Website migration: main types and step-by-step checklist

Website migration is a multi-stage process that requires attention. WEDEX will tell you how to successfully carry out the migration with a minimum of problems.

What is website migration?

Website migration (or website or domain transfer) usually refers to changes in the location of the same resource on the network. Migration includes changes in domain names, hosting companies, servers, CMS, etc. Quite often, website migration becomes a part of a rebranding strategy or is carried out to implement new technologies.

Migration is not an easy process, but it can be done without significant «losses». However, an incorrect website migration can cause a number of problems that can severely affect the SEO and ranking of the new version of the site in the future.

The main reasons for website migration

While the migration process can be challenging, the reasons for migration are usually compelling and can outweigh the potential problems in the future. So here are some of the main reasons for migration:

• Improve performance indicators – the web resource you have created may start to work incorrectly over time. For example, due to large amounts of data, the site refuses to process requests quickly, the materials are not optimized for use on modern systems, etc. To improve these indicators, as well as SEO, you should consider transferring to a more efficient server or domain.
• Improve user experience – user experience directly affects the effectiveness of your website. In addition to the above problems, SEO can be affected by design (which sometimes cannot be updated with the available tools and conditions) and clear navigation. If the available tools don’t help, site owners usually migrate their websites to newer CMSs or rewrite their existing sites.
• Improving the ranking of a website and pages is another area of SEO. Thanks to migration, it becomes possible to use new SEO techniques to improve rankings. In addition, a well-executed migration allows you not to «drag» old errors to a new domain or server, which should have a positive impact on the further operation of the site.
• Rebranding is a change of recognizable style for an existing domain or website.

In most cases, website owners decide to migrate for all or most of the reasons mentioned above.

What are the types of website migrations?

As it is already clear from the context, website migration can refer to different areas. The main types of website migration are as follows:

• Domain change – sometimes the situation requires changing the domain name to a more appropriate one. For example, there was example.com, but according to the new SEO strategy, bestexample.com would be better.
• Change of hosting – the current hosting provider may suddenly raise tariffs or otherwise demonstrate a lack of stability that is critical for the resource and its owner. Thus, there is a need to change the hosting company, and with it, the set of services.
• Changing CMS – Content management systems may become less and less relevant to your requirements over time. For example, Wix has become too simple and WordPress too complex. In such circumstances, you can change the CMS to something more appropriate
• Updating protocols is not as global a process as changing a server or CMS, but it can also be referred to as migration. Changing the old HTTP protocol to the updated HTTPS improves security and helps your website to be visible to search engines.
• In-depth design update – changing the theme or design is often done not only to improve the visual state of a web resource, but also for more practical reasons. For example, improving usability or polishing all the functionality available on the user side.
• Deep changes to the URL structure of the resource – changes to permanent and canonical links can be called interference with the URL structure of the site, and therefore this process can be referred to as migration.

Again, resource owners usually address several needs at once during migration. This can include improving website performance (through new hosting and more powerful servers), using a new, more appropriate domain, or updating the CMS.

What problems can you face when transferring a website?

The most common migration problems include the following:

• Problems with links – the site was moved, but the settings for internal or external links were not. This is a particularly critical problem with resources that have a large number of internal links and a large number of pages (for example, stores or large reference books, each page of which is linked to the previous ones).
• Problems with traffic – not all users of your resource, even regular ones, will know about the changes in the site and its migration. Therefore, in the first stages after the transfer of the resource, you should expect a decrease in traffic.
• SEO problems – in some cases, Google may evaluate the site as new and impose appropriate ranking restrictions at the initial stages. If there were SEO problems with the old version, it is unlikely that migration will improve the situation much by itself.
• A wide range of technical problems – all possible technical errors. Broken buttons, incorrect links, destroyed logic of the backend part of the site, and many more interesting things can await the owner of the resource after incorrect migration and lack of preparation for it.

How to prevent problems during migration?

And if it is almost impossible to avoid problems during the transfer completely, you can minimize their number. Here are some basic tips:

• Planning – migration is an important process that requires patience and clear planning from all participants. That’s why starting a migration without a clear and detailed plan is a waste of time and resources. Go through each stage of the migration in order (see below for a checklist of how to do the migration).
• Backup – Before any important changes to your website, you should make backups, and even more so before migration. Create a full backup, including the entire back- and front-end. This will help you to restore your website relatively quickly in case of any problems.
• Redirect – to keep URLs from being idle, use 301 redirects to redirect Google crawlers and users to a new version of the site.
• Update the sitemap and edit internal links – during migration, you should edit and update not only the sitemap.xml file, but all internal links. This will help to avoid problems on the resource itself after the transfer.

For more details on specific aspects, please see the checklist below.

Checklist for website migration

So, the fate of your website has been decided and you are ready to migrate it. Good, but before we start the step-by-step analysis, let’s mention one more important point – communication.

If you are the sole and main owner of the site, then everything is in your hands, including understanding the real need for migration. But if the resource has several owners, it’s worth discussing migration and coming to a consensus on the need for this measure.

