When making changes to your website or launching a completely new website, there are lots of potential risks to your website's SEO performance. Use this presentation to learn about what you need to take care of in order to save your SEO traffic when you relaunch your website.

1. 53
SEO factors for a successful website migration

2. 1.
Raise awareness for website
migration SEO within your organisation

3. ● Expectation management: Not losing SEO traffic is a huge success.
● Communicate the risks: All non-brand SEO traffic and the revenue it generates
could be lost.
● Define high-priority items (show-stoppers): Missing redirects, missing content,
etc.
● Budget and resources: Make sure there is enough time and money to save your
SEO traffic.
How to make SEO a priority within your website relaunch project:
https://www.searchviu.com/en/seo-priority-website-relaunch/

4. 2.
Allocate resources for
troubleshooting after the website
migration

5. ● After the launch of the new website, everybody involved in the project probably
deserves a holiday.
● But: Make sure there are resources available for troubleshooting.
● Crawl errors need to be fixed, traffic drops analysed, etc.
More details on what needs to be done after the migration at the end of this presentation.

6. 3.
Create a website migration SEO
project plan

7. ● Tools like JIRA or Trello can help you organise the SEO tasks that have to be
taken care of before and after the website migration.
● You can also use this presentation and create the first tickets out of the factors
listed here.
● Use priorities, e.g. “show-stopper”, “high”, “medium”, “low”.
● Involve all stakeholders in the project plan and make sure everybody knows
exactly what to do and when.

8. 4.
Make all content that is driving
traffic to the old website available on
the new website

9. ● This seems simple, but it’s very important: Content that is removed from the
website will no longer drive organic traffic.
● Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to analyse which landing
pages are driving SEO traffic for which search queries.
● Make sure the content that is responsible for this traffic is not missing on the new
website.

10. 5.
Make all pages with promising
rankings available on the new
website

11. ● In addition to pages that are already driving traffic, have a look at pages with
promising rankings.
● These pages might be able to drive traffic in the near future, so don’t waste this
potential.
● You can use rank tracking tools (e.g. SEMrush, Sistrix, Searchmetrics, …) to get
this data.

12. 6.
Make sure all inbound links point
to relevant, up-to-date content on
the new website

13. ● Pages with backlinks are important and should be kept, even if they are not
currently driving traffic.
● Pages with backlinks that can’t be kept can be replaced, if the click intent
continues to be satisfied.
● All backlinks should point to relevant and up-to-date pages that also link to
other important pages.
● URLs with backlinks can be redirected to a matching target if the URL can’t be
kept.

14. 7.
Make all images and PDFs that
drive traffic available on the new
website

15. ● Non-HTML file types are often forgotten when analysing content that drives
traffic.
● Check Google Search Console for PDFs and images (or other file types) that drive
traffic. Attention: They won’t show in Google Analytics.
● Indexed PDFs should be replaced by HTML pages with the same (or better)
content.
● Image file names and sizes should be kept, if possible.

16. 8.
Make all keywords that are driving
traffic available on the new website

17. ● Check which keywords are currently driving traffic and at the same time are
included in important places: Title tags, headlines, internal link anchor texts,
page content, etc.
● If you remove these keywords, your rankings might suffer.
● This is a very difficult task to do manually, but searchVIU has you covered.

18. 9.
Keep or improve all title tags and
meta descriptions

19. ● If your old website already has optimised title tags and meta descriptions, make
sure to keep them.
● A website relaunch is a good opportunity to improve all of your title tags and
meta descriptions.
● When making changes to title tags and meta descriptions, pay attention to
keywords that are currently driving traffic - think twice about removing them.
● If you create entirely new pages, make sure to create good title tags and meta
descriptions for them.

