Migration Best Practices for SEO Success

@basgr from @peakaceag#SMX #29A
Bastian Grimm, Peak Ace AG | @basgr
Successfully relaunching your website >> the tech edition
Migration Best Practices

Never change a running system!

3 @peakaceag pa.ag@basgr from @peakaceag#SMX #29A
Every (big) change brings (loads of) opportunity!
But always keep in mind: the price tag for failure is immense!
Risk Reward
User acceptance “Once in a lifetime” opportunity
Project complexity Greenfield project: question everything
Resilience/freeze Best chance to really “get shit done”
Interruption Opportunity to eliminate “legacy problems”
Politics Usually more agile vs regular, daily business
Performance Rethink RWD/dynamic serving, HTTPS, URL design, etc.

Migration types and their potential impact on SEO
Often these types overlap – or multiple things are done at once.
Inspired by @jonoalderson: http://pa.ag/2xUCMnJ
Type Example
Hosting migrations You’re changing hosting or CDN provider(s).
You’re changing, adding, or removing server locations.
You’re changing your tech stack/caching/lbs.
Software migrations You’re changing CMS (or its version/plugins, etc.).
You’re changing the language used to render the website.
You’re merging platforms; e.g., a blog which operated on a separate domain.
Domain migrations You’re changing the main domain of your website.
You’re buying/adding new domains/subdomains to your ecosystem.
You’re moving a website, or part of a website, between domains.
Template migrations You’re changing the layout/structure/navigation of important pages.
You’re adding or removing template components.
You’re changing elements in your code, like title, canonical, or hreflang tags.
… and there are more: design migrations, strategy migrations, content migrations, protocol migrations, etc.

Make it a granular, multi-step approach
Doing everything at once will make debugging & rolling back an almost impossible task!
Source: http://pa.ag/2yJqT1N

What is your goal for the migration?
The right mindset is super, super important!
I want to lose as little as
possible!” – isn’t really the
right goal for a migration!

Thorough documentation, in-depth definition of requirements
and ongoing testing are essential!
Be crazy about details

…from someone who has successfully
done this type of work before.
Ask for help…

▪ Google Search Console: manual actions,
server errors (DNS, 5XX response codes),
mark-up validation errors (AMP, schema.org,
rich cards), robots.txt
▪ Web crawl: internal redirects as well as
redirect chains, broken URLs, and internal links
▪ Log files: broken URLs, suspicious status
codes, crawler traps
▪ Algo issues? Relocating with Panda, Penguin
& Co. makes very little sense
Pre-migration site health check & clean-up
A properly optimised domain migrates easier and more efficiently.
Getting your house in order before the move minimises the risk of losing rankings.

Be careful with broken pages & broken internal linking

You will need an arsenal of tools!
A lot depends on personal taste, but you’ll need at least one tool each for crawling, log
file analysis as well as search intelligence – and yes, this costs money!

Figure out well in advance how to get access to all relevant server
access logs, e.g., native access or using a SaaS solution.
Get access to server logs

Gather all URLs including static assets #1
Must haves: log files, XML sitemaps as well as a full website crawl
Extras: analytics (top ranking URLs and/or URLs generating the most traffic)
Mode > List > Upload
small domains
large domains

Gather all URLs including static assets #2
Additionally: get the URLs that are strongly linked, bring a lot of traffic and /or have
been shared the most, etc.

Switch to monitor your keyword rankings daily
Check critical keywords daily to ensure you are only working with the most recent data.

Establishing a status quo performance benchmark
Lighthouse (via Chrome DevTools) or webpagetest.org provide relevant metrics.
Important: don’t just test the homepage, but also category/product pages.

