Migrating a website can be an immense and complex undertaking, so it is vitally important that you plan and set realistic expectations with yourself and your team.
Reasons for site migration range from changing structure, design, domain, platform or UX to rebranding or increasing SEO performance.
Utilising plugins such as Duplicator or All-In-One WP Migration can make the migration process easier, but it is still vital to perform extensive testing in a controlled environment to identify any potential errors that could disrupt traffic or cause user frustration once your site goes live. Learn more about the web migration checklist.
Create a Content Map
An inventory is an ideal way to ensure a successful website migration: it enumerates every page, video, image and file on your site and can be performed using a site crawler, software that crawls web pages to collect information.
This list will help you assess what pages need to be migrated and identify any that have been overlooked and require updating. A comprehensive inventory can help avoid unexpected difficulties during the migration process.
As you create your site map, consider how each piece of content assists buyers at every stage of the buyer lifecycle. Your content map should ideally mirror the shape of your marketing funnel. If you must appeal to multiple personas simultaneously, expand this into a segmentation grid instead.
At every step in your content mapping process, it’s vitally important to include a multidisciplinary team such as system admins, developers, SEOs, designers, copywriters and UX developers – this cross-departmental collaboration offers the highest chance of success as it reduces chances of missing critical steps or overlooking issues that another member could spot more readily.
Test in a Closed Environment
Migrating your website domain, platform, or design may seem intimidating at first, but it could provide your business with a fresh start – making expansion or rebranding simpler while improving functionality, user experience, SEO visibility and overall SEO ranking.
Although a full migration may be feasible in one go, for optimal results, it’s best to conduct the changes in a test environment first and make them live later. It gives your team time and space to find errors before they impact rankings or your business.
Perform Pre-Launch Technical Activities
Once all is in order, website migration can begin. Now is the time to outline clear goals and objectives for this endeavour; for instance, if moving from an HTTP domain to an HTTPS one, one goal might be retaining or increasing traffic levels; this goal might especially come into play when using paid search campaigns or expanding internationally.
Before beginning the migration process, conducting a content inventory of your legacy website is advisable to determine which pages need to be moved. You could do this by crawling old sites, exporting all pages using CMS software or using analytics tools such as Google Analytics to determine which are performing well and driving the most traffic – this will help determine both what pages require migrating and their priority level.
Lowering the TTL (Time To Live) before migrating can speed up DNS record transfers; add a record with lower TTL to your DNS configuration to do this. Furthermore, consider creating a coming soon page on your new URL to generate buzz and promote its launch before it goes live. Learn more about the web migration checklist.
Promote Your New URL
Migrating a website requires extensive preparation, and SEO specialists must be involved early on in the design process to avoid losing visibility and revenue due to its transition.
Migrations may be needed for various reasons, such as changing the domain name, switching HTTP to HTTPS or redesigning site architecture. A company might also want to update their platform with additional functionality or speed to increase functionality or enhance user experience. No matter what the cause for the migration might be, its execution must occur as seamlessly and quickly as possible to minimise the impact on traffic and rankings.