20. 10.
Migrate all previous content
optimisations to the new website

21. ● Previous content optimisations can include keyword placement in headlines,
internal links, page content and other places.
● They are sometimes difficult to spot, especially if obscure tactics like WDF*IDF
have been used.
● SEO traffic can suffer if previous optimisations that have had positive effects are
unknowingly removed.
● Check the history and documentation of your project for previous content
optimisations.

22. 11.
Avoid unnecessary URL changes

23. ● Important rule for URLs: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
● SEOs often feel the urge to “optimise” URLs, but in most cases URL changes do
more harm than good.
● Only change URLs if you really have to.

24. 12.
Avoid duplicate content

25. ● Duplicate content can have different causes:
○ Lazy editors might copy the same content to different pages on a website.
○ For technical reasons, some pages might be available with more than one URL.
● Both types of duplicate content can be detected by crawling the new website
and searching for duplicates.

26. 13.
Set up redirects from all old URLs
that no longer exist to a matching
target

27. ● This is one of the most important SEO tasks for website migrations.
● Manually matching old and new URLs can take up a lot of time.
● It is important to find a matching target for each URL that has been driving
traffic. Redirects to the home page or to category pages don’t save SEO traffic.
● Developers might resist and say that too many redirects slow down the site.
Don’t let them fool you.
● Set up your redirects on DEV and test them before the migration.

28. 14.
Avoid redirect chains

29. ● A redirect chain is caused by a URL that redirects to a URL that itself redirects to
another URL.
● All redirects should point directly to their final target.
● Redirect chains are often caused by protocol or domain switches.
○ A developer might set up a rule that redirects all http URLs to their https counterparts and then
redirects some of these https URLs to other different https URLs.
○ In case of a domain switch, there might be a rule that redirects all URLs from the old domain to
their exact equivalents on the new domain, before adding another redirect from old to new URL
paths.

30. 15.
Redirect all URLs that have
backlinks but no content to a
matching target

31. ● If you detect URLs that have backlinks but no content, make sure you redirect
them to a matching target (one that satisfies the user’s click intent).
● If you can’t find a matching redirect target, you should probably create a new
page. A backlink is usually worth the effort.

32. 16.
Change existing redirects to new
targets

33. ● Often, there are already redirects in place, from previous site migrations or
website changes.
● In order to avoid redirect chains, the targets of these old redirects should be
changed to new targets.
● Redirects than are no longer needed because the redirected URLs have not been
requested in a long time can be removed.

34. 17.
Make sure you only use 301 status
codes for permanent redirects

35. ● Using different status codes might slow down the process of replacing old
URLs with new ones.
● A 301 status code is the clearest signal for search engine bots.
● If you are not planning on changing the redirect target anytime soon and if the
redirect target is always the same for all users and bots, a 301 status code is
always the best choice.
● In other cases, e.g. IP or browser language based redirects, a 302 status code
might be an alternative.

36. 18.
Include image and PDF URLs in
your redirects

37. ● All image, PDF and other file type URLs that have been driving traffic or that have
backlinks should be redirected to their new equivalents.
● Indexed PDFs should redirect to HTML pages with the same (or better) content.
PDFs can still be offered on the website, but they should not be indexed.
● Image redirects only really work if the file name (the part after the last slash in
the URL) and the file size stay the same.

38. 19.
Crawl your pages to check
indexability

39. ● Crawl your new website. Often.
● Use different crawl settings:
○ With and without JavaScript rendering.
○ With and without respecting robots.txt directives.
○ As Googlebot and with a different user agent.
○ With and without “nofollow” links.
● Pay attention to settings that might prevent important pages from being
indexed: “noindex”, canonical tags, orphan pages (or only reachable via “nofollow”
links), etc.

40. 20.
Check your robots.txt for harmful or
missing directives

41. ● Some CMS or shop systems automatically add information to the robots.txt file.
● Some developers use the robots.txt file for creative solutions.
● The longest robots.txt file is not necessarily the best one.
● Be aware of this: The robots.txt file asks bots not to crawl a page. This doesn’t
mean that they won’t index it.
● Make sure you know what your robots.txt file is about and that it does not block
search engine bots from important resources.

