Website migrations can be a nerve-wracking experience for digital marketers and SEO professionals. Whether you’re changing domains, implementing a new CMS, or overhauling your site structure, the potential for SEO disruption is significant. At POLARIS, we understand the complexities involved in preserving your hard-earned search visibility during these transitions.
To help ensure your next migration goes smoothly, we’ve compiled this comprehensive SEO migration testing checklist that covers everything you need to QA before hitting that publish button.
Pre-Migration Planning: Laying the Groundwork
Define Your SEO Migration Strategy
Before diving into the technical aspects, it’s crucial to identify the reasons behind your website migration and establish concrete goals for the new site. Determine the specific type of migration you’re undertaking—whether it’s a domain change, CMS implementation, or site structure revamp—and develop a thorough SEO migration strategy designed to minimise disruptions and facilitate a seamless transition.
Create a Detailed Migration Plan
A successful migration requires meticulous planning. Draft a comprehensive project timeline that outlines each step of the migration process. Assemble your project team and delegate specific tasks to each member. Most importantly, ensure all stakeholders are properly informed and aligned with the migration plan to prevent miscommunication or unexpected roadblocks.
Preparing Your Staging Environment
Set Up a Proper Staging Website
A staging environment is essential for testing without affecting your live site. Create a duplicate version of your new website that remains invisible to users, and utilise this environment to test changes before implementing them on your live site. Your staging website also serves as the perfect place to test and implement your URL 301 redirects before going live.
Secure Your Staging Environment
Protecting your staging site is paramount. Review the staging environment configuration to ensure search engines cannot index it. This can be accomplished by limiting availability to specific IP addresses, password-protecting the staging area, or editing the robots.txt file to explicitly disallow search engine crawlers.
Conducting SEO Health Checks
Assess the New Domain’s Organic Health and Backlink Profile
If you’re changing domains, evaluate the health of your new domain thoroughly. Conduct a comprehensive organic health check to identify potential issues that might affect your SEO performance post-migration. Leverage tools such as Moz’s Domain Authority to evaluate the domain’s overall health, and identify and address any problematic backlinks or content on the new domain that could harm your SEO efforts.
Managing URL Structure and Redirects
Prioritise URLs Based on SEO Value
Not all URLs carry equal weight for your SEO. Employ a scoring methodology to prioritise content and URLs based on their SEO value and business importance. This prioritisation ensures that high-value pages receive special attention in your redirect strategy, helping to preserve the most critical SEO equity during the migration process.
Implement Proper 301 Redirects
Redirects are the cornerstone of maintaining SEO equity during migrations. Create a comprehensive 301 redirect map based on your SEO migration scoring system. Once implemented on your website, these redirects ensure old URLs properly direct to new destinations. Remember to thoroughly crawl your redirect map to identify and fix any broken redirects before launching.
Optimising Content and Meta Tags
Update Internal Links and Meta Information
Content optimisation is essential for preserving SEO value during migration. Update all internal links to prevent broken pages and unnecessary internal redirects. Tools like ScreamingFrog can help identify internal links and their associated anchor text. Take time to revise internal links to align with your new URL structure, and review and update all meta tags, including title tags and meta descriptions to reflect any changes in your site architecture.
Preparing for Launch
Implement User Experience Safeguards
Prepare for inevitable hiccups by creating an engaging 404 page that helps users navigate back to your homepage. A well-designed custom 404 page reduces bounce rates and enhances user experience when visitors encounter missing pages. Ensure your 404 page is crawlable and indexable by search engines. Additionally, update your website links in Google My Business and Bing Places, verifying that all location or office URLs are properly updated to maintain local search presence.
Post-Migration Quality Assurance
Conduct Thorough Pre- and Post-Launch QA
Verification is key to migration success. Perform comprehensive SEO audits both before and after the migration to verify that all pages, content, links, and tags are properly accounted for. Check meticulously for broken pages and internal redirects that may have been overlooked during the migration process. These audits provide a clear picture of what might have been missed and need immediate attention.
Monitor Performance with Analytics
Data-driven monitoring helps identify issues quickly after launch. Track your website’s performance in Google Analytics, verifying that pages are receiving search traffic and engagement metrics are improving rather than declining. Pay special attention to 404 page traffic to identify and address broken pages that might be negatively impacting user experience and search visibility.
Ongoing Post-Migration Maintenance
Track 404 Errors and Maintain Control of Your Old Site
The work doesn’t end at launch. Implement and optimise a 404 page to enhance user experience, and use Google Analytics to track 404 pages and identify broken URLs on an ongoing basis. Forward broken URL reports to your web development team for 301 redirect implementation as needed. Importantly, maintain control of your old domain to ensure backlinks are properly redirected, and retain ownership of the old domain to preserve accumulated search engine equity over the long term.
By following this comprehensive SEO migration testing checklist, you’ll significantly reduce the risk of traffic loss and search visibility issues during your website transition. Remember, a successful migration isn’t just about technical implementation—it’s about maintaining the SEO value you’ve worked so hard to build.
