Migrating your website? Don’t forget your SEO

Moving a website, sometimes referred to as re-platforming or migrating your website, can feel like a colossal project. Depending on the scope and scale you might have a dedicated project management team and a comprehensive plan to ensure that everything runs as smoothly as possible.

All good, but it’s important to consider the bigger picture of migration and one thing that is often overlooked is SEO. With budgets or time tight, SEO may not seem as high up on the to-do list but keeping it on your radar and putting the right processes in place will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

Why should you make SEO a priority when re-platforming?

Planning your SEO as part of your migration ensures minimal disruptions to user experience and search engine indexing. That can help to maintain your organic traffic levels and if done correctly it is a great opportunity to fix any legacy issues that your old site might have had. The top five things you should consider when reforming your website.

1. Redirects

Are you having a new site structure? Renaming your blog to a journal? Or moving some pages to new areas of the site? Then it is really important to ensure you have proper redirects in place. Ensure all URLs from the old website are properly redirected to the corresponding URLs on the new website. Then audit your site to make sure that all internal links are directed to the new pages, rather than using the redirects. This helps preserve link equity and prevents users from encountering 404 errors.

2. Content Audit and Preservation

It can be really tempting to remove old content from your site when you rebuild your site. Moving it over can seem laborious, especially if the content is old. Before you do you should audit your current content. It’s important to identify high-performing pages and ensure this content is preserved or improved upon in the new website. This includes blog posts, landing pages, and product pages that drive significant traffic or have valuable backlinks.

3. On-Page SEO Elements

Nice new design? Have you considered your H1 and H2 tags as part of the design? It’s important to retain or enhance on-page SEO elements. That includes header tags (H1, H2, etc.), meta titles, meta descriptions, and image alt text. Ensure these elements are optimised and aligned with the new website’s structure and design.

4. Technical SEO

A fresh start with a new site is a great opportunity to set strong SEO foundations. You can gain a competitive advantage by ensuring the new website has a fast loading speed, is mobile-friendly, and has a clear, crawlable site architecture. Use tools like Google Search Console to identify and fix any crawl errors.

5. Analytics and Tracking

If you’ve launched your new site and everything has gone great, the last thing you want to have to do is to explain to stakeholders that you don’t have the data to show its success. That is why it is key to set up proper analytics and tracking to monitor performance changes. Ensure you are using a tracking tool such as Google Analytics or Google Search Console, and that they are correctly configured on the new website. This will help you track traffic, and user behaviour, and also identify any issues post-launch.

A website migration presents a valuable opportunity to refresh and improve your online presence, but it requires careful consideration of SEO to ensure long-term success. By prioritising key SEO elements you can navigate the transition smoothly and maintain or even enhance your search engine rankings. To summarise, this might include:

• Implementing redirects
• Auditing and preserving valuable content
• Optimising on-page SEO,
• Establishing robust technical foundations, and
• Setting up accurate analytics

Investing time and resources into these SEO practices during your migration will not only protect your existing traffic but also set the stage for future growth, ultimately delivering greater value and performance for your new website.

If you need a hand ensuring your website is SEO-ready at launch, get in touch we have a team of experts ready to help.