Keep your organic search rankings and set your website up for SEO success. We’ll partner with you and your team to plan, consult and implement your SEO migration strategy, ensuring you keep your rankings and traffic in the process.
When you’re redesigning your website, changing or consolidating domains, or moving to HTTPS or to a new server, your organic traffic and search rankings will be affected. Without proper planning and execution, all your SEO efforts could be wiped out and your website’s rankings completely reset.
With thorough planning and establishing an SEO-led website migration strategy, you minimise the risk of losing your organic traffic and search rankings.
Involving SEO experts early helps to ensure that all elements of your website’s design and construction are user- and search-engine friendly. Even the simplest of migrations generate a large number of tasks that must be completed to ensure a successful migration. When performing an SEO-friendly website migration, you need to think about:
Design the architecture and navigation of your website with users and search engine crawlers in mind.
Such as CMS and Javascript considerations. Any elements that are negatively impacting your SEO will be removed.
Identify onsite SEO elements including URL mapping, redirects, metadata, schema markups etc that have to be migrated to the new website. Relocate page content and identify gaps in content that have to be filled. Map important events to be tracked and migrate/install analytics tracking codes.
Make sure there is adequate time to address any build concerns and incorporate SEO requirements.
Establishing benchmarks and KPIs will ensure the migration stays on the right track.
Monitor and check search engine indexes, rankings, and organic traffic levels and fix any teething issues as they arise. Also check all tracking and if third-party scripts and tools are functioning as intended.
Migrations are always a great opportunity to re-think or clean up your website’s SEO. Our team of experts will invest time into understanding your unique challenges and opportunities to not only seamlessly perform the migration, but also to enhance your search rankings where possible.
1
Audit & Planning
We’ll begin with reviewing Google Analytics and Tag Manager to ensure they are configured correctly and that data will continue to be tracked correctly once the new site goes live. We will then map out your objectives for the new website and devise a strategy to achieve them. Working with your team, we will outline the scope of the migration, including mapping all URLs and redirects. Finally, we will test the staging site to make sure there are no issues, together with reviewing the sitemap, wireframes, IA and silo structure of the new website.
2
Migration
Our Migration checklist includes:
- Review keywords, content, and export and review backlinks
- Verify internal linking structure and perform any fixes
- Check and test URL structure making sure the correct redirects are in place
- Check metadata and amend where necessary
- Benchmark the new site and do a rendering check
3
Post-Migration
We’ll monitor search engine indexes, rankings, and organic traffic levels to ensure a successful migration. Our Post-Migration Checklist includes:
- Testing of key pages, sitemap, and usage on mobile
- Submission to Google for indexing
- Reviewing all redirects
- Check tracking and check any third-party scripts and tools to make sure they’re functioning
To preserve traffic, impressions and overall visibility, having your site properly migrated is an absolute must. The different types of migration that we can support you with include:
Changing your website URL to a new URL
Moving parts of your website from a subdomain to a subfolder (or vice versa)
Securing your website from HTTP to HTTPS
Moving your website from a top-level domain such as ‘.com’ to an internationally friendly domain such as ‘.co.uk’
Changing your Content Management System, e.g. moving from Magento to WordPress
Adding or removing pages, consolidating content, and adding new languages
Changing your website architecture, This usually involves changes to URL structure, navigation, user journey, or internal links
From minor aesthetic changes to a full website redesign with changes to media, code, copy, performance, etc
A combination of all of the above
KLIQ has been our SEO partner for some time, so was the natural choice when looking for an agency to work on our global website migration project. With the reputation of 20 websites on the line, we needed a partner with the tools, experience and commitment to help achieve our goals. From the beginning, the team at KLIQ were dedicated to ensuring the success of the project. They offered clear and regular communication, were happy to collaborate closely with other partners, and accommodated shifting timelines and requirements. The commitment from individual team members was impressive, and I felt a real investment by them in our project and organisation. As a result, we’re happy to call the SEO migration project a success.
Rob Varnam
What is the role of SEO Migration services?
SEO migration services focus on preserving and optimizing SEO performance during a website migration. They ensure that critical SEO elements such as meta tags, content structure, URLs, and backlinks are properly migrated, minimizing the risk of negatively affecting organic rankings and traffic.
What sized migrations can KLIQ help you with?
Any size! Whether you have a large website with over 5,000 pages or a small business with a handful of product pages and some blog posts, we can do any size.
What happens if I don’t migrate all of my SEO elements porperly?
Quite simply, you lose your SEO and organic rankings. SEO is based on all of your existing site structure, authority, content and metadata and if you don’t migrate them properly, it will hurt your ranking.
Can we retain all of our SEO backlinks when doing a site migration?
KLIQ performs a backlink audit first to clean up any broken or toxic backlinks. We then implement backlink redirects to your new domain which helps mitigate potential loss in Page Authority.
Can you perform a migration without losing SEO?
SEO migration is not an exact science and can be quite volatile. Even with proper planning and preparation, the risk of some loss of SEO exists. However, if there is any SEO loss, we have methods to help regain any SEO losses.
How long will SEO “dip” after a migration?
When everything goes according to plan, sites can still experience impact on organic traffic and rankings post-migration. This is because Google has to re-assess the new website content and design. Generally, sites experience a 10% drop for 4 to 6 weeks before bouncing back and larger sites may see a longer recovery time. Anything over a 20% drop in traffic causes us to investigate deeper.
How long does a SEO migration usually take?
The duration of an SEO migration depends on how complex the migration is, size of the website, and the specific requirements. A simple migration may take not more than a week, while more complex migrations may take several weeks or longer to ensure a successful migration.