The document provides a summary of lessons learned from migrating over 120 websites. Some key points include: 1) Migrations do not necessarily have to result in drops in traffic or rankings if proper planning and testing is done. Ensuring redirects, indexing, and canonicalization are set up correctly can prevent issues. 2) Even meticulously planned migrations can be sabotaged if key checks like redirects, robots directives, and crawl errors are not verified frequently during the process. 3) Achieving high technical SEO standards alone with a new platform will not guarantee rankings if the original issues with the site are not addressed, such as lack of valuable content. 4) Major platforms are capable of being optimized,

1. Essential technical SEO learnings from
Launching/migrating over 120 websites

2. I’ve migrated a few websites

3. I’ve migrated a few websites
~120 (probably more)

4. Sites by CMS

5. Sites by CMS
70% of these I’ve worked in the same company as the
developers

6. This is important because?

7. I got a chance to refine the process, what works,
what doesn’t

8. Because I was in an envious position

9. SEO’ing these CMS is not hard

10. +working in the same room as the
development team has many advantages

11. Learn from me, learn from others - the successful
& the less so...

12. This is stressful stuff

13. When this is where you
stand, the drop looks
big doesn’t it?

15. Migrating a website is the most risky thing you can
do

16. I’m going to give you some of my essential tech
SEO learnings from my exp

17. Ready?

18. 1)Migrations do not have to = a drop in
traffic/rankings

19. “Expect an at-least 15% drop in organic traffic”

20. But why??

21. This is expectation management from someone
who gets it wrong often

22. When ranking drops are expected

23. 1)When content is cut out

24. 2)When the focus is changed

25. 3)When you lose an argument in design

26. An Example

27. “We can make large site structure changes, we’ll invest more in marketing/content/link building
post-launch to make up for it…”

28. It is OKAY to not rank:
●When everyone is aware
●When it’s not important
●When it’s a phase 2 or 3 addition

29. To control this you need to SEE
Set Expectations Early

30. If objective #1 is cut the site content by 90%
objective #2 won’t be retain all existing traffic*

31. But you need to get organised first
(more on this later)

32. Recommendation:
1)Get organised - understand the project
2)Benchmark where you are now as best as possible
3)Any decision which may detriment post-launch performance,
needs to be flagged as early as possible
4)Set Expectations Early (SEE)
Migrations do not have to = a drop in traffic/rankings

33. 2) The most meticulously planned
migrations are easy to sabotage

34. Migrations can be condensed into a list of simple-
tasks

35. ❏301 redirects tested
❏Noindex Robots directives removed
❏Fetch & render completed successfully
❏Canonicalisation is correct
❏Site is free from crawl errors on launch

36. Miss any one of these and...

37. Your site is deindexed

38. New spider traps are created

39. You canonicalise back to development site

40. 301 redirects don’t work or worse...

41. But check-points NEED to be frequent

42. A little rudder far from the rocks

47. (Team working
overtime)

49. (re-aligning
expectations)

51. (last minute scramble to
minimise losses)

52. (rankings tank post-
launch)

53. Recommendation:
1)Plan your migration list - pre & post launch
2)The person who signs off the checks should not be the person who
does the work
3)Little-and-often meetings to ensure good comms
4)Ensure launch timeline includes ample time to run checks - don’t
sacrifice this for anything
The most meticulously planned migrations are easy to sabotage

54. 3) A new platform + high technical standards
won't guarantee rankings

55. You’ve launched a new site

56. And nailed everything

57. ❏All images now have alt text & optimised titles
❏Meta descriptions are written perfectly
❏Correct schema on every page
❏No crawl errors
❏No excess bloat

58. But did you fix the original problem?

59. ❏All images now have alt text & optimised titles
❏Meta descriptions are written perfectly
❏Correct schema on every page
❏No crawl errors
❏No excess bloat

60. ❏All images now have alt text & optimised titles
❏Meta descriptions are written perfectly
❏Correct schema on every page
❏No crawl errors
❏No excess bloat
Great, you now have tight standards, but have you
added any significant value?

