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What to Do to Avoid SEO Loss When Moving a Website?

What to Do to Avoid SEO Loss When Moving a Website?

Moving your website, whether it's a server change, a domain name renewal, or a complete transition to a new platform, can have a significant impact on your SEO performance. If proper planning and implementation are not carried out, you may experience serious drops in your search engine rankings and suffer organic traffic loss. In this article, we will examine in detail the steps you need to take to minimize SEO loss and even potentially improve it when moving your website.

1. Comprehensive Planning and Preparation Before the Move

The foundation of a successful website migration process is detailed planning and preparation before the migration. This stage allows you to identify potential problems in advance and develop proactive solutions. Here are some important points to consider:

1.1. Analyze Your Current SEO Status

Before starting the migration process, you need to analyze your website's current SEO performance in detail. SEO tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Ahrefs, SEMrush will help you understand which keywords your site ranks for, which pages receive the most traffic, your backlink profile, and other important metrics. Using this data, you can determine what to track after the migration and which areas to prioritize.

1.2. Determine the Migration Strategy

You need to decide how to move your website. Different migration methods carry different SEO risks. For example, a domain name change is a more complex process than a server change and should be managed more carefully. Also, if you are making significant changes to your site's structure (for example, changing the URL structure), this may further affect your SEO performance. Therefore, you should carefully determine your migration strategy based on your site's current structure, your goals, and your technical resources.

1.3. Determine the URL Structure and Content

It is important that the URL structure and content on your new website are as similar as possible to those on your current website. If you need to change the URL structure, you should carefully plan these changes and create 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs. If you plan to make significant changes to your content, you should consider the impact of these changes on SEO and continue to optimize your content for keywords.

1.4. Take a Backup

Before starting the migration process, it is vital to take a full backup of all your website's files and database. This backup will allow you to restore your site to its previous state if any problems occur during the migration.

2. Things to Consider During the Move

There are many important points to consider during your website's migration process to protect your SEO performance. Here's what you need to do at this stage:

2.1. Implement 301 Redirects Correctly

If you are changing your website's URL structure, you need to create 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs. 301 redirects tell search engines that the old URL has been permanently moved to a new URL and transfer the SEO value of the old URL to the new URL. This is one of the most important ways to prevent ranking loss. To implement redirects correctly, you can edit the .htaccess file (on Apache servers) or the web.config file (on IIS servers). For example:

.htaccess example:

        Redirect 301 /old-page.html /new-page.html
    

web.config example:

To make sure the redirects are working correctly, you can use a redirect checker. These tools will help you check whether a URL is being redirected correctly.

2.2. Check the robots.txt File

The robots.txt file determines which parts of your website search engine bots can crawl and which they cannot. During the migration, make sure that the robots.txt file is configured correctly and does not prevent search engine bots from crawling important parts of your site. After your new website is published, update the robots.txt file to allow search engine bots to crawl your entire site.

2.3. Update the Sitemap

A sitemap provides search engines with a list of all the pages on your website and helps your site be crawled more easily. After moving your website, update your sitemap by adding your new URLs and removing the old URLs. By submitting your updated sitemap to Google Search Console, you can help search engines index your site more quickly.

2.4. Optimize Speed and Performance

Your website's speed and performance are important factors for SEO. During the migration, you can take various measures to optimize your site's speed and performance. For example, you can optimize your images, use caching, and use a CDN (Content Delivery Network). Google's PageSpeed Insights tool will help you analyze your site's speed and get improvement suggestions.

3. Post-Migration Monitoring and Optimization

After moving your website, you need to closely monitor your SEO performance and make the necessary optimizations. Here's what you need to do at this stage:

3.1. Monitor Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool that helps you monitor your website's performance in Google search results and troubleshoot problems. After the migration, regularly check Google Search Console to track your site's indexing status, crawl errors, mobile compatibility issues, and other important metrics. If you detect any problems, quickly develop solutions.

3.2. Track Keyword Rankings

Regularly track the rankings of the keywords you identified before the migration. If you experience drops in rankings, investigate the reasons for this and make the necessary optimizations. For example, you can update your content, continue backlink building efforts, or fix technical SEO issues.

3.3. Analyze Traffic Data

Use tools like Google Analytics to regularly analyze your website's traffic data. Track your traffic sources, most visited pages, conversion rates, and other important metrics. If you experience significant drops in traffic, investigate the reasons for this and take the necessary measures.

3.4. Check Your Backlink Profile

Regularly check your website's backlink profile. Identify and fix broken links. Also, identify spam or low-quality backlinks and report them to Google. By continuing to build quality backlinks, you can increase your site's SEO authority.

4. Example Scenarios and Solutions

Some common scenarios you may encounter during the website migration process and solution suggestions for these scenarios:

4.1. Scenario: Domain Name Change

Problem: You changed your domain name and are experiencing a drop in organic traffic.

Solution: Make sure you have implemented 301 redirects from all old URLs to new URLs. Notify Google of your new domain name and update your sitemap. Start backlink building efforts for your new domain name.

4.2. Scenario: URL Structure Change

Problem: You changed your URL structure and some of your pages are returning 404 errors.

Solution: Implement 301 redirects from all old URLs to new URLs. Identify and fix broken links. Update your sitemap and submit it to Google.

4.3. Scenario: Server Change

Problem: You changed your server and your website has slowed down.

Solution: Optimize the speed and performance of your new server. Optimize your images, use caching, and use a CDN. Analyze your site's speed with Google's PageSpeed Insights tool and implement the improvement suggestions.

Conclusion and Summary

The website migration process is a complex process that requires careful planning, implementation, and monitoring to protect your SEO performance. By conducting a comprehensive analysis before the migration, determining the right migration strategy, correctly implementing 301 redirects, updating the robots.txt file and sitemap, optimizing speed and performance, and regularly monitoring your SEO performance after the migration, you can minimize SEO loss and even potentially improve it. Remember to be patient and continue to optimize continuously. We wish you success!