Web migrations conducted with SEO in mind
Website migrations are important steps that can have a major impact on your natural referencing and your visibility in search engines. If you are making important changes to your website, such as switching to a new domain name or a new CMS, it is essential to be advised in the choice of developments to avoid complicated situations with loss of traffic.
With hundreds of migrations in practice, our SEO experts will guide you through your project. Our website migration strategy is tailored to your scenario to increase the chances of success and minimize the impact on your organic traffic.
Let our team do the heavy lifting for you. We'll take care of your SEO migration, no matter how big or small, and migrate your website efficiently and effectively.
Our consultants can help you with all types of web migration:
- Domain migrations: Change the URL of your website from "olddomain.com" to "newdomain.com
- Subdomain migrations: Change your website address from "website.com" to "subdomain.website.com". Merge or split domains.
- Top Level Domain Migrations: Change the URL of your website from .ch to .org, .com, etc.
- Protocol migrations: Change the protocol of your website from HTTP to HTTPS.
- CMS Migrations: Change your current content management system to a new one, for example from Drupal to WordPress.
- Recast Migrations: Modifications ranging from minor aesthetic changes to a complete redesign of the website with major code and text changes.
- Structural Migration: Modification of the website structure and / or URL structure
1. Migration strategy and plan
We accompany you at each stage of your web redesign project in the choice of developments, structure, content to be preserved and optimized to define with your teams an effective migration plan promoting your natural referencing.
2. URL crawling and page auditing
We test and audit each page of your site before the migration, in order to analyze your traffic sources, your content and prepare possible redirections
3. URL mapping and redirection strategy
We make sure your redirects (301, 302, 410) make sense to search engine crawls and user searches - avoiding error messages 404 and redirection loops by ensuring indexing follow-up after the redirection. Our unique know-how allows us to manage large numbers of redirections efficiently (50,000, 100,000 pages and more...)
4. Site Navigation and Internal Meshing
We will detect and correct all technical problems of internal navigation, optimize the internal mesh for a better diffusion of Page Rank optimal.
5. Upstream performance analysis and follow-up of the acceptance process
We use important SEO data such as links, keywords, crawl, loading and index performance to determine if your new site is superior to your old site, which allows us to validate or not a move online or corrections to be made post-migration.
6. Tracking of site discovery by Google and Bing
We validate the ownership of your new domain and track the indexing of your new site in Google and Bing. This also allows us to scan new search data for analysis. Our tools coupled with the Search Console allow us to have a very precise visibility on the state of your indexation
7. Management of external links (backlinks)
We audit your external link profile so that you don't lose popularity and we make sure that all the links that are on other sites respond well in 200 or 301 to your new pages. This approach allows you to keep your Netlinking and above all not to lose popularity and therefore natural referencing.
8. Detection and removal of duplicate content
We detect multiple versions of the same page. During migration, it is common for content to be duplicated. Our auditing tools allow us to avoid keyword cannibalization due to duplicate content.
9. Recommendations for choosing your hosting and domain name
Our experience allows us to advise you in the choice of your future domain name, hosting and content delivery network (CDN) solutions.
10. Audit of Analytics and tracking data
Before any migration, it is essential to analyze the web data management in Analytics. A bad tracking can lead to a superficial increase of sessions, users, page views... a situation that is detrimental to the post-migration balance.
Our development and SEO teams have identified the risks in web redesigns and migrations, allowing us to avoid them and create a foolproof strategy, while preserving and improving your SEO performance.
Frequently Asked Questions about SEO Migration
🚩 What'is a website SEO migration?
The term SEO migration refers to the redirection of organic traffic from an old website to the new one, once it has been developed. If you don't follow this procedure, you risk losing customers, due to a drop in position in the search engine rankings.
💡 Why should I migrate my website?
Website migrations can have many benefits if done correctly. For example, switching to a more reliable and efficient server, improving the user interface, using an open source cms or switching from HTTP to HTTPS can have a significant positive impact on your SEO.
⌛️ How long does an SEO migration take?
The time required to migrate a website depends on many factors, such as the complexity and size of the site. It is essential to understand the overall project to establish a migration plan that takes into account the development schedule, otherwise a botched job can lead to failed migrations.
🌐 Will my website be offline during the migration process?
No, your website will remain online during the entire migration process. A pre-production site can be set up during this period, to ensure a smooth transition to the new environment.
📚 Why are website migrations so dreaded?
If you haven't planned your migration properly or conducted thorough SEO checks to ensure success, you risk losing your ranking in search engine results. This is why many companies choose to hire the services of specialists for their website redesign and migration.