SEO throughout the migration process CAN result in little to no loss in rankings and traffic, improved impressions and CTR, and minimal fallout! Dana Lookadoo's presentation at SMX West 2012 presents a high-level overview and checklist for avoiding possible fallout of a website migration.

1. SEO Essentials For Your Website Migration
SMX West 2012
Dana Lookadoo . @lookadoo . YoYoSEO.com
March 1, 2012
@YoYoSE

2. Avoiding Migration Fallout
SEO throughout the
site migration process
can result in little to no
loss in rankings and
traffic, improved
impressions and CTR,
and…
minimal fallout!
@YoYoSE

3. Close Your Eyes
Imagine you’re an SEO and
get the client announcement
…
Your client explains that they
"had no idea it would be
this involved!"
@YoYoSE

4. True Story
Client story from hell via @netmeg – A relaunch take
PLANNING! @YoYoSE

5. Give me a “P!”
It’s all about… P L A N N I N G !
Either plan details of your site relaunch or loose rankings &
traffic @YoYoSE

6. SEO Website Migration Stages
Discovery & Data Collection
Variables Baseline Metrics
Planning & Implementation
Content, Keywords, IA URLS & Redirects
Launch & Clean-up
Go-Live Gotchas Links
Migration steps: Gather your facts, plan content structure &
URLs, go live & clean-up links. @lookadoo #SMX @YoYoSE

7. Discovery & Data Collection
Uncover Migration Variables
Benchmark Site Metrics
Phase 1 of a site migration is to discover the variables
& collect benchmark data. @lookadoo #SMX @YoYoSE

8. Migration Variables
What’s going to change?
 Design
 URLs
 IA Structure
 Content & Meta
 Plug-ins &
Functionality
Gather all your facts BEFORE developers & designers get
their hands dirty with a relaunch. @lookadoo #SMX @YoYoSE

9. To Design or Not To Design?
 Mirror the content
order.
 Keep home page links.
 Retain link structure.
Hold off on redesign by 1-2 months after migration. New
everything to search engines will kill kittens. @lookadoo @YoYoSE

10. Know Thy Internal Links!!!
Maintain link
juice to key
pages by
preserving
navigation, fo
oters, home
page links.
Do not launch to find
an entire section is only
linked to from deep
pages & not from the
home page anymore!
@lookadoo #SMX
@YoYoSE

11. Know Thy Top Pages
Google Webmaster
Tools:
Your site on the web > Internal
links > Download CSV of key Which
target pages and how many links
are pointing to them. pages
Open Site Explorer have the
(.org): most
Link Metrics > Top Pages >
Download CSV > sort by Inbound links?
Links.
Bonus Metrics:
Page Authority, Linking Root
Domains
Uncover top pages w most internal links via Google
Webmaster Tools or Open Site Explorer. @lookadoo @YoYoSE

12. Uncover Top Pages – Google Webmaster Tools
@YoYoSE

13. Uncover Top Pages - Open Site Explorer
@YoYoSE

14. Weekly Baseline Metrics
Pages Indexed | Cache Date | Page Rank | Home Page Authority
Domain Authority | Google Webmaster Tools Errors
Image & “Strategy” Credit: SEER Interactive
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/seo-website-redesign-
checklist
Baseline Metrics - SEO Website Redesign Checklist:
yseo.us/SEERmetrics by @SEERInteractive @lookadoo @YoYoSE

15. Monthly Baseline Metrics
Traffic Sources | Key Pages | Unique Visitors | Pages/Visit | Bounce Rate |
Time on Site
Track baseline KPIs monthly: traffic sources, key
pages, pages/visit, bounce rate, time on site @lookadoo @YoYoSE

16. Monthly Baseline Metrics
Traffic Sources | Key Pages | Unique Visitors | Pages/Visit | Bounce Rate |
Time on Site
Track baseline KPIs monthly: traffic sources, key
pages, pages/visit, bounce rate, time on site @lookadoo @YoYoSE

17. Organic Traffic
Traffic Sources | Key Pages | Unique Visitors | Pages/Visit | Bounce Rate |
Time on Site
Chart out organic traffic to measure pre & post relaunch visibility.
@lookadoo #SMX @YoYoSE

