Website Migrations

Owned by
Megan Bostwick
Feb 17, 2023
4 min read

Pre Migration Checklist:

 Create Redirect Map

  • Gather Current URL List

    • Create a list of known URLs. If this is not readily available, then a crawling tool can help locate most of the publicly accessible URLs. Tools such as Screaming Frog or Xenu can crawl an entire site, including assets (robots.txt, JavaScript, CSS, Images, and Font files).

    • Check your analytics and/or server logs for highly popular URLs

    • Check your backlink profile for well-linked URLs. Group and prioritize based on referral traffic/conversions, link value, and relevance.

    • Look to your XML sitemap

    • Ensure image and video URLs are all moved in the same way as other content on the site.

  • Redirect Map of Old > New URLs

    • Once you have a list of old URLs, decide where each should redirect.

    • Engineering notes: How you store this redirect map depends on your servers and the site move. You might use a database or configure some URL rewriting rules on your system for common redirect patterns

  • Redirects/Rewrite Rules

 

 Google Search Console

  • It is recommended that any configured settings within Google Search Console for the old profile transfer to the new profile. This includes:

    • URL Parameters – if you have configured URL parameters to control the crawling or indexing of your old URLs, make sure those settings are applied. If you are adding parameters to the destination URLs, you will want to declare them in GSC on the new domain.

    • Crawl Rate – it is recommended not to limit Googlebot's crawl rate in GSC for both the source and destination URLs.

    • Disavowed Backlinks – it is recommended that any disavow files uploaded to the old profile are also uploaded to the new profile.

 

 Canonicals

  • If you are using URL Parameters on the Destination URLs, you will want to ensure that there are self-referencing canonicals on the true/original Destination URL. The parameter URLs should have canonicals pointing to the true/original destination URL as well.

 XML Sitemaps

  • Save the following lists for your final move

    • An XML sitemap file containing the old URLs in the mapping

    • An XML sitemap file containing the new URLs in the mapping

 

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Post Migration Checklist:

 Monitoring

  • Indexed Pages & crawl errors

  • 404 pages

  • Backlinks, linking root domains, and site networks

  • Keyword rankings

  • Traffic, conversions, conversion rates

 

Redirects

  • Review all redirected pages to ensure they're redirecting to the correct locations. You can do this manually if there are not a lot of pages. If there are a significant number of pages, you can use a bulk uploader through Screaming Frog. Learn more -  https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/redirect-checker/

 

Reporting

  • Create a report for migration to show benchmarked traffic and new traffic post migration. Share with marketing stakeholders.

 

Google Search Console

  • This should be configured prior to launch. It is an essential tool to help monitor problems and manage crawling and indexation of the site.

 

Google Analytics

  • Add parameters to GA under Admin > View Settings > Exclude URL Query Parameters > Add "source" if using the example noted above.

  •  Check to see if Google Analytics code is included on all pages of the migrated site to ensure you're properly tracking all parts of the site.

 

Robots.txt

  • When a search engine crawler comes to your site, it will look for the robots.txt file. This file tells search engines which web pages of your site should be indexed or which should be ignored.

  • Review the Robots.txt file ensure that it is optimized to tell search engines to crawl only the most relevant pages.

 

Crawl Errors

  • Search for any 404 pages that exist on the new site and correct these errors.

  • Search for any additional crawling errors and provide recommendations on correcting these.

 

Canonicals

  • Make sure canonical tags are correctly implemented after the migration

 

XML Sitemap

  • Make sure the XML sitemaps for the old and new URLs were manually added to GSC.

  • Review any errors with the XML sitemaps and escalate as needed.

 

Content

  • Check the site to make sure no content was lost during the URL migration.

 

Duplicate/Missing Titles, Meta Descriptions, and H1s

  • Search for any missing tags.

 

Internal Navigation

  • Review the internal navigation structure of the site to ensure the structure is passing the strongest amount of link value possible through the site.

 

Internal Linking

  • Assess the current internal linking structure of the migrated URLs.

  • Assess optimizations for internal linking strategies that will help pass value of high authority pages to less authoritative pages.

  • Check Internal Links on website to ensure that none are linking back to old/migrated website

  • If URLs on new website have changed, update internal links to point to the new pages

  • Work with Blog Team to see if there are opportunities for content linking from blog to new pages to help boost traffic/awareness

 

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Additional Resources:

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