Read time 10 mins

How To Retain SEO Value When Migrating To a New Website

04/09/2017 - Digital Marketing

We’ve heard too many horror stories about companies paying thousands of pounds for a new website which in theory should perform much better than their previous one, only to be wiped off Google’s radar because they didn’t follow SEO best practice guidelines when taking their new website live. And once your keyword rankings have dropped dramatically, it can be a long, painful journey to get them back to where they used to be.

Worry not, we’re here to help and we’ve prepared a handy guide covering some of the key steps you should follow to avoid that happening to you.

Speed

Step #1 – Prepare a checklist

The Un.titled SEO team has created an SEO go-live checklist which covers 58 points across different areas that can help us ensure that whenever we take a new website live, we are able to retain its existing SEO value.

The main areas you should look at include:

Meta data
Content
Schema mark-up

URL structure
txt
xml
Crawler accessibility
Domain duplication
Google Analytics

If you’re not too familiar with SEO and its more technical aspects, you can always get an SEO agency to help you ensure that your website is being taken care of.

UX Design

Step #2 – Pre-go live checks

Once you have your checklist in place, it’s time to start working your way through it, covering as much as possible before the new website goes live. This can result in an easier migration and less work to be done after the go live, when invariably there will be some last aspects that need sorting out.

You (or your SEO experts) should work closely with developers to ensure that the all the meta data is in place and optimised, the website is populated with high quality content which has been tagged up appropriately, the URL structure is set up correctly and the Schema mark-up has been done.

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) Analysis

Step #3 – Post-go live checks

Immediately after the new website has gone live, the SEO team needs to ensure that the sitemap.xml and robots.txt are fetched correctly and updated, as well as testing that all the data is being pulled through to Google Analytics correctly.

Step #4 – Monitor your keyword rankings and Organic performance

Keep a close eye on your keyword rankings and Organic performance in Google Analytics for the weeks following the go live. It’s normal to see some initial shifts in rankings, as Google is re-indexing your website, but if you’ve done all the SEO checks needed, there shouldn’t be a massive drop, and you can expect to see significant improvements in the months to come.