Website migration: how to do everything right so as not to lose traffic and position in search results

Today, almost every business strives to develop in the online space. This is quite reasonable and justified, since every day more and more people are betting on online shopping. It is profitable, convenient, fast. But it is important to make sure that potential buyers can find you on the Internet. That is, you need a platform for promoting goods and services. Thus, a small business can work in the online environment even with a fairly simple and inexpensive site created using a constructor. In this case, the opportunities provided by the economy hosting tariff will be quite sufficient for him.

A completely different situation is with companies that are developing and expanding. In this case, there will definitely come a time when the site simply stops meeting the basic requirements. And then it is necessary to change something: hosting, domain, CMS, etc. But this process is associated with a number of serious risks. There is a possibility that when migrating a site, you will lose traffic to it, and as a result, you will fall in the search results. This is something that no business can afford, because then what kind of development can we talk about?

As part of today's review, we will dwell in more detail on the reasons for which you may face the need to transfer your resource to another platform and what risks and problems you may encounter in this process. We will get acquainted with the main types of site migration and the main stages that will need to be implemented during this work. We will tell you what specialists it is advisable to involve in the site transfer. We will dwell in more detail on the nuances of transferring content, design, and how to preserve existing promotion channels. Let's highlight the importance of tracking site positions after migration and the main points that need to be implemented at this stage. Now, let's talk about everything in order.

Why do sites need to migrate?

Moving a site is not as simple a task as it may seem at first glance. In the course of performing these works, you have a high risk of losing your clients, traffic, and position in search results. That is, all your efforts that were previously applied to the promotion of the resource can simply come to naught. So is it worth risking all this and migrating the site? Yes, if you have a good reason for it. In particular, this may be:

1. Reluctance to cooperate with a particular company providing hosting services.
2. Doubts about the security of personal data and, as a result, the desire to change the existing provider to a more reliable one.
3. Limitations of the technical capabilities of the platform with which you are currently cooperating.
4. Problems with the stability of the site, directly related to the hosting.
5. Insufficient bandwidth for your site, which occurred due to an increase in the number of orders.
6. The need to make constant improvements, which began to require from you not only effort, but also material costs.
7. You found a supplier with more attractive terms of cooperation and a new platform.
8. You are no longer satisfied with the work of the technical support service, you cannot quickly solve the problem that has arisen.

If you have encountered at least one of these problems, then it's time to think about migrating the site. In any case, it is necessary to approach the implementation of the task as comprehensively as possible, provide for preliminary development. That is, you must understand in advance what exactly awaits you in the near future and be ready to implement your idea.

The main problems that can be encountered when migrating a site

If you make certain mistakes when migrating a site, then you risk completely removing your resource from the index. And the cause of such problems can be:

1. Lost content that was indexed by search engines.
2. The appearance of duplicates on the site, which also negatively affects the attitude of search bots.
3. Multiple redirects or errors made in their configuration.
4. Errors that led to incorrect indexing of site pages.

We would like to immediately draw your attention to the fact that in the first period after the resource transfer, you will in any case face a loss of traffic. But such a problem can be minimized if you focus on improving the convenience of users on the updated service. This is what will allow you to regain lost positions as quickly as possible.

Why is it important to pay attention to SEO when transferring a site?

SEO-optimization is what allows your site to move to the top of search results and stay in the positions it occupies. It will also be important if you are transferring it. If you neglect SEO when migrating a website, you risk facing the following problems in reality:

1. Loss of traffic. We have already said above that this is normal within a short time interval. The fact is that changing the content, domain or any other important characteristics will require a certain period of time from search bots to recognize all these changes and make adjustments to the index. If it turns out that your new resource does not satisfy the requests of search bots, then the loss of traffic may not be temporary, but a permanent phenomenon.
2. A decrease in the site's position in search results. A similar phenomenon can occur in practice if you make a mistake when redirecting users to another URL. Today, this work can be done in two ways: 301 and 302 redirection. The first technology is used when the page is moved to a new location on a permanent basis, and the second is used when it comes to temporary migration. If you make a mistake at this stage, the search engine may incorrectly process your content, which may ultimately lead not only to a lower position, but also to the resource disappearing from the search results for several months or even years.
3. Difficulties with indexing the transferred site. In order for the search bot to index your resource as conveniently as possible, a tool such as site map is used. If you do not update it when transferring the service, this will lead to the fact that search engines will simply pass by your updated pages, that is, will not index them. As a result, the position of the resources in search results will definitely go down.

This is just one of the most common consequences of not taking SEO aspects into account when migrating a site.

