Also, be sure to identify your most valuable pages when assembling your list of URLs. High-value pages are pages with high-intent content, high conversion rates, high traffic levels, and quality backlinks.
This data helps you know which pages to prioritize for minimal impact during the migration.
Finally, if you plan to add additional pages and categories to your new site, this is the time to check that they can fit into your existing architecture. If not, you may need to reconsider your website structure.
Tip: Use a visual sitemap to visualize your current website architecture and find gaps in your content strategy that need to be filled.
Again, ensure you’re tracking the keywords your high-value pages are ranking for. As mentioned above, this helps you to benchmark your performance before and after the migration process.
11. Create A Redirect Map
Next, use your URL list to determine the pages to move to the new site, which ones you can merge, and the ones to drop.
Use redirect links to connect your old content and the new one. So, when users try to access the content on your old page, they’re automatically redirected to the latest version of it.
For your redirect plan, start with the most important pages you identified in the previous step.
Implement a 301 redirect for each page you’re moving to the new site. For context, a 301 redirect indicates that a page has been moved permanently from one URL to another. The authority on the old page is also transferred to the new site.
Technically, your URLs should point to the most relevant page on the new site. For example, let’s assume you have a website (example.com) and want to redirect to a new location:
Old URL: example.com/old-page
New URL: example.com/new-page
In this case, you’ll set up a 301 redirect from “example.com/old-page” to “example.com/new-page.”
Also, avoid redirecting old URLs to your new homepage. This can result in soft 404 errors, which will dilute overall link equity and harm your rankings.
Instead, if you can’t identify an appropriate new page to point to, either create a new page or remove your old URL.
Using our previous example, let’s say you have another URL (example.com/blog); you need to redirect it to the newer version of the page (example.com/new-page/blog).
Old URL: example.com/blog
New URL: example.com/new-page/blog
Then: “example.com/new-page/blog” should 301 redirect to “example.com/new-page.”
This way, each domain is redirected to the most relevant page on your website.
When you’ve completed your redirect map, share a list of your new URLs with your broader marketing team so they can update their campaign links once the new site launches.
Tip: Cross-check your redirects on your staging website to be sure they’re not redirecting to another URL that’s redirected.
This is called chain redirects, and it confuses search engine bots when they try to crawl and index the page.
For best results, ensure your redirects are one-to-one and are ideally not going through redirect chains.
12. Run Pre-Launch Checks
Before launching your new site, you’ll need to run various checks in your testing environment to ensure the new site functions as expected.
Work with your SEO team to confirm if the following elements meet the required standards:
Test Redirects: Ensure that all redirects are correctly implemented and functioning properly. This includes checking the 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones to avoid redirect chains or soft 404s.
XML Sitemap: Verify that the new site contains a valid XML sitemap. Use tools like XML Sitemap Validator to check for errors and compliance with search engine requirements.
Robots.txt File: If you’ve added a robots.txt file in the staging file, reconfigure it to include pages you want to index on the search engines.
URL Structure: Review the URLs to ensure they’re optimized with relevant keywords and follow SEO best practices.
Canonical URLs: Do all your canonical URLs point to the relevant variant of the page? Consolidate any duplicates to maintain a clear content hierarchy.
Structured Data: Implement structured data (Schema markup) to help search engines understand your pages’ content and deliver rich results to users.
Status Codes: Check the HTTP status code for all pages to ensure they return the correct responses. Address any 404 errors or other related issues immediately.
Internal Linking: Internal links create connections between your webpages and distribute link equity. Review all internal links to ensure that they are intact and redirect users to the right content.
Title Tags, Header Tags, And Meta Descriptions: Are they optimized for the right keywords? Do they follow SEO best practices? Review and update them accordingly.
Tip: Use third-party SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to run a quick audit of your website to find any SEO issues that will become roadblocks during and after migration.
Phase 3: Launch
Now that you’ve crossed all your Ts and dotted your Is, you can proceed to launch your website.
13. Launch And Promote Your New Site
When your site goes live, you’ll need to lift any user and search engine restrictions you set up during the development phase. Remember, the quicker you implement the migration, the better.
Your site will temporarily go offline during the migration, so minimizing downtime will reduce the impact on traffic and revenue.
Remove all the limitations you’ve placed on the staging site so that search engines and users can access it. This includes robots.txt disallows, no index tags, and password protection.
Also, ensure your DNS records point to the right servers after migration.
It’s also a good idea to plan PPC campaigns to coincide with the site launch. Not only will this spread the word about your new site, but it can also help make up for the short-term organic traffic dips you experienced during the migration process.
Phase 4: Post-Migration
Lastly, re-check all the changes to ensure everything is working as intended. Sometimes, the migration may not go as planned, and this is where you decide whether to tweak your edits or roll back to the previous website.
Let’s run through a few of the vitals:
14. Optimize Your Website Performance
Monitor the new website closely to verify if everything is working as it should and check critical aspects of the site, including your new robot.txt file, XML sitemap, redirects, usability, and analytics.
Also, check your website performance compared with your old site. It’s natural to experience a dip in performance for a while, but as the weeks go by, your rankings and traffic should return to their original levels.
To optimize your website:
Use website caching to store content/data so users can access it faster.
Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to reduce latency and improve content delivery time.
For best results, minify your JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files to improve Content Delivery Network (CDN) performance. You can also use IPV6 (Internet Protocol version 6) to improve routing efficiency and reduce content delivery times.
Optimize your database systems to improve query speed, user experience, and overall website performance. Best practices such as proper indexing, data tables optimization, query structuring, materialized views, vertical scaling, etc., can help the database handle complex requests without downtime.
Learn more about database performance tuning.
15. Update Technical Documentation
Now that you’ve launched your website, you need to revise your technical documents to ensure it’s accurate and up-to-date.
This documentation guides the migration process and can mitigate risks such as duplicate/lost content, missing/broken links, etc.
Also, it allows for faster collaboration between cross-functional teams and stakeholders. Your documentation should include:
A spreadsheet or map of your 301 redirects, including the old and new links.
An updated XML sitemap that lists all necessary pages. This is important for search engine indexing.
Title tags and meta descriptions for all pages on your site.
A report showing performance metrics before and after the migration. You can also add your primary keyword rankings as well.
The state of your robots.txt file to ensure only the right pages are indexed on the search results.
16. Implement Basic Maintenance Practices
Lastly, set preventive maintenance practices to keep your website functioning properly after the backup. This helps you catch and resolve potential issues before they become a bigger problem.
Use third-party SEO tools like Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and Semrush as monitoring systems to track your performance metrics and detect anomalies that affect web performance.
These tools also give insight into your user activity on your website and your overall performance strength on the search results.
Tip: Since migration impacts search and user experience, recrawl your new site to ensure it’s performing as required. And if your key performance indicators (KPIs) don’t improve, troubleshoot the causes. These could include:
Pages on your old site are still being indexed.
Slow load times.
Bad redirects.
Missing internal links.
Activate specific alerts on Google Search Console to highlight issues that could affect performance so you can fix them as soon as they occur.
Final Thoughts
Website migration can be a complex undertaking.
Following the above steps will set you up for success and allow you to prepare, execute, and monitor your migration while minimizing associated risks.
More Resources:
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