Google Updates

by PRAKASH UPRETI SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER/ CONTENT

A site migration SEO checklist: Don’t lose traffic

Planning a site migration you cover all the SEO bases to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Use the following SEO checklist to prepare yourself as you develop a migration game plan for your website

Ø Carefully consider if migration is the right choice: A site migration will almost always result in a temporary loss of traffic. Google needs time to process the change and update its index accordingly.

Ø Use a Sandbox: Never do a site migration without first testing everything on a testing server.Verify that the redirects work properly and do all of the checks that follow in private before going public.

Ø Plan to migrate during a slow period: A well-planned and monitored shouldn’t permanently affect your traffic but you should plan for a temporary dip.

Ø Crawl your site before the migration: Crawl with your site with a tool like Screaming Frog and be sure to save the crawl for later. You need to make sure you have a complete list of the URLs on your old site so that nothing ends up getting lost because of the transition. You should remove or replace any links that point to 404 pages during the migration process.

Ø Benchmark Your Analytics: Make a copy of Google Analytic Data; you will need this information so that you can quickly identify if any traffic is lost after the migration. If any traffic is lost, export the analytics data from your new site and run a site-by-site comparison with the data from your old site.

Ø Map all changed URLs from old to new: You should have a spreadsheet that lists every old URL and every new URL. Ideally, during a site migration, all of the old pages exist on the new site. Obviously, removing a page removes its ability to capture search engine traffic.

Ø Update All Internal Links: The HTML links on your new site should point to the new site. Not the old one. This might sound obvious, but as you go through the process, you will quickly realize how tempting it might be to leave the links unchanged since they will redirect to the new URL anyway.

Ø Self-Canonicalize All New Pages: Verify that canonicalization on the new site references the new site and not the old. Canonicalizing to the old site can be disastrous, as it may prevent the new site from being indexed.

Ø Resolve duplicate content issues: Various missteps during the migration process can result in duplicate content issues. Be aware of these issues, and take steps to avoid them.1. IP address should redirect to URLs. 2. Look out for folders that lead to the same content especially ‘’default’’ folders. 3. If both multiple versions of a URL are published, it results in duplicate content 4.If your site has a search function; the search result pages should be no indexed.

Ø Identify and address any removed pages: Avoid removing any pages during the migration. Make a list of all pages. Do not redirect the old pages to the new site. Remove all links from these pages.

Ø Ensure that a custom 404 page in place: A custom 404 page allows users to easily navigate your site and find something useful if they land on a page that no longer exists.

Ø Manage and submit sitemaps: Keep your old sitemap in the Google Search Console and add the sitemap for the new site as well requesting Google to crawl the old sitemap and discover the redirects is a good way to accelerate the process.

Ø Keep analytics in place at all times: Install Google Analytics on the new domain and get it up and running well before you launched the site to the public. You do not want to have any missing data during the transition, and it’s important to watch for any changes in traffic during the migration.

Ø Redirect all changed links.

Ø Keep control of the old domain.

Ø Monitor traffic performance and rankings.

Ø Mark dates in Google Analytics.

Ø Ensure Google Search Console is properly set up.

Ø Properly manage PPC.

Ø Update all other platforms.

Ø Reach out for your most prominent links.

Ø Monitor your indexed page count.

Ø Check for 404s and redirects.

Ø Crawl your old URLs.

CONCLUSION--à If a site migration is carried out without taking SEO into account, you can almost bet on losing search engine traffic in the process. javascript:nicTemp();