42. 21.
Make all important content
available for search engine crawlers
and rendering services

43. ● Google now renders almost every single page and often ignores the HTML
source document completely.
● Make sure that all important content is available in the rendered versions of the
pages of your new website without further user actions required.
● Some pages might be driving traffic for long tail search queries thanks to content
that’s not very prominent on the page. Make sure this kind of content is not
hidden from search engines on the new website.

44. 22.
Make all important internal links
crawlable

45. ● Important internal links can be links that have keywords in their anchor texts that
drive traffic to the linked page.
● Links that link from many pages to one page can also be important for the
rankings of the linked page (e.g. main menu links, footer navigation links).
● If a page only has a few internal links pointing to it, these links are also very
important for the page.
● Make sure that these links are technically crawlable and that there aren’t any
directives preventing them from being crawled.

46. 23.
Exclude all pages that are not
supposed to be indexed from indexing

47. ● Pages with thin content or duplicate URLs should not be indexed.
● Pages that generate very few impressions or clicks can also be excluded from
indexing.
● Less pages with a higher average quality often generate more traffic than lots of
pages with lower quality.
● You can use “noindex”, canonical tags and other directives to prevent pages from
being indexed.

48. 24.
Change all internal links to new
targets

49. ● When you launch your new website, make sure your internal links no longer
point to old targets.
● Links in content blocks are often forgotten.
● It is not enough to redirect all URLs, as internal links to redirects are a bad
quality signal for search engines and they slow down the processing of the new
website content and structure.

50. 25.
Keep all important internal links
to important pages

51. ● Just as you have to make sure that all important internal links are still crawlable
after the migration (see number 22), make sure that they are available in the first
place.
● A redesign of the main menu, deletion of the breadcrumb navigation or changes
to the footer menu might cause pages to lose important internal links.
● Check for pages that lose lots of internal links or that are demoted in the internal
linking hierarchy.

52. 26.
Keep all important keywords in
internal link anchor texts

53. ● A keyword that is driving traffic to a page and that is also included in internal
links pointing to this page should not be removed from the link texts.
● A change of a label in the main navigation can cause a serious traffic loss for the
linked page.
● Removing single contextual links from strong pages that contain an important
keyword in the anchor text can also harm the linked page’s rankings.

54. 27.
Keep your breadcrumb
navigation

55. ● Breadcrumb navigations are an important signal for users and search engines to
understand the structure of a page better.
● Their links also pass relevance from pages to their parent pages and they often
contain descriptive link texts.
● Removing a breadcrumb navigation without replacement can cause serious
damage to your organic traffic.

56. 28.
Don’t demote important pages in
the navigation hierarchy

57. ● The level of a page in the navigation hierarchy can play a role for its rankings
and organic traffic.
● The further a page is away from the home page, the less relevant it appears to
search engine crawlers and the harder it is to reach for users.
● Demoting a page that drives organic search traffic can cause a loss of this traffic.

58. 29.
Keep your canonical tag
implementation

59. ● If your current website relies on a canonical tag implementation to tackle
duplicate URLs and this problem is not solved on the new website, make sure to
keep your canonical tag implementation.
● Your new website might need canonical tags on pages that didn’t need them or
that didn’t exist on your old website.
● A perfect website doesn’t need canonical tags and it is always better to improve
the cause of a problem, rather than fighting the symptoms, but canonical tags are
still an important tool for tackling duplicate content problems.

60. 30.
Implement hreflang correctly, if
needed

61. ● If your new website has more than one country or language version, you need an
hreflang implementation.
● A correct hreflang implementation will help search engine crawlers better
interpret the international and multilingual structure of your website.
● Efficient crawling and processing of new information is crucial after a website
migration, and hreflang is one signal that helps search engines achieve this.

