Migrations are Messy | Digital Summit Washington, DC

1. MIGRATIONS ARE MESSY Avoid common mistakes and reduce the risk of harming your SEO performance DIGITAL SUMMIT | WASHINGTON, DC | APRIL 19, 2023 CLARK TAYLOR Chief Digital Oﬃcer, Atigro clark@atigro.com @clarktaylor Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential

2. TODAY WE WILL REVIEW 4 Insights that’ll almost GUARANTEE a Successful Migration 10 Big Mistakes to AVOID A valuable DOCUMENT to ensure your new website is SEO-friendly Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential @clarktaylor

3. PREPARE STAKEHOLDERS Even if everything goes smoothly, it’s not unusual to see a decline in organic traffic If you’re getting significant traffic and revenue from SEO, your SEO team MUST be tightly intertwined in every aspect Continuous communication among all stakeholders is required It won’t be perfect Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential @clarktaylor

4. SET EXPECTATIONS You’ll need a strong project manager This can be the most complex undertaking you’ve ever gone through professionally If you’re the SEO, inject your self very early If you’re the CMO, CTO, CIO, Designer, Developer, engage with SEO very early If SEO is a significant part of your revenue, this advice is critical Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential @clarktaylor

10. 4 CRITICALLY IMPORTANT THINGS THAT MUST IMPROVE 1 SEO Fundamentals 2 Content Quality 3 Core Web Vitals (CWVs): User Experience, Page Speed, and Performance 4 Information Architecture Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential @clarktaylor

11. SEO FUNDAMENTALS - 1ST OF 3 AUDITS ✔ Find technical issues that shouldn’t be carried over to new site ✔ Identify the most valuable content ✔ Capture baselines on page speed/performance, types of URLs, site structure, internal linking and link depth ✔ Develop URL source for redirect map ✔ Use audit to develop requirements for the new site ✔ Identify low value content for removal Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential @clarktaylor

12. CONTENT QUALITY Google’s Helpful Content Ranking System is real A migration is a great time to prune low-quality or unhelpful content Can significantly help to shorten recovery after migration If you have content that’s performing well, make as few changes as possible Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential Timeframe: January 1, 2022 - January 9, 2023 @clarktaylor

13. PAGE SPEED AND PERFORMANCE All areas of CWVs should be improved ✔ Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) ✔ First Input Delay (FID) ✔ Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) Testing before launch can be difficult Have seen a stronger correlation recently to improved SEO performance Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential @clarktaylor

14. INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Helps users and search engines easily find your content and related information Helps showcase your depth and breadth of content Your most important content should be no deeper than 2-3 clicks from the homepage Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential @clarktaylor

16. PLANNING AND DISCOVERY PHASE ✔ Make sure all stakeholders have input on objectives (executives, operations, sales, marketing, advertising, content, SEO, development) ✔ Thorough audit of your entire web presence (all domains, sub-domains) ✔ Analysis of top competitors’ web presence, topic and content gaps, performance, frameworks, platforms and other technologies ✔ Establish MVP and SEO business requirements ✔ Realistic estimates of cost and timelines Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential @clarktaylor

17. SEO BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS Marketing and development teams cannot provide accurate time and cost estimates without knowing EXACTLY what is required of the new site SEO will develop the requirements and get formal acceptance from marketing and development teams Some give and take is expected but each party needs to know the impact of each requirement and the risks Ensures SEO-friendly website at launch, reduces risk of catastrophic traffic loss and increases likelihood of long-term gains Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential @clarktaylor

23. WARNING Not everyone will love the strict requirements Formal acceptance is required Expect pushback even after acceptance happens Remind stakeholders of the risks Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential @clarktaylor

24. YOU MAY GET PUSHBACK AFTER ACCEPTANCE Me: Some URLs in the staging site are mixed case (a combination of uppercase and lowercase) Developer: This is a non-issue. Look at any other major website, such as amazon.com. No one types URLs by hand… this is silly. Me: This requirement is not because people enter URLs by hand. It is because Google will treat uppercase and lowercase URLs as unique indexable URLs, causing confusing on which URL it should rank. Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential @clarktaylor

26. TOP 10 BIG MISTAKES TO AVOID 1 Not testing a beta version 2 Migrating to a new domain that has been tarnished, penalized 3 Improper redirects – 302s instead of 301s, redirect loops, long redirect chains, redirecting all pages to the new homepage 4 Failure to think mobile-first in the new design 5 Forgetting about legacy content Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential 6 Migrating everything without being selective 7 Setting up a new Google Analytics account 8 Meta-robots noindex, or robots.txt block on new site 9 Forgetting to update paid campaigns, Google Business Profile, social profiles 10 No reset button in place, fail to save backup of old site @clarktaylor

34. TOP 10 BIG MISTAKES TO AVOID 1 Not testing a beta version 2 Migrating to a new domain that has been tarnished, penalized 3 Improper redirects – 302s instead of 301s, redirect loops, long redirect chains, redirecting all pages to the new homepage 4 Failure to think mobile-first in the new design 5 Forgetting about legacy content Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential 6 Migrating everything without being selective 7 Setting up a new Google Analytics account 8 Meta-robots noindex, or robots.txt block on new site 9 Forgetting to update paid campaigns, Google Profile, social profiles 10 No reset button in place, fail to save backup of old sit @clarktaylor

37. SEO BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENT Some SEOs may have very different requirements Find links to site migration checklists from seoClarity and Semrush Copyright 2023 All rights reserved Confidential atigro.com/digital-summit-dc-2023 @clarktaylor

Migrations are Messy | Digital Summit Washington, DC

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