Site Migration Best Practices: Your Burning Questions, Answered

All proper, of us, let’s discuss website migration, one of the nerve-wracking, pulse-racing initiatives in digital advertising. In the event you’ve ever been getting ready to a website migration, you’ve most likely had a second the place you significantly thought-about operating off into the woods to begin a brand new internet-free life. 

However worry not. With the best web site migration technique, a strong workforce, and possibly some chocolate close by to appease your nerves, your web site migration doesn’t should really feel like a high-stakes gamble. 

At Intero Digital, we migrated six legacy brand websites into one digital powerhouse: InteroDigital.com. Was it simple? Completely not. Was it value it? 1,000%. And since we’re all about sharing the love (and saving you some sleepless nights), we’re answering frequent website migration questions and breaking down some website migration greatest practices we discovered alongside the way in which.

Web site migration is whenever you make main adjustments to your web site’s construction, area, internet hosting, or platform. 

Consider it like renovating your own home, besides as an alternative of simply pulling down partitions, you’re additionally transferring your deal with, rethinking your landscaping (hi there, search engine optimisation!), and possibly putting in a complete new safety system. 

Why do it? As a result of staying stagnant within the digital marketing world is a one-way ticket to irrelevance. Whether or not you’re rebranding, consolidating a number of websites, or upgrading your tech stack, website migration can rework your online business — however provided that it’s finished proper. 

However right here’s the kicker: Web site migration is dangerous. Search rankings can tank, site visitors can nosedive, and leads can disappear sooner than free snacks within the workplace breakroom. That’s why we’re right here: that can assist you keep away from a digital catastrophe. 

Step one of a web site migration is to ask your self, “Why am I doing this?” 

For Intero Digital, our objective was crystal-clear: After our acquisitions, we had six legacy manufacturers with separate web sites. Consolidating them into one wasn’t nearly reducing down on internet hosting charges (although, let’s be actual, that was a pleasant perk). It was about making a unified model presence, streamlining advertising efforts, and higher capturing leads. 

Professional tip: Write down your website migration targets, and ensure each single motion and choice aligns with them. Are you making an attempt to spice up search engine optimisation? Enhance the consumer expertise? Simplify backend administration? Figuring out your “why” and documenting your goals will maintain your workforce laser-focused as you’re employed your approach by way of your web site migration guidelines.

One of the vital vital web site migration steps is conducting a radical website audit. Content material, URLs, backlinks, metadata, analytics information, website pace, cell efficiency, design belongings, technical infrastructure — the entire enchilada. 

At Intero Digital, we kicked issues off with an enormous content audit throughout the six legacy websites. Image us in a digital warfare room, armed with spreadsheets and caffeine, determining what content material to maintain, merge, rewrite, or toss. 

Right here’s what we analyzed: 

• Excessive-performing pages: What content material was driving site visitors and leads? Prime precedence for migration. 

• Outdated content material: Something irrelevant or underperforming received rewritten or reduce. 

• Duplicate content material: As a result of Google hates duplicate content material, and we weren’t about to threat our rankings by migrating a number of items from a number of websites that coated the identical data. 

Professional tip: Use instruments like Screaming Frog or Semrush to crawl your website and collect information on URLs, metadata, and backlinks earlier than making any strikes. We even have a content audit template that may aid you get began.

Listed below are just a few methods you may maintain your SEO strategy robust throughout your web site migration: 

• 301 redirects: A 301 redirect tells Google that an outdated URL has completely moved to a brand new one. Throughout our migration, we constructed an in depth redirect map so that each single web page from our legacy websites had a correct new house on InteroDigital.com. 

• Preserved backlinks: Use a instrument like Ahrefs to trace inbound hyperlinks and ensure they level to the proper new pages. Shedding backlinks = dropping authority = unhealthy information. 

• Key phrase mapping: Guarantee your new pages are optimized for the best key phrases. 

Professional tip: Check your redirects earlier than launch. There’s nothing worse than discovering out post-migration that your website has broken links and half your pages are resulting in a dreaded “404 Not Discovered” error. 

Run usability exams. 

A shiny new web site isn’t value a lot if it’s irritating to navigate. That’s why, for InteroDigital.com, we prioritized a seamless UX so guests might simply discover what they have been on the lookout for, whether or not that was search engine optimisation companies, content material advertising companies, or a useful weblog submit like this one. 

Earlier than launch, we ran usability exams to determine and repair ache factors in our new website’s construction. 

Professional tip: Use heatmaps and A/B exams earlier than your website migration to see how customers work together together with your present website(s). Instruments like Hotjar can reveal invaluable consumer conduct insights. 

Brief reply? A LOT. 

Launch day will not be the time to search out out that your website appears like rubbish on cell or that your contact kinds are utterly damaged. 

At Intero Digital, we examined our new website throughout multiple units and browsers, we examined each single hyperlink, and we nonetheless commonly evaluate website pace and efficiency. 

Instruments we used: 

• Google PageSpeed Insights 

• Good old style handbook testing 

The work doesn’t cease after launch. For weeks, you’ll want to observe site visitors, rankings, and leads like a hawk. You also needs to use a instrument like Google Search Console to test for crawl errors or indexing points. 

Don’t panic when you see a slight dip in site visitors. That’s regular at first! The bottom line is to determine and repair any points promptly so you may rebound rapidly.

If you’re about to deal with a website migration, keep in mind this: Preparation is every little thing. Comply with the ideas on this web site migration information, maintain your website migration targets in focus, and you’ll come out on the opposite facet stronger than ever.