13 Website Migration Steps to Keep Your Rankings

By Keith Moehring | Posted Nov 6, 2009 | 4 Comment(s) | Filed in: Internet Marketing

If not done correctly, migrating your current Website to a new site with different URLs can have grave consequences. We’re talking drops in keyword rankings, a dramatic decrease of indexed pages, less traffic from referring links, dogs and cats living together, MASS HYSTERIA! 

Fortunately, if you follow the 13 steps below, you can seamlessly transfer search engine credit and links from your current site to the new site.

NOTE: If you don’t have a Website development background, be sure to work with someone who does. There are numerous technical elements in this process that if done wrong will hurt your site.

Pre-Step: Make sure the new site is still in a dormant phase and cannot be seen by visitors or search engines prior to starting this process. An effective way to do this is to keep the new site behind password protection or on a designated test server.

Step 1:  Create a Sitemap

Create a sitemap that outlines all the pages of the new Website and the internal link structure. Below is an example we created using MindJet.

Step 2:  Review Analytics and Identify Key Pages

If your site doesn't have them already, install Google Webmasters Tools and Google Analytics. Using these tools, you can ensure that all of your pages are being crawled and indexed properly, review traffic sources and patterns, and identify ways to improve your site's marketing and search engine effectiveness.  

Make sure to review these tools to discover the current site pages that have links coming to them or are ranking well for specific keywords. If at all possible, these pages should also be included on your new site and a 301 redirect (see step 8) should point the old URL to the new URL telling search engines and incoming links that the page has permanently moved.

Steps 3 & 4: Create or Migrate Content

(3) Decide which new site pages will need new content and which pages will have migrated content.

(4) Provide your Website development team with a listing of the URLs for the pages with content that needs to be migrated over to the new site.

Step 5:  Populate

Start building out the new Website by creating the pages, uploading or writing new content, inserting images and graphics, formatting the content appropriately, and linking internal pages to each other.

Step 6:  Optimize

Optimize the pages with unique, keyword-rich Page Titles, URLs and Page Descriptions (your Content Management System should give you control of these). Be sure to include alt text on all images and optimize the anchor text of all internal links.

Step 7:  Review and Test

Review and test the new Website to ensure everything works properly and is formatted correctly. This includes all links (main and sub navigation, call-to-action buttons, and text links within the copy), page copy format (headlines, sub-headlines, paragraph spacing, bolded phrases, etc.), and optimization activities (Page Title, URLs, Descriptions, Alt Text and Anchor Text).  

Be sure to test in a variety of browsers to make sure the site is optimized for all visitors. Major browsers to test include:

• Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8
• Mozilla FireFox
• Safari
• Google Chrome

Step 8:  Point the Old to the New

Develop a Side-By-Side URL Chart that features the new Website URL tag (any part of the URL that appears after the .com) and the old URL tags that need to be 301 redirected to it. (See example below.) Send this to your Website developer so they can set these up prior to the launch of the new site. Every page on your old site should be included. If a page does not have a similar page on the new site, redirect it to the homepage.

Step 9:  Launch Your Site

Have your Website developer activate the new Website by pointing the DNS to the server that contains your new Website’s files. 

Step 10:  Activate 301 Redirects

Activate the 301 redirects defined in the Side-By-Side URL Chart.

Step 11:  Test Links

Test to make sure all the links pointing to your old URLs automatically redirect like they are supposed to.

Step 12:  Submit Sitemaps to Search Engines

If possible, submit the old XML sitemap and new XML sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Central. This step will make the search engines crawl your old URLs, see that they have moved and change their indexes accordingly. If nothing else, submit the new XML sitemap to both these search engines. If your new site platform does not automatically provide an XML sitemap (to check, add /sitemap.xml to the end of your URL) talk to your Web developer.

Step 13:  Check Google Webmasters Tools

Wait until Google Webmaster Tools updates (24 to 72 hours) and then fix any errors that occur.

It will also benefit you to read Google’s blog about moving your site. According to Maile Ohye, Senior Developer Programs Engineer, Google Inc., it has been reviewed by at least 12 Googlers for accuracy.

A special thanks to Clay Schossow (@newmediaclay) at New Media Campaigns for his help developing this post.

Keith Moehring is a consultant at PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency and PR firm. Follow Keith on Twitter @keithmoehring.

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