Main types of site migration

At this stage, you should already know that the process of resource migration itself is a rather complex and comprehensive task, which involves making changes not only to its location. Technologies, content, structure, design, and user interface can also be adjusted. Depending on how serious and deep the corresponding adjustments are, separate types of site migration are distinguished. Some of them will be simpler and faster to implement, while others, on the contrary, will require from you sufficiently deep knowledge, skills, and time. Moreover, you will not always be able to perform this work yourself, that is, without the help of relevant specialists.

Let's get acquainted with the main types of site migration. For convenience, we will divide all possible options into two separate groups:

1. Simple types of migration.
2. Complex types of migration.

Let's consider both options in more detail.

Types of simple site migration

This category includes those types of migration that do not involve significant changes to the structure of the site, its appearance, or functionality. These works can be implemented as quickly and easily as possible, in some cases even without the involvement of third-party specialists. If you are familiar with the basic knowledge, you can easily solve the upcoming tasks yourself. The essence of such work is to make similar changes through the code.

Today, there are two main types of simple migrations:

• Moving a site from HTTP to HTTPS. This is done when the resource owner would like to increase the security level of their service. By and large, today almost all sites have undergone such a migration, since the use of the HTTPS protocol is one of the key ranking factors in search engines since 2014. Moreover, since 2018, all popular browsers have marked sites running on the HTTP protocol as unsafe. If for some reason you have not yet completed this work, then you need to replace the URLs as soon as possible, because you are simply losing potential customers: few people will use a site that is marked by a search engine as unsafe. By the way, all sites that are created after 2014 are already launched by default via the HTTPS protocol. That is, such migration is performed on resources that the owners have not worked on for a long time.
• Changing the domain name. In practice, such a solution may be required in the case when your company has gone through a rebranding stage and changed its name. Also, such a solution is resorted to in the case when this domain name was initially chosen incorrectly. In practice, there are cases when, in order to make it unique, the domain name was made too complex: a large number of characters, many hyphens, numbers. This makes it difficult to find a portal by name. Another case when a domain name apology is required is the adjustment of the domain extension. Alternatively, perhaps you initially chose the wrong solution for your niche or initially saved money, and now you are ready to spend a large amount on a reliable domain name. As soon as you complete these works, all pages of your site, without exception, will automatically change their names. This means that the probability of making a mistake at the stage of setting up the gluing of pages will be minimal.

In this case, 301 redirect settings and gluing of old and new pages will be performed. Despite its simplicity, such a migration can also be accompanied by errors, but their probability is much lower than with more complex migration options. To be sure that you have not made any mistakes, you will need to monitor the results of your move and respond in a timely manner if problems are identified.

Types of complex site migration

Unlike the previous category, here are already presented such options for transferring a site, which provide for a change in the appearance of the resource, its structure, and functionality. In this case, the URL of the pages will change unpredictably. Adjustments can affect the structure of the catalog, which will ultimately lead to unexpected generation of page names. The main difficulty of such work is that in order to correctly configure redirects, you have to compare old pages with new ones. If your site had 20 pages, this would not be difficult. It is a completely different matter if we are talking about thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pages. In this case, you will need to involve specialists who can write a corresponding script that will provide automatic or semi-automatic comparison. But such an approach will be impossible to implement in practice if your site has an old page named manually. That is, those that do not have a formation structure. Using code, they cannot be identified and compared. This means that you will have to do this work manually.

The main types of complex migration include the following varieties:

• Website redesign. It involves a significant modification of the resource in order to improve the convenience of working with it for users. It is recommended to perform such a transformation regularly, approximately once every 3 years. During such work, the portal's appearance and navigation are changed, new functions and capabilities are added. Thanks to this, the site is not just modified, but also becomes more useful and convenient to work with for the target audience.
• Launching a new site. In some cases, when major changes are to be made to a resource, it is easier to replace it with a new one. Making adjustments to old materials will be much more difficult, since you will have to change absolutely everything, from the external solution to the content. The only thing you can leave the same is the name of the pages themselves, if they do not lose their relevance.
• Migration of a website builder to a CMS. As practice shows, websites created with the help of builders have rather weak functional capabilities. Here, design solutions will be limited, management capabilities will be cut down. If this is quite enough for small resources, then for developing portals it is still optimal to use a CMS and form an extended website structure. At the same time, filters are optimized, language versions are configured.
• Transition to a new CMS. Such a solution is used in practice by businesses that are developing at an accelerated pace. It may happen that old resources can no longer cope with new traffic volumes, cannot withstand sudden surges. Its failure will lead to the fact that users will simply go to competitors, that is, buyers are lost. Moreover, not all CMS allow you to connect certain advertising tools, systems that automate actions to the resource. Such problems can be eliminated by switching to another CMS. One that supports broader functionality, advanced marketing tools that allow you to increase your user audience reach several times and, as a result, raise your sales to the maximum.