As a rule of thumb: 1-to-1 redirects from old to new!
Prepare URL redirect mapping

Provide staging/test server
Make sure the server is locked-down properly to ensure your content doesn’t get
indexed in advance (i.a. duplicate content problems).
Methodology Pros Cons
noindex (meta tag/header)
- External tools can access without
separate access rules
- URLs are definitely not indexed
- Indexing rules cannot fully be tested
(all noindex)
- Waste of crawl budget
robots.txt
- External tools can access without
separate access rules
- No crawl budget is wasted
- Indexing rules cannot fully be tested
(only with robots.txt override)
- If linked, test URLs may appear in the index
(without title/metas).
password secured (.htaccess)
- Everything can be tested properly
- External tools must be able to handle password
authentication.
IP-based access
- Everything can be tested properly
- External tools must be able to handle IP-based
authentication.
VPN - Absolutely safe! - So safe, only a few tools can handle it!

Build your very own migration Q&A check-list
Depending on what type of changes you’re undergoing, this needs to be adapted.
Use Aleyda’s template for more inspiration: https://pa.ag/2H6bOLH
Canonical tags & other rel-alternate annotations
Remember to annotate your dedicated mobile site and to
adapt your RSS feeds
Stage: Pre-migration Who? Bastian When? 23.05.18
Multilingual setup: Customize hreflang target URLs
Keep in mind: Various locations can be affected (e.g. head
section, server headers, xml sitemaps)
Update pel=next/prev pagination annotations
Are you using Google´s recommendation for pagination?
Update XML Sitemaps
Sitemap index file needs to be changed also, if you
reference it in robots.txt
Structured data update (schema.org)
Update your schema.org mark-up references. Short annotations
like “//schema.org“ don´t validate!
Update CDN settings and resource hints
Update requests for assets to CDNs & any resource hints
(preconnect, dns-prefetch)
Update HTTP header & customize cookie settings
If applicable, customize X-Robots header tags. Use Chrome
DevTools!

Update internal links
Simply relying on redirects is no migration strategy
▪ Links to other internal
URLs
▪ Links to internal image
files
▪ Links to internal video
files
▪ Links to internal web
fonts
▪ Links to internal
JavaScript files
▪ Links to internal CSS
files
JS
HTML
Source code

Update internal links (within JavaScript files)
▪ Links to other internal
URLs
▪ Links to internal CSS
files
JAVASCRIPT
Files
files

Update internal links (within CSS files)
files
▪ Links to internal
web fonts
CSS
Files
▪ Any other internal links

Be careful with internal redirects!
Avoid redirect chains: old URLs should lead directly to the corresponding new URL
Source: Redirect Chain Report via DeepCrawl

Better safe than sorry: let’s test crawl the staging server
and run a comparison
Everything updated?

Work your search console

Prerequisites for a migration:
▪ No manual actions
▪ No significant amount of crawl errors (DNS,
availability)
▪ No problems with the XML sitemaps
▪ Valid structured data/rich cards mark-up, no
AMP and hreflang errors
Create new properties & eventually merge them into a set
Properties for HTTP and HTTPS with and without www = 4 domains
If you use separate mobile domains, there are 6 domains in total!

Transfer disavow links file in time
Especially for domains with a “questionable” link profile: GSC setup and disavow file
transfer should be done approximately 48 hours before going live!

Set your preferred domain and (if necessary) crawl rate
You don’t need to set the crawl rate, but, if you have done so previously, I would
suggest transferring the original settings (for now).

Configure geo targeting for gTLDs
Synchronise settings for handling URL parameters if necessary (i.e. for “.com” gTLDs)

After all this preparation, all you need to do now
is to "just" redirect URLs.
301 redirect all the things!

Even if, as some Googlers say, all redirects are equal…
…all we did for this client was change the (chained) 302/307 to 301 redirects!

Note: it only works for domain migrations!
Use the GSC “site move” feature

Before you send to the index: test GSCs fetch & render
Make sure Google includes and displays all requested components properly!

Test and re-submit all XML sitemaps
Also: synchronise URL parameter settings, if you were using them or if you need them
for your site’s functionality.

List crawl of old URLs & manual SERP checks
Import old URLs, e.g., to ScreamingFrog (list mode), only 301s should appear here.
Additional manual check of indexed URLs, e.g., via LinkClump add-on in Chrome.
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The most common problem with migrations gone wrong?
Missing or wrong redirects!
Seriously: check your redirects

Migration Best Practices for SEO Success

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