Website migration can be very risky, and you can lose a significant amount of traffic at once. Although the process of website migration is scary, the are ways to eliminate the risk. A successful site migration can also improve the performance of your website. In order to maximize the benefits of site migration and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) value, this article provides you five tips that you should follow.
Analyze Your Current Website:
Before moving to a new platform, it is important to analyze the data of your current website. By analyzing every content on your website, you will have an idea of the most and least important content. You will also need to analyze your business from the perspective of the customers in order toimprove their experience of buying journey. To assess the performance of your website and to analyze the contents, you can use Google Analytics. The data will show you the most popular and worst-performing pages on your website. This will further help you to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your website and you can find a solution to improve your website.
Backup Your Website:
You need to back up your website and move all the data of your website before starting the migration. Backing up is important, otherwise,the old hosting provider can delete all your data and you can lose the entire site. In order to have a good migration, you need to maintain consistency in site traffic. Having a backup can help to improve your SEO value. You can also create a local backup because you can not rely on technology as it can cause several issues.
Upgrade Your URL Setup and Website Architecture:
A major part of website migration is about updating the URL structure and website architecture. This includes HTML code, page structure, and other elements. As search engines understand and catalog your site with the help of these pieces of information, you need to carefully update these setups during the migration process. You need to understand how you can make your website simple, SEO-friendly, and easily navigable with the help of URL structure and website architecture.
Test the New Site:
You can not rush into a migration process, instead, you should go through small testing procedures. You need to test a small amount of data on a sub-domain or sub-directory in order to understand that every component of the whole process is in excellent coordination. You also need to analyze whether the new site is better and more SEO-friendly than the previous site. Everything on the new site should be tested before going live.
Complete DNS Propagation:
After the change of Domain Name Servers or DNS, you should complete your DNS propagation. You should not make changes to your site during the period of propagation. During the propagation, you can not even post new content. In order to check the status of your DNS propagation, you can use some applications.
These are the five tips that you should follow in the case of website migration. However, after the completion of the migration process, you should monitor the website regularly to have better site qualityand optimal SEO.
