descriptions, ALT tags, Headings, Title tags, images, videos, JS and CSS files. SEO experts should update internal links during migration and this will not drive visitors to an error web page.
E. Tracking Codes: Digital marketers measure traffic and conversions using the Google Analytics platform. Make sure that your new website contains AdWords tracking, Facebook pixels, retargeting pixels, Google Tag Manager and more.
F. XML Sitemap: You should submit XML Sitemap (Access Google Search Console SEO Tool) to index and crawl your new website at earliest. This file helps search engines to effectively crawl the web pages because it includes a list of website URLs.
G. New Website Launch: There will be less impact on your business if you launch your new website during non-peak hours.
H. Canonical Tags: Search engines can easily determine the default version of a page by reading Canonical tags.
I. Robots.txt: This file provides instructions to search engine bots about the crawling status of web pages. Always include the XML Sitemap URL in Robots.txt file.
J. Noindex Tag Removal: SEO experts should analyze and remove the Noindex Meta Robots tag during the development of a new website.
K. New Website Set Up in Google Search Console: Access one of the SEO tools 'Google Search Console' to inform Google about the migration of your website. Add a new website domain name in this tool once you complete the migration process.
L. URL Inspection: The functionality 'URL Inspection' of Google Search Console assist you with the immediate crawling of web pages. You can view three sections such as 'URL is on Google', 'Coverage' and 'Mobile Usability'. Access the TEST LIVE URL button to analyze whether a web page can be indexed or not.
M. Google Search Console Settings: You will have to consider Search Console settings such as crawl rate, URL parameters and Geotargeting during the migration process.
N. Disavow Sheet: You can disavow spammy backlinks in Google Search Console. Just be safe by resubmitting the disavow file for the new website if you have done this with the old website. Be sure that you do not make any mistakes when you resubmit the disavow sheet.
O. Update Landing Pages: It can cost you a lot of money if you fail to update the landing web pages.
In-depth information about crawling and indexing for SEO Experts.
Know the importance of 301 Redirects in an SEO strategy.