When working with complex migrations, the probability of making a mistake will be much higher, especially if you are not familiar with all the nuances and subtleties of these processes.

The main risks of switching to a new CMS and redesign

Regardless of what complex migration you plan to implement, it will have a direct impact on the CMS indicators of the site. The fact is that search engines will need to re-index the pages of your resource. And this, in turn, will require a lot of time. That is, accept as a norm that in the short term, organic traffic to your site will decrease, and its position in the search results will go down. But again, such a phenomenon will be short-lived, since the transition of the site is intended to improve its position, since search engines rely on fast and easy-to-use resources.

But traffic losses can be minimized if you do the following when transferring:

• transfer all the content that was on your portal;
• save the entire volume of the link mass;
• perform the correct comparison of old and new URLs.

Only experienced specialists can carry out these works qualitatively. Those who have been successfully engaged in such work for a long time. Only in this way can you be sure that the main pages that brought most of the user audience to the resource will not be lost, and along with them the entire link mass, traffic. By the way, it is necessary to transfer not only the texts themselves, but also the meta tags.

If mistakes are made at this stage, this will definitely lead to a decrease in the site's position in organic search, and not for a short time. There is also a high probability of a decrease in the authority of the resource, the emergence of difficulties with control over analytics, page speed, mobile adaptability.

All this allows us to confidently say that a complex migration in practice will really be difficult, at least without professional help. Follow our recommendations to increase the efficiency of work and avoid most of the most common mistakes.

The secret of successful site migration

An effective website migration strategy involves the consistent implementation of 4 main stages:

1. Detailed planning of each stage. That is, initially you describe step by step what you plan to implement within the framework of the upcoming task and then follow it. This way you will be able to take into account all the smallest nuances and avoid mistakes that can negatively affect the SEO indicators of the site.
2. Carry out preparatory activities. In advance, it is necessary to select all the data that you plan to transfer, and also provide them with the correct format.
3. Draw up a detailed technical task, specify in it the deadlines and volumes of work, the cost of the project, the obligations of the performers to the customer and vice versa. This is the document on the basis of which both parties clearly understand what they need to get in the end.
4. Implement all the work in practice. In most cases, a team of specialists is involved in performing a complex migration. The work is distributed among them. Communication channels are mandatory, since only fruitful cooperation can lead to a good result.

Specialists who will be involved in the website migration

The more complex the project, the more specialists will need to be involved in its implementation. So, in order to ultimately achieve a decent result, each of the involved employees must work effectively in their area of responsibility. We are talking about:

• Project manager. This is a specialist who will synchronize the work of the entire team and monitor the achievement of the task, compare the results obtained with the expectations and requirements of the customer.
• Software developer. This can be either one person or several specialists who will take on the provision of resource functionality and its compliance with the technical requirements agreed upon with the customer. This specialist should work as closely as possible with the SEO specialist, since the structure of the site is a key factor in attracting traffic. This is especially true for multilingual resources.
• SEO specialist. Ensures that the resulting website will be appreciated by both search bots and regular users for its convenience, functionality, and usefulness. This person will have to take the most valuable from the old website and make sure that it ends up on the new one.
• Content manager. Responsible for transferring content from one website to another, increasing its usefulness, and updating it.
• Designer. The new website should look modern and presentable. The work here should be carried out in close cooperation with an SEO specialist, content manager, so that in the end it will be possible to create presentable and useful pages that can attract traffic.

Now we will briefly describe how the site migration should be carried out.

How to implement site migration correctly

The entire range of works that must be carried out as part of the site move can be divided into 3 separate stages:

1. Preparatory work. One of the most large-scale stages, which involves the presence of a detailed plan for subsequent work, including the preparation of content for the move. Here it is important to plan and think through everything to the smallest detail, as well as write it all down in a detailed work plan, indicate the deadline for each stage, form a team of specialists and provide all the materials that they will need to perform the work. Also at this stage, the most important information from the old site is selected, that is, the one that will be transferred to the new one. Only in this way, while preserving the main sources of traffic, you will be able to ensure an influx of people to your updated resource. You should also think about what tools you will use to promote the new site.
2. Direct migration. In this case, we are talking about the physical transfer of the site while maintaining its stable operation and functionality. At this stage, all work is carried out in strict accordance with the plan agreed upon at the previous stage. It is very important that all your specialists interact with each other when performing this work. This will help avoid inconsistencies and minimize the number of edits.
3. Post-migration. After the site has been transferred, it is very important to ensure that it operates as stably as possible. This will require monitoring its performance. That is, you will need to collect analytical data, analyze it, and make adjustments to the strategy until the traffic to the new resource is restored to the previous level or is higher than the figures before the migration.

That is, until you return your site to the positions it occupied before the transition, the work with the site migration will not be completed. This applies both to the resource's place in search results and to traffic. It is very important to identify errors and oversights as early as possible, that is, before they cause significant harm to your site.

