SEO MIGRATION SERVICES
Migrating your website can be a time-consuming and complex process. You have to manage the technical elements of your site migration, and if it’s not done properly, it can also do real damage to your search visibility.
At The SEO Works, we offer website migration services that have a focus on SEO, allowing for you to smoothly migrate your website without having to worry about losing your rankings. Our team of web migration specialists will be on hand to advise you through the migration process, keeping SEO front of mind. Helping you with different technical and content elements that need addressing in a website migration.
Preserve Your Rankings
Maintaining strong visibility in the search engines and AI tools is challenging, and a website migration adds further to this challenge.
When you move your site, it can alter how search engines see and understand your site. It can affect how they read your pages and how much trust they give your site.
A badly executed migration can cause your site to vanish from the search results and significantly impact your site’s traffic and conversions. But with the right planning, it doesn’t have to hurt your visbility or rankings. We’ll help keep things steady and make sure the changes support your goals.
Why Do You Need SEO Website Migration Services?
Migrating a website is one of the riskiest projects from an SEO point of view. Here’s why SEO migration services will help minimise the risk.
Seamless Website Migration
As a professional SEO migration service provider, we have a meticulous process for migrating websites smoothly, including auditing, redirecting, benchmarking, launching, testing, tracking, and reporting. By using our SEO migration services, you can leave moving your website in the hands of professionals. Our team of migration experts will be able to support a successful migration, seamlessly transferring essential data.
Improve Website Performance
One good thing about moving your site is that it gives you the chance to start fresh. You can make sure everything works well behind the scenes and that your site runs quickly. Working with a team that knows SEO means you can build on solid ground, which will help minimise the risk of your visibility tanking.
Move Away From a Difficult or Unintuitive CMS
If your current website uses a content management system (CMS) that is difficult to use, it can be incredibly frustrating to upload new content, or make changes to the existing pages. As a professional website migration services provider, our team is very familiar with many content management systems, and the process of migrating from one to another. Our experts will be able to ensure you can enjoy the features of a new CMS rather than worrying about site performance.
Implement a Logical Site Structure
Having a logical site structure in place serves as a strong foundation for any website. By working with our SEO migration team, you can ensure that the site you are migrating to will use a site structure that makes navigation for both users and search engines much easier. This will include implementing things such as sub-folders, navigation menus, and any other structural elements that may be needed, such as subdomains.
SEO Migration Service Case Study
Neil Kilcoyne & Co Solicitors moved from a Yelp CMS setup to a newly designed WordPress site, in order to improve their brand image and make it easier to update their website. Every page was redesigned as part of the move, plus new pages added.
Before the migration, we benchmarked keyword rankings, backlinks, traffic and conversions. We crawled the full site and produced a redirect map, considering new and old pages, to make sure users and search engines were sent to the right pages. We also identified priority URLs that were high performing and had to stay as part of the move.
The project led to strong improvements, with year-on-year results below:
- Total Users: +201.3%
- New Users: +206.5%
- Sessions: +186.3%
- Engaged Sessions: +179.9%
- Contact Form Submissions: +157.4%
- Phone Number Clicks: +78.7%
Product Page SEO
Category and product page optimisation after a complex web migration, to help maintain rankings and revenue for a family-owned business.
Financial Content SEO
Informational blog content SEO optimisation for a financial and business mentoring provider to increase awareness and rankings.
Our SEO Migration Services Process
Pre-Migration
Because a site migration is a complex process, being thoroughly prepared and organised is key for success. Our web migration services process begins with a comprehensive audit and analysis of your current site, including:
- Benchmarking current keyword rankings and backlinks
- Benchmarking current traffic, conversions, and site speed
- Crawling the site for a full list of URLs
- Identifying the most influential links within the site’s backlink profile that will need updating
- Creating a redirect map for the site, using 301 redirects to ensure the user experience isn’t impacted, and no links are lost.
By being thorough with the above checks, our SEO migration services team can ensure that there is a smooth transition between sites, making sure that the user experience isn’t impacted by encountering 404 pages, or that no backlinks to the site are lost.
This benchmarking stage also provides us with accurate comparison data, allowing us to measure how the new site performs across many key areas.
Migrating Your Site
Even with a solid plan in place, it is crucial that this stage of the migration process is done correctly, as any errors can result in disruptions in your site’s SEO performance.
Some of the tasks that are key to safeguarding your site’s SEO include:
Implementing Redirects
Using the redirect map we create during the pre-migration process, our web migration team will make sure that 301 redirects are implemented for any old URLs. By implementing redirects, we can ensure that any link equity is passed onto relevant pages, helping to preserve the authority of your website.
Submitting a New Sitemap
Creating and submitting a new XML sitemap for the new version of your website will help search engines to crawl the site and understand the relationships between pages. In addition to this, submitting an up to date sitemap to Google Search Console can help make the page crawling and indexing process from Google much faster.
Testing URLs and Navigation
In order to provide a thorough SEO migration service, our team carries out extensive manual tests of the new site’s URLs and navigation menus, as well as the validity of canonical tags. This ensures that users and search engines can navigate through and interact with the site correctly, with a focus on making sure that the user experience is smooth.
Reviewing Site Performance
One of the most important jobs that our SEO migration services team do when a website has just been migrated, is to monitor and review the new site’s performance immediately after launch. This is so that we can gauge if the new site is performing as we’d expect across key metrics, such as conversions and organic traffic. A large difference from the pre-migration benchmarking could indicate that there is an issue that needs to be addressed.