Step 1. Set up hosting, DNS, CDN, and mail server

To begin with, you should have a backup copy of your website and all existing databases. Some sources recommend having an additional backup site where you can test certain functionality before the final stage of migration.

Once the issue of a new hosting or domain has been resolved, you need to take the following steps:

• Customize the hosting environment for the required format – most hosting services offer popular CMS built into the package, but if the site is self-written, you will have to manually configure the hosting for this format.
• Transfer files – depending on the hosting, you need to transfer all components of the site to an FTP server.
• Configure DNS information.
• Configure the information about the CDN accordingly.
• Change mail server settings.

These five main points are the beginning of the migration process, so the entire future path depends on the correctness of their implementation.

Step 2. Create redirects and redirects

To simplify the work, it is important to have a structured list of redirects and link mass before migration. You will have to refer to this list to make sure that all the necessary redirects are preserved on the new version of the site after migration.

You can use the following algorithm to check the correctness of redirects:

• All URLs of the old site are loaded into the table in the first column.
• All the URLs of the new site are loaded into the same table in the next column.
• Check for relevant new links for each old URL.

If the old URLs don’t have direct equivalents on the new resource, you can specify pages or categories that are similar in content.

Be especially careful when creating redirects, because sometimes a website can contain a large number of such links.

After 301 redirects are set up, you should check all internal links for old and broken URLs. They will need to be replaced with new ones.

Step 3. Update the SEO website promotion strategy

Migration will require a new SEO strategy, taking into account the changes already made to the site structure. SEO will have to be adjusted in any case, because it is often organic promotion that often causes the migration.

Here’s what you should pay attention to:

• Traffic – how the site works and what is its bandwidth.
• Alternative text – an appropriate alt will help search robots better understand the content of the page and thus rank it more actively.
• The rel tags=”canonical” – the canonicity of the pages should be additionally checked, and you should also make sure that there are appropriate redirects.
• The Robots.txt file – instructions for Google search robots – should be updated to reflect the new SEO strategy and website policy.
• Sitemap – like robots.txt, the entire sitemap should correspond to the actual data, and not just be copied from a previous web resource.
• Internal links – their type, brevity, and relevance to the chosen SEO strategy.
• Hreflang attribute – if your website is multilingual, check its availability and functionality.
• Link structure.

Step 4. Testing the website after migration

It is not enough to update your SEO strategy, you should also check your website for correct operation. So, here are some important indicators for both SEO and the technical condition of the resource:

• Page loading speed.
• The speed of page indexing by search engines.
• Errors in scanning pages by robots.
• Keywords.

These indicators should be checked especially carefully at first after migration, and then kept under control.

SEO testing and what to look for

In order for users to receive the expected high level of user experience, it is necessary that the site not only loads quickly. You should pay attention to the following indicators:

• Mobile version. Not only its presence is important, but also its correct operation. Check how the mobile version works and whether it has any critical issues.
• Duplicate content. Various mistakes often occur during migration, and one of the most popular is duplicate content. You should make sure that the new version doesn’t have too many duplicates.

Step 5. Analyze the key pages of the website

Every website has a star page – the page that attracts almost all the attention of not only users but also search engines. These pages are the main source of traffic and revenue, so it’s important to make sure they work properly on the new version of your website.

The pages with the highest rankings and rankings should be prioritized. All other pages can be perfected over time, but the main sources of traffic and new customers should be checked right away.

Step 6. Technical audit of the website

In a sense, the technical audit of a website starts from the moment you make the decision to migrate and doesn’t end until the migration is complete. But, throughout the entire migration process, it is worth checking on a regular basis:

• correctness of redirects;
• correctness of internal links;
• server response time to commands;
• page indexing errors.

In addition, you should also check the items listed in Step 3 to ensure that the site is working properly during the migration.

Step 7. Setting up the Google Search Console

If the migration is global (we change not only something pointwise, but together with the domain), then you need to inform the search engines about it. You can do this using Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. After that, you need to request indexing of the site and provide a sitemap.

In Google Search Console, you can change the website address without changing your account. You can do this by going to Settings -> Change address.

Notifying the search engine of a domain change is one of the most important aspects of website migration. We would also like to emphasize that you, as the owner, will have to confirm the fact of ownership of both sites before providing new addresses.

Step 8. Main checks of the website after migration

As practice shows, it is necessary to check the site for performance after migration in the first few weeks after the process is completed. Fortunately, most of the changes made are reflected instantly, so you can trace and refactor errors relatively quickly. Here are some items that require monitoring:

• incorrect redirects;
• slow loading;
• lost internal links;
• lack of meta tags;
• 403/404 errors;
• availability of a sitemap and up-to-date robots.txt;
• availability of all relevant licenses and security certificates;
• a properly functioning mail server;
• correct navigation;
• absence of critical errors in the website.

Conclusions

Migrating a website is a non-trivial but possible task. Throughout the process, you will most likely encounter some mistakes, but most of them can be overcome relatively quickly and painlessly. It’s important to remember that it’s quite possible that your website will have a limited amount of traffic at first after the transfer, but following all the above points in detail will help to minimize this period.

Oleksandr Romanenko

Team Lead/Senior SEO specialist

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