Website Migration & SEO Impact: Is It Always Bad?

When it comes to website migration, SEO impact is a legitimate concern. Many people fail to realize that any change can significantly undermine search engine optimization efforts. 

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The process of moving a website to a new location can cause unintended changes. It also opens the door to alterations that could lead to SEO problems.

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However, website migration is important. It could be a necessity for many reasons, from a change of needs to dissatisfaction with the current hosting. Overall, migration can help to create a better website experience for everyone. It allows website owners to adapt to the changing needs of customers or visitors, make use of new features, and provide a more secure environment. 

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Still, only one out of 10 site migrations result in improved search engine rankings. For others, it may stay the same, but more often, it creates issues.

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At elk Marketing, we have a high success rate assisting with website migration and SEO impact to ensure the best results possible. We know the common pitfalls and the best SEO practices to enhance a site after migration.

Common Challenges in Website Migration and SEO Impact

Website migrations can cause many changes to a website that are not intentional, but impact SEO nonetheless. The migration process involves a lot of change and movement of files. It is easy for something to get lost or become corrupt during this process.

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Another common issue is human error. While there are many automation tools for migration, manual transfers are still common because they give more control and oversight. However, they also open the door to mistakes.

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Furthermore, many people look at migration as a chance to revamp their website. They may remove or add content, switch pages around, delete pages, or make other major changes to the website during the process. Doing this makes it very hard to ensure all SEO measures are in place and working properly.

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Even absent of these issues, there are certain byproducts from migration that lead to challenges.

Key SEO Challenges and Effects

Issues that come up may include various aspects of a site that are not obvious, such as missing redirects. At first glance, this wouldn't be an obvious issue. It isn't until someone stumbles upon the issue that it becomes clear. By then, the search engine has probably already found it, and the site's ranking and indexing have been impacted.

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Other common challenges that can come with migration include:

• Error introductions in coding
• Content loss or movement
• Diminished user experience

It can also lead to changes in meta tags, unpreserved backlinks, and other elements that hurt SEO performance. 

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If these things occur during website migration, the SEO impact can be substantial. It can lead to:

• Less traffic
• Reduced search visibility
• Poor user experiences
• Increased bounce rate
• Analytic issues
• Broken links

These issues require immediate attention. Letting SEO performance falter creates a deficit that can be difficult to reverse. The best approach to website migration and SEO impact is to prevent the issues so they don't ever end up being a problem.

Technical SEO Considerations for Site Migration

Technical SEO is one part of the larger SEO picture, but it is just as important as the other elements when it comes to results.

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This type of SEO refers to the behind-the-scenes elements of optimization. Technical SEO helps to optimize the site for viewing on a mobile device. It can impact how quickly pages load. It makes it easier for the search engines to index and crawl the site. Technical SEO also plays a large role in organic traffic.

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Maintaining these elements will help to secure overall SEO performance. If they suffer issues during website migration, the SEO impact will be noticeable. Problems can impact search engine crawling, indexing, accessing, and ranking. They also will cause user experience issues.

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Two elements of technical SEO to pay particular attention to are metadata and schema markup.

A Look at Metadata and Schema Markup

Metadata helps to ensure the other data on the website is easy to find, access, interpret, and reuse. It provides descriptions of the content on a website to the search engines so that they know what the web pages are presenting.

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Schema is a map for the data. It allows for assigning context to data so that a search engine knows where to look for it. Schema markup is the code that communicates the details of the website map to the search engines.

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Metadata and schema markup are important to allowing search engines to do what they need to rank a site and return it in search results. For example, metadata helps the search engine understand the relevance of a page, while schema markup lets it find that page within the site map.

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It is essential to ensure these elements are intact and working properly after website migration, or SEO impact will become a major issue. A site will likely suffer greatly in rankings and traffic will probably diminish because the search engines won't understand the website content. 

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Luckily, there are many steps you can take to avoid these issues with technical SEO. It begins with making sure the XML sitemap is correct and without errors. The sitemap must list every single web page on the website. It is crucial to the navigation of the site by humans and search engines. 

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The next steps should include:

• Working on pages that you want the search engines to crawl: Make sure they are in the best shape without content problems, broken links, or other functional issues, and check all related technical SEO elements. 
• Going over all website content: Look for link issues, duplicate content, and outdated content. Optimize your content for featured snippets. This Google feature will help boost your rankings because it will bring it up at the top of relevant search results. However, be careful about making too many changes, especially if your SEO was doing well before the migration. 
• Looking over your site architecture: Keep only necessary URLs and ensure all URLs make sense for the subpages. Check that the site is easy to navigate and all pages link to at least one other internal page. Fix any orphaned pages that are disconnected from the rest of the site. Make sure page depth makes sense. Important pages need to be near the top and never more than three pages deep.
• Checking any disallowed pages to be sure they remain disallowed after migration: You don't want the search engine to crawl them and drag down your SEO. Make sure to use robots.txt and that it is set to accomplish your desired results. 
• Placing redirects: Having proper redirects will get people and search engines from your old website location to the new one. Check they are working properly.

