{"id":4079,"date":"2022-01-19T00:24:14","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T00:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/19\/google-shares-advice-on-site-migrations\/"},"modified":"2022-01-19T00:24:14","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T00:24:14","slug":"google-shares-advice-on-site-migrations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/19\/google-shares-advice-on-site-migrations\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Shares Advice on Site Migrations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Google published a new video about site migrations. John Mueller offered insights into how Google handles website migrations and how long they can take. The major takeaways are that site migrations can be difficult and that a comprehensive plan needs to be in place before the migration.<\/p>\n

The video begins with a question:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re currently going through a site migration and we\u2019d also like to restructure the URLs on the site. Does this impose any risks?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Migrating a site typically means changing the domain name, sometimes because the company is merged with another one or because the branding changed.<\/p>\n

Joining two sites together are the trickiest because you have to choose what URLs will remain and which will be merged into existing pages that are similar.<\/p>\n

John Mueller answered:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cUnfortunately, while this may at first sound like a small change within a website, it\u2019s not that simple for search engines.<\/p>\n

In particular, search engines like Google store their index on a per-page basis.<\/p>\n

So if you change the address or the URL of a page, that page\u2019s data has to be forwarded somehow, otherwise it gets lost.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re completely rebuilding a website or if you\u2019re just removing a slash from the end of URLs. These are all essentially site moves.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

John Mueller Offers Site Migration Tips<\/h2>\n

1. Research the Options and Potential Effects<\/h3>\n

Site moves can be disruptive so it\u2019s important to plan out the move by mapping one site to another. One way to do it is to divide the two sites into sections and see if sections can map to each other.<\/p>\n

From there it\u2019s a matter of mapping URLs one to one and deciding which URLs cannot be moved to the new site and should resolve to a 404 response, which can be tough if there are links pointing to those pages. Which is why it\u2019s important to plan ahead, thoroughly.<\/p>\n

Mueller advised:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cSince these changes take time and have ranking effects, it\u2019s also recommended to consider the timing of when you make a move.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Screenshot of Google\u2019s John Mueller<\/p>\n

\"John<\/p>\n

2. Create a List of Old and New URLs<\/h3>\n

This is an important step.<\/p>\n

According to John:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201c\u2026This tip will help help you to track and check the changes afterward.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A good practice is to create a spreadsheet of URLs, which can easily be done with Screaming Frog.<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve got the redirects in place and the new URLs up, you can check the work by uploading the list of the old site structure to Screaming Frog so that it can crawl the URLs.<\/p>\n

This is easily done by selecting Mode<\/em> > List<\/em> then clicking on the Upload<\/em> drop down menu tab and selecting the type of file being uploaded.<\/p>\n

Screaming Frog will crawl the old URLs in the list and show you which URLs are redirecting to the new URLs and which are not and returning a 404 page not found error response code.<\/p>\n

The 404 URLs may be the URLs that didn\u2019t make it over to the new site (if they aren\u2019t the URLs planned on being purposely dropped).<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll have to determine if the 404 is the correct response (you meant to do that) or if the URL was unintentionally left out of the site migration and needs to be mapped to a new URL.<\/p>\n

3. Implement the Migration<\/h3>\n

Mueller advised:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201c301 redirect all the old URLs to the new ones, also update all internal mentions such as:<\/p>\n