Additional recommendations for site migration

We have already mentioned above that site migration involves transferring its content, design, connecting all the necessary integrations and setting them up. It is also very important to preserve promotion channels. That is, all these works will need to be done efficiently and in full. And here the following recommendations will come in handy:

• Features of content transfer. At this stage, it is important to save all your landing pages, that is, those that received traffic. This applies to both informational material and the product catalog, characteristics of each item, photographs, order histories, reviews. It is important to save the block, the customer base. But still, special attention should be paid to the product catalog. Its structure and important information should be preserved. If you fail to do this, then there is no point in doing the transfer. A more appropriate solution would be to create a new site from scratch. To avoid errors or at least minimize them, create export files, such as XML, XLS, YML, CSV. But if you are going to transfer information or news pages, that is, those with a large amount of material, then it is better to do it manually while preserving the interlinking. This is what will ensure decent organic traffic indicators. Along with text, we also transfer graphic content. The main difficulties here may arise with the transfer of user profiles. The fact is that most platforms allow you to export only the name and email, but if there is no login and password, such actions will not give you the desired result. That is, you will have to wait for your customers to go through the registration stage again on the updated site. Many nuances will also arise when transferring bonus programs. Therefore, many experts agree that a more effective solution on a new resource would be to launch a new loyalty program. Those bonus points that your customers have already accumulated can be compensated with a good gift or a discount coupon.
• Features of design transfer. Unlike the migration of text content, in the case of design there are no strict rules or recommendations. Here you must primarily proceed from individual preferences. Moreover, migration is a great way to make adjustments to the design of your resource, make it more modern, stylish, presentable. But it is still important to make sure that customers feel like they are on your company's website. That is, it is important to pay attention to maintaining recognition. So, you can place your logo, use corporate color schemes. By and large, you can not make any changes to the design at all.
• Features of connecting integration. In this case, we are talking about connecting all accounts on third-party services to the new site. This can be a payment and delivery service, advertising accounts of social platforms, Google Ads, Google Analytics, etc. These works are performed using special tokens and keys API. But in any case, it is necessary to take into account the requirements of the platform you are working with. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that when working with Google Analytics, it is very important to continue working on the old account, and not create a new one. This is the only way you can qualitatively track the statistics of your resource, compare the indicators and understand whether the migration has benefited the resource or, on the contrary, worsened its indicators. If after a while you notice that the metrics are not improving, that the decline was not short-term, then it may be advisable to return to the old resource and prepare for the transition more deeply and professionally. If you work with an online store, then the integration with the CRM is also necessarily transferred. This is what will ensure stable operation of the store and professional customer service. It is optimal to use a cloud system, because this will significantly simplify the reconnection of the CRM.
• Preserving all SEO promotion channels. Before migrating a site, you should understand which pages gave you the most visits, and then pay more attention to them. This way, you will not lose positions in search results, and will not worsen traffic to the new site. But it is also important to focus on pages that attract users by low-frequency queries. Even if each of them does not give a large number of visits, but in total the total traffic here will be quite significant. Make sure that the most popular pages retain the same site URL, content, meta tags. This is what will minimize SEO losses, and along with this, loyal customers.
• Provide an additional series of email newsletters. This is necessary to notify your subscribers about the transition of your site.

Once the migration is completely completed, you will just have to track the statistics. This will help you understand how your actions affected the functioning of the service: improved or worsened it.

Monitoring the site after migration

To understand what impact the migration had on your site, you need to monitor not only organic traffic, but also referral traffic. You need to monitor these indicators for at least a week after the transition. This way you will be able to keep this process under control and identify errors before they negatively affect the overall operation of the site.

When monitoring, you should pay special attention to the following points:

1. Correct configuration of analytics tools. That is, you should make sure that Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Google Search Console collect characteristics correctly, and the tracking code is provided on all pages of your new site. It is also important to use annotations, which will allow you to mark the migration date in Google Analytics. Thanks to this, you will be able to easily identify changes in the service operation caused by migration.
2. Check the resource performance. You must be sure that your new site loads quickly, that there are no serious performance issues. That is, this way you can make sure that your regular customers and new visitors will be able to access the site without problems.
3. Do not completely abandon work on the old site. At least until you can make sure that all traffic, as well as links that previously led to the old resource, will not be switched to the new one.

Let's summarize

As you can see, site migration is a rather complex process that requires an integrated approach and deep professional knowledge. Therefore, to perform this work, especially in the case of complex types of migration, it will be necessary to involve additional specialists, distributing all the work between them. But another mandatory aspect of effective migration will be careful planning of each stage. The more thorough the preparation, the more detailed the technical task, the more coordinated the work will be.

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