The document discusses website migration goals and best practices. It outlines the importance of both protecting existing rankings and visibility through defensive strategies like redirects and accessibility, as well as forging new opportunities through improved information architecture, authority signals, and content. A good migration example is shown where rankings were maintained through a clean swap between the old and new sites.

1. RichHird
Migration101not404.

2. A quick intro…
Rich Hird
Snr SEO Lead

3. What We’ll Be Covering
 Migration Goals & Principles
 Pre-Migration Planning
 Pre-Migration Actions
 Post-Migration Checks
 Measuring Performance

4. Migration Goal

5. Don’t just maintain traffic, rankings &
revenue
but IMPROVE on these key metrics
also.

6. A successful migration.
Our philosophy on delivering a successful migration can be broken
down into two distinct parts:
DEFENSIVE
Protecting the rankings and visibility you already have:
• IA compatibility
• Redirect management
• Crawling & accessibility
• Relevancy transition
OFFENSIVE
Forging new opportunities via an improved technical
environment:
• Improved IA for added relevancy
• Enhanced authority management
• Content & depth enhancements
• Best in class category / product pages
• Correcting the basics

7. GoodMigrationExample
Clean swap between the visibility of the old site and new,
rankings
were maintained.
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8
Visibility
Good Site Migration
Old Site New Site

8. Poor MigrationExample
A poor example of a migration, some rankings were maintained but
the website has lost a significant amount of visibility.
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Visibility
Poor Migration Example
Old Site New Site

9. Pre-Migration
Planning

10. Planning for a migration can be
broken down into four key areas…
RESPONSIBILITIES
Get everyone into a
room and discuss
who’s responsible
for each factor of
the migration.
Ensure everyone
knows what they’re
supposed to do and
when.
RESOURCE
It’s crucial to
ensure you have the
correct resource
available at
various stages
during a migration.
Don’t let the team
go on holiday on
migration day!
PROJECT PLANNING
Will you be using any
project planning
software such as
Jira/Trello to manage
the day to day
workflow of the
migration?
CHECKLIST
This needs to be
defined as early as
possible and
tailored to each
individual project.
Each migration
comes with its own
unique issues and
challenges.

11. Responsibilities
 Involve as many stakeholders as
possible.
 UX / Design
 Analytics
 SEO
 Product
 PR / Content
 Paid
 Dev
DON’T WORK IN SILO!

12. Resource
NO HOLIDAYS! 
 Estimate time and effort required.
 Ensure budget is allocated to
resource.
 Include a buffer for additional
resource.
 Check availability of the migration

13. ProjectPlanning
CRUCIAL FOR A SMOOTH MIGRATION!
 Determine the plan as early as
possible.
 Share the plan with all stakeholders.
 Ensure it’s clear & concise.
 Include responsibilities.
 Utilize project management software.
 Consistently keep track of progress.

14. MigrationChecklist
DETERMINE WHAT NEEDS CHECKING
 Often varies per project.
 Break into key phases.
 Include technical and on page factors.
 Don’t forget to include 3rd party
elements.
 Ensure responsibilities are defined.

15. MigrationChecklist
COMMON ITEMS TO CHECK OFF
 Who’s creating the sitemap & when is it
needed.
 Who is responsible for creating Redirect,
Robots.txt & Sitemap files and when for.
 Which pages will need to be redirected.
 Who is handling the transfer of tracking
elements.

16. Pro-tip #1
DON’T DO IT ON A FRIDAY!

17. Pre-Migration Actions

18. InformationArchitecture
One of the first stages of a new site build is mapping out the IA – SEO
needs to be involved in this process.

19. Wireframes
Often overlooked – input into wireframe designs to determine key on page
factors is crucial from the onset.

20. StagingAccess
Probably one of the most important factors is getting staging
site access.
Remember – Staging sites need to be
inaccessible to search engines!
 Robots.txt
 NoIndex
 Password Protect
 IP Restricted Access

21. StagingAccess – WatchOut!
When the site does go live however, ensure the staging version
isn’t indexable!

22. GatheringURLs
To ensure a smooth migration, we need to capture as many URLs as possible
to map to the new site structure.

23. GatheringURLs
Get access to your server log files to discover
even more URLs including those that bot’s crawl
the most.

24. RedirectMapping
Likely the most crucial part of any migration is
ensuring that all URLs are correctly mapped to
their new counterpart.
Old URL Redirect Type New URL
example.com/old-url-1 301 example.com/new-url-1
example.com/old-url-2 301 example.com/new-url-2
example.com/old-url-3 301 example.com/new-url-3
example.com/old-url-4 301 example.com/new-url-4
example.com/old-url-5 301 example.com/new-url-5
example.com/old-url-6 301 example.com/new-url-6
example.com/old-url-7 301 example.com/new-url-7
example.com/old-url-8 301 example.com/new-url-8
example.com/old-url-9 301 example.com/new-url-9
example.com/old-url-10 301 example.com/new-url-10
example.com/old-url-11 301 example.com/new-url-11
example.com/old-url-12 301 example.com/new-url-12
example.com/old-url-13 301 example.com/new-url-13
example.com/old-url-14 301 example.com/new-url-14
example.com/old-url-15 301 example.com/new-url-15
example.com/old-url-16 301 example.com/new-url-16
example.com/old-url-17 301 example.com/new-url-17

25. Legacy Redirects
Don’t forget any existing redirects!
URL A redirects to URL B (legacy redirect)
URL B redirects to URL C (new redirect)
Which results in the following redirect
chain:
URL A –> URL B –> URL C
To eliminate this, amend the existing
legacy redirect and create a new one so
that:
URL A redirects to URL C (amended legacy
redirect)
URL B redirects to URL C (new redirect)
EXAMPLE

26. ImageRedirects
Google recommends redirecting the old image URLs to the new
image URLs to help Google discover and index the new images
quicker.
301
Redirect

27. Internal Link Updates
Internal Link
Updates
HTML LINKS
• Links to other URLs
• JavaScript Resource Links
• CSS Resource Links
• Image resource links
• Video Files
CSS LINKS
• Image Resources
• Internal Web Fonts
MISCELLANEOUS LINKS
• Robots.txt XML Sitemap Links
JAVASCRIPT LINKS
• Internal URLs
• Internal Image Files
• Internal CSS Links

28. RankingBenchmark
During a migration, it is always advisable to
start tracking keywords daily when possible for
a period both pre-migration and post-migration.

29. GSC- Configuration
When changing to a new domain name, you need to ensure GSC is
configured correctly.
 Target country is specified.
 All HTTP / HTTPS / WWW variants are added.
 Preferred domain is set up.
 URL Parameters are configured.
 Disavow has been added to all relevant
properties!
 Use change of address.

30. RedirectTesting

31. PRO-TIP #2
DOUBLE & TRIPLE CHECK!

32. Migration Day!

33. PRO-TIP #3
DON’T PANIC! *
* Unless it’s a Friday…

34. Post-Migration
Checks

35. Robots.txt
First check: Is the Robots.txt disallowing User
Agents?

36. RedirectTesting

37. RedirectChains

38. RedirectLoop
URL A URL B URL A URL B URL A

39. AnalyseLogFiles

40. URL Monitoring

41. GSCMonitoring– Performance

42. GSCMonitoring- Inspection

43. GSCMonitoring- Coverage

44. PerformanceMonitoring
The gathering, measuring and benchmarking of
key performance indicators is essential to
measure the success of a migration.
CLIENT

45. ThankYou