Post-Migration
Once the migration has completed, the next steps are to monitor performance, and test that everything is working as intended. This will include assessing several key SEO aspects. The key checks that our migration team carry out include:
- Checking that each page on the site can be crawled and indexed, keeping an eye out for any 404 errors or groups of pages not being indexed.
- Making sure that all the redirects have been implemented correctly, sending the users to the correct pages, as well as checking for any errors like redirect loops.
- Comparing the keyword rankings of the site post-migration, to the benchmarked data we recorded pre-migration. This will highlight any priority areas that will need to be looked into and optimised first.
- Reviewing the backlink profile of the website post-migration, as this will highlight any backlinks that haven’t successfully been redirected to a relevant page, which is key for retaining domain authority.
- Continually monitoring organic traffic after the migration has been completed, and comparing it to the benchmarked data we record pre-migration. This will highlight potential areas that could be impacting the user engagement on the site.
Why Use Our SEO Migration Services?
Expertise and In-Depth Knowledge
Partnering with an SEO website migration service provider means gaining access to their vast knowledge and industry experience. A website migration is a multifaceted process that demands specialised attention and expertise at every step, especially when trying to preserve your SEO efforts. Our team brings together a diverse range of skills to ensure a smooth and effective transition for your website.
If your account manager encounters an unfamiliar issue, they can speak with other specialists on our team who possess the necessary expertise. This guarantees that you’ll always receive the most reliable advice and recommendations for your website migration and preserving your rankings.
SEO Focused Website Migrations
Our website migration services are not only made up of a team of experienced web developers, but also the knowledge of our SEO agency team members. Because of this, we can offer a unique service that focuses heavily on not just migrating your website, but making sure your rankings and domain authority survive the move.
Communication
At The SEO Works, we prioritise providing clear and transparent communication with our clients above all else. We believe this is crucial for building relationships with our clients, and fostering a smooth workflow. A website migration is a collaborative process between your internal teams and our specialists, so regular meetings and updates are all part of the service.
Industry-Leading Tools and Software
To make sure that our SEO migration services are always providing the best results as possible, we make sure that our team uses the most effective tools and technologies available. This approach ensures that we consistently achieve the best outcomes for our clients.
What Our Clients Have to Say
Speak To The Team
Do you need support with a website migration? Get in touch with us today, to arrange a chat with one of our team.
Website Migration Service FAQs
What are SEO migration services?
SEO migration services are used when a site needs to move to a new hosting provider, CMS, or domain, and have been designed to minimise disruptions, such as downtime, and maximise the benefits of a website move. One of the primary objectives of SEO migration services is to ensure that a website maintains or improves its search engine rankings and backlink profile when migrated. These services are typically required during significant updates or changes for a website. SEO migration services are often handled by professionals to minimise risks and safeguard the site’s visibility in search results.
SEO migration services often include pre- and post-migration benchmarking, performing technical audits, creating URL redirect maps and monitoring the performance of the site after the migration has finished. A website migration benefits from thorough checks and careful planning provided by the previously mentioned tasks, ensuring that the new site avoids large pockets of 404 error pages, and makes sure that the user experience isn’t impacted.
What types of website migrations are there?
There are multiple different types of website migrations that can be done, which will have differing impacts on your website. The best practices and advice for each migration will differ, which is why support from a website migration service provider is helpful. The different types of migration are:
- Changing Your Domain Name: Updating your domain name as part of a rebranding effort. This involves transferring your entire website to the new domain and managing the transition to ensure minimal disruption and a smooth rebranding process.
- Revamping Site Structure, Navigation, or Design: Updating your site’s design or improving its structure and navigation to ensure better search engine crawling and indexing, especially if the current setup is hindering these processes.
- Transitioning to a New Framework or CMS: Moving to a different framework or content management system to boost your site’s performance, security, or functionality. A new system can provide enhanced features and capabilities.
- Optimising for Mobile Devices: Ensuring your site is fully compatible with mobile devices is crucial for user experience and search engine rankings. This includes adapting your site for tablets and smartphones.
- Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS: Switching from HTTP to HTTPS to enhance visitor security and privacy. HTTPS encrypts data and reduces security warnings, fostering greater trust and confidence among users.
- Transferring to a New Server: Moving to a different web hosting provider to improve site speed and performance, especially if your site is growing. A faster site benefits both visitors and search engines, leading to better user experiences and higher search rankings.
Does a website migration impact SEO?
A website migration will impact a site’s SEO, although depending on how the migration is handled, these effects can be both positive and negative. The reason why a web migration can impact SEO so much is because when migrating a site, there are usually major foundational changes made to the site, such as the site/URL structure, implementation of subdomains, or swapping to a new CMS or server.
Migrations are a complex process, especially when trying to preserve a website’s keyword rankings and domain authority. Working with an experienced website migration service provider should help to minimise any SEO impact on your site, and ensure a much smoother migration process.
What can go wrong with a website migration?
If a website migration is not done properly, there are several areas that can go wrong, which can have serious impacts on the SEO performance of your website. Some of the most common challenges are:
- Not having redirects implemented correctly, or at all, which can result in a loss of traffic, decrease keyword rankings, and see the site drive less conversions.
- The relevant tracking codes, such as Google Analytics, are knocked off the website, results in a loss of data. This can make it hard to know how successful your migration was.
- Optimised content or metadata needs re-uploading to the site, which can result in a drop in traffic and keyword rankings, as well as taking up a lot of time.
- Crawling and indexing issues, such as noindex tags being in place on key pages, or the new site taking a long time to be indexed.
- The new site not being tested when it goes live, which can result in poor functionality, leading to a poor user experience or technical performance.
All of the above can easily be avoided by working with an SEO migration service provider, who specialises in smooth website migration that retains your site’s SEO performance.