How to properly transfer SEO value during a website migration? 

Migrating a website is a complex process that, if not done correctly, can lead to loss of SEO value and traffic. Fortunately, there are steps you can follow to ensure the migration goes smoothly and SEO traffic is preserved.

What is a website migration?

Website migration refers to the process of making significant changes to a website's technology, structure, design or location to achieve better online visibility. This can range from changing domain name to a complete redesign. 

Why is SEO important during a migration?

SEO, or search engine optimisation, is crucial for your website's traffic and visibility. If you don't do a website migration properly, you could lose rankings, traffic and revenue. Transferring SEO values is also called a SEO migration. 

Read also: How do you plan a website migration and what is the role of SEO?

How do you retain SEO value during a website migration?

1. Provide a good new URL structure

Before you start, make sure your new domain is SEO-friendly. This means the domain name must be relevant. It is also important that the user easily remembers the name. Furthermore, a logical URL structure important. 

2. Ensure proper redirects (301 redirects)

When migrating the site to the new domain, it is essential to 301 diversions set up from your old domain to your new one. This ensures that users and search engines are seamlessly directed to the new location. Although there are other types of redirects, a 301 redirect is recommended because it indicates that the page has been permanently moved. Also, with this redirect, SEO value is passed, which in the case of a 307 redirect for example, is not the case. 

3. Verify your new domain with Google Search Console and provide an address change if the domain name changes

This helps you detect and correct any crawl or indexing errors quickly. In our blog about Google Search Console read what you can do with all this. 

4. Update all entries from the old URL

This includes internal links, backlinks and mentions on social media. This often means you need to write to parties, for example to update backlinks. That way, you make sure the links lead to the new urls and not to urls that have a redirect on them. 

5. Update Google Analytics

Make sure your tracking code is installed correctly on your new site so you can continue to track your traffic and conversions.

6. Monitor results

After migration, it is essential to keep monitoring your traffic, rankings and other key metrics to quickly identify and address any issues.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

There are an awful lot of pitfalls when it comes to SEO migration. Our technical check often consists of 30-50 slides alone, with information for the developer. Not to mention the creation of the redirect files (the files that contain all the redirects). 

We would like to tell you in advance about some of the pitfalls we see coming up during migrations. After all, we not only do the migration itself, but are sometimes called in if a migration has gone wrong. It is then up to us to restore the SEO value as much as possible, if that is still possible. Here are a few pitfalls to make sure this does not happen to your website/webshop:

1. Not the right redirects 

Make sure you redirect old URLs correctly to the relevant pages on your new site, rather than sending them all to the homepage.

2. Loss of content

Make sure that all valuable content is transferred and that no pages are lost. Otherwise, SEO value will also be lost. 

3. Technical issues

Test your new site thoroughly on a test server before going live to identify and resolve any technical issues. Also, do crawl immediately after going live to identify problems. The faster problems are resolved, the better it is for SEO value and rankings. 

Martijn Hoving (owner of SEO agency Onder) has now been in the business for more than 10 years. This means he has already experienced a lot when it comes to the migrating websites. He is happy to tell you more about his biggest mistakes in a YouTube video. 

Need help with a SEO migration? Choose SEO agency Onder 

In recent years, we do a lot of migrations for customers. As a result, we have already done many different cases past and we have had some great successes. Is your website/webshop going to migrate and do you want to maintain or even improve your organic traffic? Then take contact with us. Then together we will make sure that the SEO is transferred in the best possible way. This way, you maintain your positions in the search engines and ensure that you have a website that is "healthy", and can perform well in the future.