Website Migration

Website Migration

Website migration is a website moving from one environment to a different one or the content of a website changes. But what is website migration actually and why it is done? Also, do you need to consider any important things while migrating a website?

Let us know!

What is website migration?

In SEO language, a transition is termed as migration whenever basic modification happens to a site’s address structure. Usually, website migration represents changes within the location, platform, layout, content, design, or user experience of the website.

Website Migration is the method of fixing the website location, platform structure, website’s content, or user expertise. It’s done to increase visibility in the search engine. This method has got to be through with utmost expertise because it at the start affects the visibility of the website on Google.

Types of Website Migration:

  • Protocol Change: An example of protocol change is the migration of a website from HTTP to HTTPS.

  • Subdomain or subfolder change: When a company or an organization moves into subdomains or subfolders from a ccTLDs it is called Subdomain or subfolder change. Example: www.exam.com.au to www.au.exam.com.

  • Domain name change: When a business or an organization is rebranding and is bound to switch to a different domain name, this change happens. Example: www.exam.com to www.paper.com 

  • Top-level domain change: When an organization or a company decides to extend their business abroad or decides to limit it to a certain country. Example: www.exam.com to www.exam.com.au 

  • Site structure changes: Improvements to the layout of the site, which affect the URL structure and internal reference of the page are called site structure changes.

  • Re-platforming: When a website changes or switches platforms, the process is called re-platforming. Example: Switching or changing from Shopify to WordPress.

  • Mobile Set-up Changes: Processes like shifting to mobile set-ups, creating PWA websites, or indexing applications are usually called partial website migration.

  • Content Migration: To have a major impact on the visibility of organic search results, content is sometimes pruned, rewritten, and consolidated. This process is called content migration.

  • Redesign: Redesigning can be anything, a minor design change or a completely revamped website with changes in the code and copy.

Things to consider during website migration

  1. Calculating risks and being prepared for the consequences.

  2. Creating backups and downloading them.

  3. Paying special attention to the URL structure.

  4. Considering redirection of the URL is a major factor for SEO.

  5. Using the change of address tool while searching to communicate the site migration at the domain level.

  6. Maintaining the same directory and folder structure as before.

  7. Removal of broken links and 404 pages.

  8. Setting up a new directory for robots.txt

  9. Prioritizing websites with higher authority.

  10. Planning to rebrand strategies.

Important points to remember about website migration:

  1. Carefully and meticulously considering the costs and benefits of migrating a website.

  2. Before beginning website migration, consider crawling.

  3. Testing all the URLs of the site.

  4. Customizing a 404 web page (ERROR) for the users.

  5. Removing all duplicate or plagiarized content.

  6. Submitting the sitemap after the migration is complete.

  7. Monitoring the rankings and the traffic of the website.