5 Killer Techniques For Effective SEO Site Migration

5 Killer Techniques For Effective SEO Site Migration

5 Tips for Effective SEO Site MigrationWhen building a new website, you may not always think of the effect it will have on your search engine rankings. But, it certainly can! The site migration can severely damage your search engine rankings, if best practices are not followed. To help you avoid SEO issues, here are my 5 Killer Techniques for building and migrating your new website!

Use 301 redirects for all old URL’s

If you migrate your new website and don’t account for all the old URL’s, Google will find dead links within your website which will damage your search engine rankings.  To avoid this, you want to identify ALL URL’s in the old site and outline the pages in the new website that they will be re-directed to.  This will also ensure that any external links will point to an active page on the website.

Create a custom 404 page

To also further protect yourself from potential dead links on your website, you want to create a custom 404 page that includes links to the main pages on your new website.  This will help both the search engine crawlers and your potential customers if they land on a 404 page.

Migrate the new website as quickly as possible

On average, Google crawls your website once every 1-2 weeks.  If you migrate the new site overnight and implement all 301 redirects, Google will crawl your new website easily without seeing glitches within the navigation of the website.  The key is to make all final website checks prior to migration to ensure a flawless transition.

Generate and submit your sitemap to webmaster tools immediately following the site migration

On the same night that you migrate your website, you want to generate your XML sitemap immediately.  Then use webmaster tools to submit your sitemap to the various search engines and carefully monitor the account for any crawl errors in the first couple months.

Follow your SEO best practices through all stages of development

While this may seem obvious, it is important to mention because if you follow the SEO best practices throughout the development of your website, Google crawlers will be more inclined to automatically “like” your new website upon its first visit, hardly noticing the change. 

Well, that sums up my 5 tips for effective SEO site migration.  By following these tips, you should be able to successfully move your site and move forward with your online marketing program.

For more information, read these Helpful Tips SEO Migration Tips from Google..........Happy migration!

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5 Comments

  • avatar

    I'm assuming you're talking about moving the content of an existing web site to a new web site with a different domain?
    I was wondering if you have any thoughts on moving a website from one hosting provider to another? Same domain, same content.
    Any comments on how this kind of move may or may not affect the site's ranking? Best practices?
    Thanks

  • avatar

    Nice info Valerie! What's really important while maintaining the webmasters is also adding that personal touch (using the 404 custom error page set up) – makes it more user-friendly and trustworthy for the clients to see a page of their own (website) with info on it.

  • avatar

    Good read Val! Really good tips for SEO website migration these are often overlooked by web admins.

  • avatar

    As mentioned if it's a full website migration it needs to be tested in a demo folder before it's made live. A site can be switched over to new version within seconds if it's well planned by changing the folder name in the server of making changes in the config file. Great Tips Valerie !

  • avatar

    Valerie, you said it right. Your blog is a must read for all the SEO professionals and web admins while moving their website from one domain to another!

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