61. ❏All images now have alt text & optimised titles
❏Meta descriptions are written perfectly
❏Correct schema on every page
❏No crawl errors
❏No excess bloat

62. ❏All images now have alt text & optimised titles
❏Meta descriptions are written perfectly
❏Correct schema on every page
❏No crawl errors
❏No excess bloat
Except Google rewrites these more than ever (and
aren’t a direct ranking factor)

63. ❏All images now have alt text & optimised titles
❏Meta descriptions are written perfectly
❏Correct schema on every page
❏No crawl errors
❏No excess bloat

64. ❏All images now have alt text & optimised titles
❏Meta descriptions are written perfectly
❏Correct schema on every page
❏No crawl errors
❏No excess bloat
Schema = ranking improvements far-less than you’d
expect

65. ❏All images now have alt text & optimised titles
❏Meta descriptions are written perfectly
❏Correct schema on every page
❏No crawl errors
❏No excess bloat

66. ❏All images now have alt text & optimised titles
❏Meta descriptions are written perfectly
❏Correct schema on every page
❏No crawl errors
❏No excess bloat
Unless this was a significant problem before, this is just
good housekeeping

67. ❏All images now have alt text & optimised titles
❏Meta descriptions are written perfectly
❏Correct schema on every page
❏No crawl errors
❏No excess bloat

68. ❏All images now have alt text & optimised titles
❏Meta descriptions are written perfectly
❏Correct schema on every page
❏No crawl errors
❏No excess bloat
Again - Unless this was a significant problem before,
this is just good housekeeping

69. BONUS POINT
A “Good looking” website != ranking better

70. Recommendation:
1)Don’t assume tech SEO hygiene = ranking improvements
2)Understand what you need to fix which Tech SEO can’t help
3)A lot of what you read about as “best practice” doesn’t help every
site in all circumstances
A new platform + high technical standards won't guarantee rankings

71. 4) None of the major platforms are so
bad you "can't SEO them"

72. BOLD STATEMENT ALERT
A successful website can be built on any
modern, functional CMS

74. SEO
It’s very easy to point fingers when
things go bad

75. Assuming it can perform the basic tasks
it needs to, it can be “SEO’d”

76. 1)Don’t confuse disliking a CMS with it not being able to rank
2)Time & a good developer can accomplish a lot
3)If you don’t have these two things, it’ll be more than just “the SEO”
which suffers
Recommendation:
None of the major platforms are so bad you "can't SEO them"

77. 5) Sometimes weird sh!t happens

78. I put this in the middle to not linger too much on this

79. Even if you think you’ve nailed it, sometimes it isn’t
enough

80. Lack of skill?

81. Unlucky?

82. Google Trying to trip us up?

83. Or maybe it’s because the whole system is
complex & opaque?

84. Maybe it’s all of them

85. Migration. From. Hell.

86. Migration. From. Hell.
- Fresh look
- 75+ pages of new, unique
content
- TIGHT SEO standards
- 301’s redirects MOST
comprehensive
- Log files pre-post launch
OKAY

87. Migration. From. Hell.

88. Migration. From. Hell.
These continued drops suggest
something more than just
migration at work

89. But don’t panic, the vast majority of migration-
relation issues can be solved.

90. 1)If you cannot find the answers related to on-site factors, try to
correlate drops with off-site events/factors
2)Find someone to bounce ideas off
3)Don’t get complacent
4)Create a fall-back plan
Recommendation:
Sometimes weird sh!t happens

91. 6) Most launches/ migrations fail
because they are too complex

92. More variables =
more chance to screw up

93. A bad idea:
Changing CMS, protocol & domain in one go

94. An okay idea:
Changing CMS & domain in one go

95. A better idea:
Changing CMS first & waiting

96. It’s a choice between
A)Struggling to ID cause of drops (which costs
weeks/months)
and

97. It’s a choice between
A)Struggling to ID cause of drops (which costs
weeks/months)
and
B) Waiting weeks between events, treading
carefully