62. 31.
Create correct and well-structured
XML sitemaps

63. ● XML sitemaps are only directly important for SEO on very big websites, but they
are always handy for SEO quality control.
● If you separate your XML sitemaps by page types or topics, you can easily detect
how well different areas of the website are indexed.
● Use a sitemap index that links to your different sitemaps.
● Make sure XML sitemaps only include URLs that are supposed to be indexed and
are not blocked by robots.txt, are set to “noindex” or have canonical tags pointing
to other pages.

64. 32.
Handle pagination correctly on the
new website

65. ● If you have paginated content on your new website, make sure you use
rel=”next” and rel=”prev” to help search engine robots interpret the pagination.
● You can also provide a “show all” page and use canonical tags pointing from all
paginated pages to the main page.
● Another alternative can be to set paginated pages to “noindex”. You should avoid
“nofollow” though, because that way pages that are linked only from paginated
pages might never be crawled.

66. 33.
Use structured data on the new
website, wherever possible

67. ● Structured data should be used wherever possible to make the content of your
pages more machine-readable.
● If you’ve been using structured data on your old website, make sure you don’t
remove any of it.
● The latter can happen unknowingly, if your old CMS included structured data out
of the box, and your new one doesn’t.

68. 34.
Use https

69. ● There is no excuse for not using https.
● A website migration is a good opportunity for switching to https.
● If you are changing most of your URLs anyhow, a switch to https can’t do much
additional harm.
● If you are not changing your URLs, but lots of other elements on the website, it
might be a good idea to do the move to https a few weeks earlier or later to
minimise the risk of confusing search engine bots too much.

70. 35.
Keep your image
alt tags

71. ● If you’ve been using optimised image alt tags on your old website, make sure to
keep them on your new website.
● Image alt tags can help generate additional traffic from image search.
● They are also considered as part of the content of the page and should
therefore not be ignored.
● Image alt tags are not just important for SEO, but also for the accessibility of your
page. Users that can’t see your content or that are using devices without screens
have to rely on image alt tags for interpreting images.

72. 36.
Check your HTTP headers for SEO
directives

73. ● Canonical tags, hreflang annotations, “noindex” and other directives can be
included in HTTP headers.
● Directives in HTTP headers can easily be overlooked, so make sure you check the
HTTP headers of your new website before the launch.
● Screaming Frog automatically extracts all important information from HTTP
headers.

74. 37.
Implement your 404 page
correctly

75. ● A 404 page should load on the URL that has been requested (and not trigger
a redirect).
● 404 error pages have to give back a 404 status code, and not 200 or any other
status code.
● For tracking purposes, it makes sense to include “404”, “page not found” or
something similar in the title tag of the error page.
● Your 404 page will probably have lots of visitors after the website migration, so
make sure it’s extra user-friendly.

76. 38.
Check the page speed metrics of
your new website

77. ● You can use Chrome’s new Audits Panel on protected environments.
● It’s even possible (but a bit tricky) to use Google’s PageSpeed Insights on
protected environments.
● Make sure your new website is super fast. This should be a top priority.

78. 39.
Check the mobile version of your
new website

79. ● Crawl your website with a tool that behaves like Google’s mobile bot.
● Make sure all elements that are relevant for SEO (title tags, meta descriptions,
canonical tags, hreflang, rel=”prev” & rel=”next”, “noindex”, internal links, content,
etc.) are available on the mobile version.
● Be aware of all differences between your desktop and mobile version and
evaluate their possible SEO impact.
● This is especially important as we are facing a mobile-first index in the near
future.

80. 40.
Check the rendered
version of your new
website

81. ● As mentioned before, Google renders most pages and often relies on the
rendered version instead of the HTML source document.
● This means that you have to crawl your new website with a tool that renders
JavaScript and extracts all information from the rendered versions of the
pages.
● JavaScript crawling takes up a lot of time and resources.

