12-01-2017, 06:20 AM
Site migration SEO checklist： don‘t lose traffic
Nothing in the search results can damage a brand’s performance faster than a bad site migration.
Change the domain name or implement the HTTPS can be a very good business， but if you don‘t consider the search engine’s response to the move， you will almost certainly suffered a big blow in the natural search traffic.
1. Carefully consider whether migration is the right choice
Site migrations almost always result in temporary traffic losses - Google takes time to process changes and update its indexes accordingly.
A carefully executed site migration can minimize traffic volatility and， at best， Google will eventually see the new site as the original site.
2. Use a sandbox effect
If you don‘t test the test server for the first time， don’t move the site.
Check the redirection for normal work and complete all inspections before publication.
Trying to do all the work without a test is bound to lead to errors， and if these errors are bad enough， they can get your site back in a few weeks.
Plan to move in a slower time
Well-planned and monitored migrations should not permanently affect your traffic， but you should plan a temporary drop.
For this reason， it‘s best to migrate in a slower section this year， assuming that your site has some seasonal performance.
It’s always a bad idea to migrate before or during the holidays.
While the goal should be to avoid losing any traffic， it‘s important to make sure that if you do lose traffic， you lose it when the business has been slow.
Crawl and grab your site before migrating
Use tools like this on your website to crawl and grab， and make sure to keep these spiders in the future.
You need to make sure that you have a full list of URLs on your old site so that nothing can be lost during the transformation.
Benchmark your analysis
Copy your Google analysis data;
You will need this information so that you can quickly identify whether any traffic is lost after the migration.
If any traffic is missing， please analyze the data derived from your new site， and the old site with you side by side comparison of data so that you can accurately determine which page missing traffic.
In many cases， the loss of traffic will be isolated by separate pages rather than on the entire site.
Plan to map all changed URLs from old addresses to new ones
You should have a spreadsheet listing each old URL and each new URL.
Ideally， all of the old pages will exist on the new site during the site migration.
Obviously， deleting a page removes its ability to capture the traffic of the search engine.
Most importantly， removing too many pages during the migration may result in Google’s conclusion that the new site is different from the old one， leading to a drop in your ranking.
7. Update all internal links
The HTML links on the new site should point to the new site， not the old site.
8. Normalize the transformation of all new pages
Verify that the normalization on the new site references a new site， not an old site.
Normalizing an old site can have disastrous consequences， as it might prevent new sites from being indexed.
Nothing in the search results can damage a brand’s performance faster than a bad site migration.
Change the domain name or implement the HTTPS can be a very good business， but if you don‘t consider the search engine’s response to the move， you will almost certainly suffered a big blow in the natural search traffic.
1. Carefully consider whether migration is the right choice
Site migrations almost always result in temporary traffic losses - Google takes time to process changes and update its indexes accordingly.
A carefully executed site migration can minimize traffic volatility and， at best， Google will eventually see the new site as the original site.
2. Use a sandbox effect
If you don‘t test the test server for the first time， don’t move the site.
Check the redirection for normal work and complete all inspections before publication.
Trying to do all the work without a test is bound to lead to errors， and if these errors are bad enough， they can get your site back in a few weeks.
Plan to move in a slower time
Well-planned and monitored migrations should not permanently affect your traffic， but you should plan a temporary drop.
For this reason， it‘s best to migrate in a slower section this year， assuming that your site has some seasonal performance.
It’s always a bad idea to migrate before or during the holidays.
While the goal should be to avoid losing any traffic， it‘s important to make sure that if you do lose traffic， you lose it when the business has been slow.
Crawl and grab your site before migrating
Use tools like this on your website to crawl and grab， and make sure to keep these spiders in the future.
You need to make sure that you have a full list of URLs on your old site so that nothing can be lost during the transformation.
Benchmark your analysis
Copy your Google analysis data;
You will need this information so that you can quickly identify whether any traffic is lost after the migration.
If any traffic is missing， please analyze the data derived from your new site， and the old site with you side by side comparison of data so that you can accurately determine which page missing traffic.
In many cases， the loss of traffic will be isolated by separate pages rather than on the entire site.
Plan to map all changed URLs from old addresses to new ones
You should have a spreadsheet listing each old URL and each new URL.
Ideally， all of the old pages will exist on the new site during the site migration.
Obviously， deleting a page removes its ability to capture the traffic of the search engine.
Most importantly， removing too many pages during the migration may result in Google’s conclusion that the new site is different from the old one， leading to a drop in your ranking.
7. Update all internal links
The HTML links on the new site should point to the new site， not the old site.
8. Normalize the transformation of all new pages
Verify that the normalization on the new site references a new site， not an old site.
Normalizing an old site can have disastrous consequences， as it might prevent new sites from being indexed.