Some additional items to check include:

• Mobile responsiveness: Ensure the migration didn't cause issues with viewing your site on a mobile device. Google is giving some weight to the mobile-friendliness of sites, so this is becoming increasingly important to monitor.
• HTTP errors: Ideally, you should have no error codes coming up on your website. You should check every link and fix all errors.
• Load time: Load time issues can come from a variety of triggers. However, if your pages are delayed, you must get to the bottom of it and fix it fast as it will tank SEO.

It is advisable to do a complete audit of the website to look for any changes or issues. After migration is also a good time to update all SEO tools. Finally, don't forget to verify your new domain in Google Search Console.

How elk Enhances Site Migration Outcomes

Elk Marketing has been working hard for clients to develop and manage effective SEO strategies since 2016. Co-founders Frank Sanchez and Craig Harrison have put together an excellent team of experts with the ability to handle any SEO need, including website migration and SEO impact issues.

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The company's work is consistent and proven. We offer plenty of tools to help maintain SEO integrity throughout migration. Our experts conduct automated SEO checks to catch issues right away before they can snowball into larger problems.

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We assist with all elements that could lead to optimization trouble, including providing redirection management to ensure redirects are correct and working. We also assist with content optimization to help with after-migration SEO boosts. We work to ensure content is on point and there were no mistakes introduced during the migration process.

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We also can integrate with other platforms to make it very easy to transition smoothly and avoid common SEO errors. Under our watchful eye with the various tools we have at our disposal, we can make website migration and SEO impact a non-issue.  

Best Practices for a Successful Site Migration

Planning before migration for SEO can help to reduce issues throughout and beyond the process. Note that you should plan only to migrate right now. Avoid making any other changes until you know there was no website migration SEO impact. 

Learn About Migration 

Before you can properly plan, you need to make sure that you fully understand the migration process and how it could impact SEO. Do your homework on the common issues that occur with SEO after migration. Even if you are using a plug-in or other tool to automate your migration, it helps to also learn how to manually migrate a site. 

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Learn as much as you can about how the process works because this can be valuable knowledge if problems occur afterward.

Gather Analytics

Once you are ready, you want to gather your analytic data to create a database. This will serve as your before picture. You'll use this to compare to the analytics from after the migration. It'll allow you to look for issues more easily. 

Back Up the Site

You also must back up your site. This is a normal step in migration, but it is worth stressing because it is so important. Having the backup file can help immensely if you run into serious SEO issues. It also provides a nice fallback in the event something goes wrong during the migration that causes an unfixable error. 

After Migration Checklist

After the migration, you want to run through some steps to check over potential areas of concern. You can follow this checklist for the other things you will want to do:

• Block your new site from the search engines until migration and testing are complete. You can set it up as password access only or use no index tags. You don't want the search engines crawling your new site until it is ready. Also, if they are on both the old and new site, it can create confusion and lead to some serious SEO problems that may not be very easy to fix. 
• Set up Google Analytics on the new site.
• Run a technical SEO audit.
• Allow Googlebot access for a short time once you feel everything is good to go. You'll then need to check the results and look for issues. Make any fixes necessary, and then allow Googlebot access again. Repeat this until everything looks good. 
• Update your information in the Google Search Console. Make sure to do the ownership verification and change of address if needed. Also, submit the new XML sitemaps.
• Run the analytics and compare them with the pre-migration results. Investigate and fix any issues.
• Allow full access by the search engines.

Once you are live again and allowing search engine access, do not forget to continue to monitor your SEO analytics, especially in the first couple of months. Keep an eye out for anything unusual that does not reflect the pre-migration data.

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You may need to run further audits of all SEO or do a refresh of content. Once you have your new site through the migration and have your SEO stabilized, you can start working again to boost your SEO performance.

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You want to continue to optimize your site. Don't be afraid to introduce new elements once your site is secure after the migration. Also, you must stay on top of the latest developments in SEO. Search engines change the SEO criteria often, so optimization is a job that is never complete.

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Final Thoughts on Website Migration and SEO Impact

Website migration and SEO impact is a topic that people don't want to think about because it can go very wrong. However, migration does not have to mean SEO deterioration. It is possible to migrate a site and maintain or improve SEO. You just need the right partner to work with to make it happen.

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At elk Marketing, we have the experience and proven results to do just that. We understand careful management of SEO before, during, and after migration is essential to avoiding trouble. Consider elk for your next site migration to secure and enhance your SEO performance.

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‍Find out more about our company, what we do, and how we can help you with a successful website migration.