82. 41.
Implement a custom page for
5xx errors

83. ● Server errors are very likely to occur after a website migration.
● For UX and tracking reasons, it makes sense to set up a custom page for server
errors (with 5xx status codes).

84. 42.
Return a 503 error code in case
the entire website is down
after the relaunch

85. ● If the entire website happens to be down after the website migration, it is best to
return a 503 status code.
● This status code means that the service is temporarily unavailable.
● Search engine crawlers are more likely to interrupt the crawl and try again later if
they encounter this status code.
● A different status code might cause them to keep trying and waste resources.

86. In case of a domain switch

87. 43.
Use the available webmaster
tools features for domain
switches

88. ● Google, Bing and Yandex all have “domain switch” tools with different names.
● If you are switching domains, make sure you set up your webmaster tools as soon
as possible and use the domain switch tools that are available.

89. 44.
Update your backlinks to the
new domain

90. ● Update all links to your website that you have direct control over to your new
domain.
● You can get in contact with website owners that link to your old domain and
politely ask them to change the link target.
● This is also a good way of letting more people know that you have a brand new
website.

91. 45.
Don’t cancel your old domain
and SSL certificate

92. ● Your redirects should work for a long time (probably for ever).
● Make sure you keep your old domain, or your redirects will disappear.
● If you were using https on your old domain, you also have to keep your SSL
certificate, otherwise redirects from https URLs will stop working.

93. After the relaunch

94. 46.
Check your new robots.txt
file

95. ● As soon as your new website goes live, check your new robots.txt file.
● A classic error is leaving the robots.txt file blocking everything, because it was
(intentionally) set up like that on the DEV environment.

96. 47.
Monitor the number of
indexed pages

97. ● If you’re changing lots of URLs, it would be natural to see the number of indexed
URLs rising and then falling again.
● Indexing of new URLs normally happens sooner than removal or replacement of
old ones.
● If you see a different pattern, e.g. a sudden decline in indexed pages, you should
have a closer look at the situation.

98. 48.
Monitor and fix crawl errors in
Google Search Console

99. ● Website migrations without a spike in crawl errors are very rare.
● Mark all crawl errors as fixed just before the website migration.
● After the migration, check them regularly and fix them by redirecting the false
URLs to the correct target.
How to deal with crawl errors in Google Search Console:
https://www.rebelytics.com/crawl-errors-google-search-console/

100. 49.
Monitor and fix errors
experienced by users

101. ● You can easily track 404 errors in Google Analytics without any further tracking
configuration if your 404 error page is set up correctly (see no. 37).
● If you have a trackable 5xx error page, you can also monitor these errors in Google
Analytics.
● Errors experienced by users are even more important than those encountered by
bots and should be fixed first.

102. 50.
Monitor the most important
SEO KPIs

103. ● Keep an eye on your most important SEO KPIs, such as revenue from organic
traffic, session quality, visibility, etc.
● Changes are inevitable after a relaunch, but you should analyse them and
understand their causes.
● Negative trends should be analysed and corrected with high priority.

104. 51.
Monitor the number of SEO
landing pages

105. ● The number of pages that drive organic search traffic is a metric that is usually
very stable.
● It doesn’t depend on seasonal changes or other external factors as much as
traffic, revenue or rankings.
● A drop in the number of SEO landing pages normally is a symptom of technical
(indexing) problems.
● Go to the landing pages report in Google Analytics, apply an organic traffic
segment and scroll down to the number of lines in the report.

106. 52.
Monitor the search analytics
reports in Google Search
Console

107. ● Keep an eye on overall impressions, clicks, average position and click rates in
Google Search Console’s search analytics reports.
● Also monitor these metrics for your most important landing pages and keywords.

108. 53.
Crawl your old URLs to verify
that your redirects are working

109. ● Directly after the migration, crawl all of your old URLs and make sure they
redirect to the right targets.
● This way you can detect errors and fix them before users or search engine bots
find them.

110. THE END