This is the slide deck that we presented in partnership with Nathan Huppatz from www.costumes.com.au at the 2013 Online Retailer conference in Sydney.
Planning, creating and implementing a new website design can be very exciting but many companies do not consider how this change can affect their search engine visibility. This deck runs through the steps and methodology taken to migrate the website to an entirely new domain and new platform.
2. Who is Nathan?
• Started in eCommerce back in 1998
• Experienced online retailer
• Author of 'Making Money on eBay for Dummies„
• Launched, sold, run online businesses for 10 years.
• Founder of Costumes.com.au
@huppy
http://au.linkedin.com/nathan.huppatz
3. Who is Jason?
• Been in online marketing for 8 years
• Specialist in SEO
• Worked with websites large and small
• 7 years agency-side experience
• Co-founded Bespoke
@jasonmun
Jasonmun.com
www.bespokeagency.com.au
4. What We‟re Covering Today
New Branding & Migration to New Domain
How to Plan for Migration
Tips, Tools & Gotchas
Impact & Results
5. Background of Costumes.com.au
• Started in 2009 as 'fashionforfun.com.au' – mostly lingerie and sexy
costumes
• In 2010, changed focus to costumes. Added suppliers, 4,000 products
• 2011 we decided to really focus on the business.
• 2012 bought 'costumes.com.au' domain, and began work on
complete site rebuild to help with growth
• Re-brand in May 2013, business investment for growth
• So why change?
8. 1. DETERMINE OBJECTIVES
What are you looking to achieve with a migration strategy?
What’s changing with the new website?
9. These were our objectives…
Traffic Conversions Revenue
• Minimise traffic loss
• Minimise decline in rankings
• Minimise website errors
• Ensure new website is search friendly
Traffic Conversions Revenue
We do not want
this to happen
10. Scope of the migration
Changing domain names
New Design & UX
Product categorisation
URL structures
Information architecture
New plugins & functionality
Helps identify common situations, pitfalls and solutions
11. 2. DATA DISCOVERY & COLLECTION
Gather metrics to help with planning & prioritisation
13. Keyword Research Tools
Google Keyword Tool
Great for mining keyword ideas and search volume data.
TIP: Use [exact] match
Google Analytics
Export a list of keywords that drove traffic to the website
TIP: Traffic sources > Sources > Search > Overview > Keyword
Ubersuggest.org
Great for mining Google Suggest data
Soovle.com
Pulls keyword suggestion from up to 15 search engines (eBay &
Amazon as well)
14. Identify Top Performing Pages
Scrape & crawl current website
Gather website metrics
Gather SEO metrics
If you can’t implement 1-to-1 redirects, ensure that the top 100 most
valuable pages are catered for
15. Tools to Gather Metrics
Screaming Frog or Xenu Link Sleuth
Great for website crawling and scraping
Google Analytics
Export data: visits, pageviews, conversions, revenue, etc.
Moz’s Open Site Explorer
Gather link data and other SEO metrics
Go to “Top Pages” report > Export CSV
Google Webmaster Tools
Export link data from Search Traffic > Links to Your Site
16. Don‟t Forget to Benchmark
Before Migration After Migration
Keep track of these vital stats:
• Traffic Sources (Direct, Referral, Social, etc.)
• Organic Traffic
• Conversions
• 404 errors
• Keyword rankings
18. Get Your Team Together
The Boss SEODevelopers
Web
Designer
• Brief everyone & allocate tasks
• Share data & information
• Use Google Docs for collaboration
• Keep an open communication
20. Work On New Site Architecture
Homepage
Categories
Sub-categories
Products
• Use keyword research
• Name categories accordingly
• Create a flat and intuitive architecture
• Map relevant keywords
• Avoid keyword cannibilisation
21. Optimise On-Site Elements
Title tags
Meta descriptions
URL structure
H1 headings
Source: http://moz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factors
TIP: Create recipes for developers
{Category Name} | Fast Delivery – Costumes.com.au
Buy {Product Name} Online | Fast Delivery – Costumes.com.au
Shop online for {ProductName} from Australia‟s leading
costumes store. Great prices & Fast delivery!
22. 301-redirects
Create 1-to-1 redirects for top priority pages
Misc pages can be redirected to key pages
Create automation rules (if possible)
Avoid multiple redirect hops
Fix any existing 404 errors
Map it all in excel and let the developers do their magic!
23. 4. LAUNCH & GO-LIVE
Checklist and things to look out for
24. Go-Live Checklist
Crawl website – check SEO elements
DNS update (keep both servers running..)
Remove blocks (robots.txt, meta tags, etc)
Add & verify new domain with GWT
Fill out “Change of Address” in GWT
Check HTTP header response
Verify 301-redirects
Check Google Analytics code
(Use the same code to keep historical data)
Monitor errors
25. “Change of Address” in GWT
Access from
here
Do this on the old website’s GWT account!
TIP: Make sure you verify both www and non-www subdomains
26. Check 301-redirects
Upload old URL list in to Screaming Frog
Use list
feature
Check these
Web-sniffer.net for spot
checking
29. Impact on SEO Visibility
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VisibilityScore
fashionforfun.com.au costumes.com.au
Migration happened
here
We tracked rankings of 100 keywords (before & after migration)
30. Tools to Track Rankings
Advanced Web Ranking
http://www.advancedwebranking.com/
Rankerizer
http://www.rankerizer.com/
Rank Checker
http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/
31. Organic traffic after migration
Steady traffic for 4 weeks, then strong uplift in SEO rankings
32. Key take-aways
Spend time looking at site structure for users
Control Google indexing (no duplicate content)
Take the opportunity to implement best practice 'on site' SEO
Implement 1-to-1 301 redirects
Test and Prepare
Follow Migration steps!
Check post launch. Stamp out 404s etc
Good Luck!