98. 1)Only make one large change at once
2)Clearly spell-out risks of each major variable
3)Increase expectation on post-launch time needed for the more
variables you introduce
Recommendation:
Most launches/ migrations fail because they are too complex

99. 7) Investing in buy-in upfront saves
massively on fixing screw-ups later on

100. “In order to carry a
positive action we
must develop here a
positive vision.”
-Dalai Lama

101. Make friends with developers!

102. Dogmatism is the biggest enemy of SEO

103. SEOs aren’t popular on projects...

104. Let go of the stuff
you know is BS

105. But also understand you HAVE to compromise
sometimes...

106. But stick with the stuff that matters

107. 1)People perform better when they understand why they’re doing
what they’re doing
2)Confront any objections early-on
3)Don’t assume everyone’s goals are the same as your own
4)Find a shared-goal, work towards it
5)Don’t be dogmatic
Recommendation:
Investing in buy-in upfront saves massively on fixing screw-ups later on

108. 8) Assumptions lead to the
biggest mistakes

109. “I thought ____ would have checked the redirects
before launch”

110. “It was built in WordPress, that shouldn’t have been
a problem”

111. “Why would they have added a second canonical
tag?”

112. Managing this can be tough - we have to assume
things

113. <a href="https://websitebrand.com/what-we-do/web-development/">

114. <title>Web Design + UX | WEBSITE BRAND</title>
<title>Web Design + UX |
StrategiQ</title>

115. <link rel="canonical" href="https://websitebrand.com/what-we-do/web-design-and-ux/" />

116. Everything GoogleBot sees...

117. … it’s yours, here’s your
sheriff’s badge -own it!

118. Trust that everyone has the best intentions but
monitor like you expect the biggest screw-ups

119. These are all accidents - but the first caused
2 week’s disruption

120. 1)Check everything you can
2)Anything which GoogleBot sees is your responsibility
3)Do not short-cut pre/post launch checks <- these take time
because they are important!
4)Do not assume every website will be built the same way/correctly
Recommendation:
Assumptions lead to the biggest mistakes

121. 9) SEOs build bad websites, but so
do designers & developers

122. In the vast majority of cases one person/skillset
will make a bad website

123. If this works, it’s either because you’re lucky or
you’re paying a lot of money for a great marketer

124. Those who have suffered a poor migration over-
rely on SEO to make a successful launch

125. 1.Create an “SEO-friendly” template
2.Plan out the IA for the design team
3.Tell the content writers what to write

126. As long as “content that ranks well” is not the
same as content that sells well, you need more
people around the table

127. Collaboration is what’s needed here.

128. ❏Iterate the sitemap based on keyword research
❏Recommend IA changes to push key areas
❏Outline content quantities based on search-intent
& competitive landscape

129. Recommendation:
1)Develop a healthy respect for all the key project team
2)Agree involvement/ milestones & when SEO is needed
3)Know when something is or isn’t yours to “own” - round
pegs fit better in round holes
Investing in buy-in upfront saves massively on fixing screw-ups later on

130. 10) The biggest variable in the process is
organisation size, not CMS

131. More stakeholders =
more opinions

132. Recommendations get watered-down

133. Goals are compromised.

134. Not all tech SEO problems are technical

135. Recommendation:
1)Sometimes a battle is better fought with the CMO rather
than the CMS
2)Take as much time framing recommendations as you do
formulating them.
Investing in buy-in upfront saves massively on fixing screw-ups later on

136. To finish

137. If you really struggle to know where to start, invest
in...

138. Set Expectations Early
Too late!

139. Benchmarking
(because some keywords drive traffic
when you don’t expect it)
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/measuring-and-tracking-success

140. Comprehensive 301 mapping
(as many as you can*)
*https://strategiq.co/does-the-number-of-htaccess-rules-impact-performance-and-scalability/

141. And finally...

142. Thank you.

143. Thank you.