18. Social Traffic
Traffic Sources | Key Pages | Unique Visitors | Pages/Visit | Bounce Rate |
Time on Site
Measure impact on social. Chart out
LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter & Google+. @lookadoo #SMX @YoYoSE

19. Planning & Implementation
Content Audit
Keywords & Information Architecture
URLs & Redirects
Phase 2 of a site relaunch = auditing content, mapping
keywords, IA & URL structure & 1-1 redirects. @lookadoo @YoYoSE

20. Step 0 – Put the Dev Site into Protective Custody
 robots.txt -
Disallow
User-
 Password-protect User-agent:
agent: *
the staging site. * Disallow: /
Disallow: /
Bad robots & good people can
still get in & run the stop sign.
Put up barriers.
Password-protect your baby!
Don’t leak your staging site to Google. Step 0 is to put a
Disallow in your robots.txt. @lookadoo #SMX @YoYoSE

21. Content Audit – Whatcha Got?
What types of
content? Text
Images
Video
PDFs
Rate
What’s moving Does page
pages:
to the new need
Redundant
prominent
site? Outdated
link focus?
Trivial
What’s site:www.yourdomain.com
indexed? site:www.yourdomain.com
filetype:pdf
@YoYoSE

22. IIS SEO Toolkit – Content Types
Use IIS SEO Toolkit to identify types of content on the old
site – text, images, PDFs, etc. @lookadoo #SMX @YoYoSE

23. IIS SEO Toolkit
URL Heading
Status code Is External
Title Keywords
Description Last Modified
Canonical URL Linked By Count
Content Encoding Linking To Count
Content Length Time taken
Content Type URL-Directory
Content Type URL-Host
Normalized URL-Scheme
Has Links Violation
Has Violations Count
Hash
Headers
Export URLs from IIS SEO Toolkit to get a CSV scrape of
the site to build a content audit. @lookadoo #SMX @YoYoSE

24. Keyword Research
Redesign?
New URLs?
Revised IA?
Strategize &
map those
keywords!
Image Credit: SEOGadget
https://seogadget.co.uk/surviving-seo-site-
migration/
Surviving a Site Migration by @richardbaxter via @SEOGadget:
yseo.us/survival @lookadoo #SMX @YoYoSE

25. Redirect 1-to-1
Say “NO!” to site-wide redirects!
 Map page-to-page.
 Retain site hierarchy & structure.
No time for 1-to-1 Large or e-commerce
redirects? site?
Redirect top (key) pages. Set automation rules.
Download @YoYoSEO’s Redirects Worksheet:
yseo.us/redirects via @lookadoo #SMX @YoYoSE

26. Launch & Clean-up
Final Days Before Launch
Go-Live Gotchas
Links
@YoYoSE

27. Final Days - Launch Labor Pains
 Try to break the site!
 Broken links
 Multiple browsers
 New Domain?
Keep both active.
 503 (Service
Unavailable)
 Mail Server?
 Secure Login Areas?
 Notify users!
DO NOT turn off the old server! DNS propagation can take time.
@lookadoo #SMX @YoYoSE

28. Launch
You can expect a drop in rankings for 2-4 weeks
after relaunch. @lookadoo #SMX @YoYoSE

29. Post-Launch Clean-up
 Remove the robots.txt Disallow.
 Update/submit your XML
sitemap.
 If a new domain, add and verify
your site in Google’s Webmaster
Tools.
 Fill out a change of address in
Webmaster Tools for a domain
switch.
 Check Header Response codes.
 Keep track of crawling errors in
Bing & Google Webmaster Tools
to detect 301 redirect problems @YoYoSE

30. Thank God for Google Webmaster Tools
BEWARE of the unknowns…
 Check those 404 errors
 Check indexation
@YoYoSE

31. Links…
 Monitor 404s often
 Reclaim links
Keep the juice flowing to
your relaunched baby!
Clean-up links after launch. Stay tuned for @Rhea’s juicy
insights on link reclamation. @lookadoo #SMX @YoYoSE

32. Dana Lookadoo
 SEO Consultant, Trainer
Yo! Yo! SEO
Agency focus is Word-of-Mouth SEO,
helping clients optimize their
online conversation.
dana@yoyoseo.com . YoYoSEO.com
@lookadoo . @YoYoSEO