This process may involve different scenarios such as changing the domain, renewing the URL structure, updating the site design or changing the content platform. However, the trick is to ensure that these changes are understood and indexed correctly by search engines. Because a faulty transition can cause serious losses in search rankings.
What is the scope of SEO migration?
Organizing technical SEO
Determining redirect strategies
Preserving or optimizing existing content
Improving user experience
In short, SEO migration, although it may seem like a moving operation indonesia mobile phone numbers database on the surface, is a critical process to protect your site's digital footprint and ensure that it continues stronger on the new platform. Planning, analysis and careful implementation are essential in this process.
Why is SEO Migration Important?
When moving or restructuring a website, SEO migration is actually the heart of the matter. Because the changes you make directly affect not only the appearance of the site, but also the availability of your site on the internet. A mistake made during this process can lead to your search engine rankings, organic traffic, and even loss of customers. This is exactly why SEO migration is so important.
Imagine, a store is moving. If your sign is still hanging at your old address, customers may not be able to find your new location. Or if you put your products on the wrong shelves when moving to your new store, people may not be able to find what they are looking for. SEO migration is the digital equivalent of this;
Maintain Search Engine Visibility: Changes to your site can completely change the way search engines perceive you. For example, a change in URL structure can cause users who were getting traffic from your old URLs to encounter a 404 error. A proper SEO migration plan can prevent such situations.
Not Losing the Achieved Performance: You don't want to suddenly lose the SEO success you have gained by working for months or even years, do you? SEO migration is like a shield to prevent you from falling behind in the rankings.
Improving User Experience: Your new site should be faster, more mobile-friendly, and more user-friendly. But when making these changes, you should also consider the habits of old users. While introducing them to a brand new experience, it is important to make them feel your old structure that they trust.
Staying Strong Against Competitors: A bad SEO migration can be an opportunity for your competitors. A mistake you make during this process can cause them to surpass you in the rankings. But a good SEO migration will not only protect you, it will also give you a competitive advantage.
SEO migration actually gives the following message: “Yes, we are changing. But this change promises a much better future for both our users and search engines.”
In Which Cases Is SEO Migration Necessary?
SEO migration is not a continuous process for every site; however, there are some situations where it becomes a necessity to start this process. Just as you need to decide on the reasons before making a major renovation in your home, it is very important to understand the needs correctly when making a migration decision on a website.
Domain Changes
“Our brand now has a more international identity, so we should switch to .com” or “Our old domain name was too complicated, we are switching to a more user-friendly domain name.” These types of changes are like moving a large address from the perspective of search engines. A proper SEO migration plan is essential in order not to lose all the power (backlinks, authority, ranking) of your old domain name while migrating to your new domain.
Platform Changes (e.g. moving from WordPress to Shopify)
Sometimes your business grows and your current infrastructure is insufficient. You may need to change the platform to provide a better user experience or expand e-commerce features. However, during the platform change, everything from URL structures to metadata must be transferred completely. Otherwise, your rankings may drop and your traffic may decrease.
Site Redesign or Restructuring
Over time, your website may look outdated or lacking in user experience. You may want to switch to a more modern design. However, preserving the old content and structure during this refresh is crucial for both users and search engines.
Major Changes to URL Structure
You may make decisions like, “We will now use a product-focused URL structure instead of a category-based structure.” However, if your old URLs are not redirected to your new ones, your visitors will encounter 404 errors, which will greatly damage your SEO performance.
Moving to a Multilingual or International Site
If you are making your site multilingual to open up to a new market, you need to use hreflang tags correctly and plan your language and region targeting carefully. Otherwise, search engines will not be able to understand which language is suitable for which user and your rankings will be negatively affected.
Major Category and Product Updates for E-Commerce Sites
Frequent category changes, filtering configurations or changes to product URLs on e-commerce sites also require SEO migration. In this process, you should both preserve the value of old pages and increase the performance of new pages.
Preparing for SEO Migration Process: Things to Do Before You Start
SEO migration is like going on a long journey. If you set off without a good plan, with deficiencies or a wrong map, you may not be able to reach your desired destination. Therefore, the preparation phase should be handled with great care before starting the process. Now let's take a closer look at these important steps.
Data Analysis: Understand the Current Situation Well
Before starting the migration process, you need to examine the data about your site in detail.
Google Analytics and Search Console Data: Which of your pages get the most traffic? Which pages on your site are visited the most by users? This data helps you understand which pages are critical and which content needs to be protected.
Performance Reports: Analyze metrics such as your site's current rankings, backlink profile, and organic traffic. Be sure to record this data so you can compare it after migration.
Backup Old Site Structure
Sitemap: Save an XML sitemap of your current site. This will help guide you when planning your URLs.
HTML and Content Backups: Make a full backup of your page titles, meta descriptions, and content, so you don’t lose any valuable information during the migration.
