A Guide To Common Website Migration Issues - And How To Avoid Them
Every once in a while, your website will have the need to migrate to another hosting provider or content management system. Much of the reason for this will have to do with changes and updates to the way you conduct your SEO strategy, but there are financial and efficiency-related motives for the move as well. A common question that gets asked during this period is how you can avoid a dip in search engine rankings during this point. Much of what causes dips in traffic like these can be avoided with the right precautions and practices. We’ll go over some of the most common issues website owners face when migrating below – and how to avoid them!
The Most Common Website Migration Issues
Before we can get into preventative measures to take and best practices for website migration, it’s crucial to determine the biggest problems before you start. Website migration is a sensitive process that your business cannot afford to go into blind! However, many companies fail to do their research, which leaves them vulnerable to these preventative issues. We’ve compiled a list of the biggest offenders below:
- Lack Of Website Backups: A crucial mistake that business owners make is failing to have a backup of their website prior to the move. Without a fallback option, you could potentially lose all of the design and content elements of your website should things go wrong!
- Failure To Outline Your Sitemap: When a website is moved, link structure has the potential to change. This is especially the case if your website migration comes with a new domain! Without a detailed sitemap, your business could fall victim to a plethora of 404 errors.
- Failure To Account For Link Structure: If you have a lot of canonical links on your website, you need to ensure that they all go to the same places to prevent any issues. Additionally, if you’re moving from an HTTP domain to an HTTPS domain, ensure that your internal links either reflect this change or have appropriate redirects set up.
- Failure To Save Metadata: Especially if you have a website that you’ve worked with for a while, the last thing you want is for all of your metadata to go missing after the move!
Best Preparation Practices For Website Migration
The best thing you can do before you migrate your website is to put special emphasis on the planning phase. The more things you can account for before a potential move, the easier it will be to avoid drops on search engine rankings and losses of traffic! Before you conduct your move, we’ve compiled a checklist of all of the items you need to get together. Once you’ve checked everything off the list, you’re good to move! Otherwise, make sure you have the following elements:
- Metadata for all pages
- Link structure for all pages
- XML sitemap
- A backup of your website and its files
- A redirect list of any redirected links you had prior to the move
- Your DNS servers – both the old ones and the ones you’ll be pointing to next
- A list of all URLs on the website – Google Search Console is great for this!
Web Design & Migration With Boston Web Marketing
If you feel that your website’s design is lacking, it could be hurting your ability to rank well online! Boston Web Marketing can design a brand-new, beautiful website for you that perfectly aligns with your business’s vision and branding goals. We’ll also conduct all of the SEO-related work before and after the build to help your business stay relevant on search engines! To improve the user experience on your website and drive new business, click here to contact us directly!