Website Migration: The 3 Types Of Migration & When A Redirection Is Essential
A website migration is a common project as brands and business owners regularly redesign their websites or carry out a brand refresh. It needs to be handled carefully though, from an SEO perspective, as failure to do so can result in a dramatic drop in rankings and traffic... which could also mean a significant reduction in conversions and revenue.
There are 3 different scenarios for a website migration:
You're changing your template & the website structure remains the same (website design refresh)
You're changing the CMS or website structure
You're changing the domain & moving everything to completely new URLs
If you are choosing either scenario 2 or 3 - changing the structure of the website - then you will need to do a website migration with redirection.
Why is it important to do a redirection?
A redirection satisfies two conditions, one is allow a continuous user journey, so that when the user goes to a certain page that doesn’t exist, they're taken to a relevant page. The other reason is to pass page authority.
What is page authority?
As you progress with optimising your website, you start to build domain authority. This is defined as the overall authority of the website. Page authority is the authority of each page.
On a website, not all pages have the same amount of page authority. Some pages might have higher authority than others, which is sculpted using internal linking & backlinking to specific pages.
Redirections allow you to pass this authority to a new page so when your website structure changes, you don’t lose authority.
Ok great, what are some things you should look out for when you’re doing a redirection?
Firstly you’ll need to create a redirection plan. In this doc, you’ll need to divide it into two sections:
1. The old website URLs
2. The new website URLs
You’ll need to map out which pages on the old site will be deleted & where you’re going to redirect this URL to on the new website.
Copy across your meta tags to the new site. Depending on whether you have already optimised your site, you’ll need to make sure there is minimal difference when migrating, which includes making sure you have meta tags on the page.
After the website migration:
Check if the site is indexed
Check Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Check sitemap.xml & robots.txt files
Redirections are a crucial step with website migrations, to make sure you don’t experience a drop in traffic. Make sure you take the necessary time & precautions to make the redirection a success.
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