It’s not just us animate beings that become accustomed to our environments and surroundings. A website is in an environment of its own when it’s being hosted that hosting environment can have a lot of affects on the the site itself. Not in relation to how the site feels or anything of the site, as we know that a website is just a digital creation based on a bunch of of code that determines how it displays and functions for visitors. But the real relevance of ‘environment’ for a site is the way in which the web hosting service is contributing to its SEO value. And as no one needs to be told, search engine ran king are pretty much everything when it comes to a website’s visibility. So what can be done for maintaining rankings after website migration?
That’s what we are going to look at here, and there are all sorts of reasons why a person or business with a website is going to be migrating it to another Canadian web hosting provider. The best case scenario is going to be one where they’ve grown to the point they need to switch to VPS hosting and another provider has the best price on it. But that’s just one of any number of scenarios related to website migration and like most of the hosts across Canada we make domain name transfer easy for anyone who’s migrating over to 4GoodHosting. It’s something we handle for folks on a regular basis, and we’re quite happy to do it.
The primary assurance that website owners are going to want to have when transferring over is to know that their site’s search engine rankings are not going to be diminished as a result of going with a new hosting provider. And fair enough, as there’s no guarantee that’s not going to happen. The first thing we can tell you, though, is that 9-plus times out of 10 if there are going to be any shortcomings they are going to be the result of shortcomings with the web host’s infrastructure. As you’d expect that’s never going to the case here, but that’s a truth that IS going to stretch right across the industry.
With that out of the way, it’s also true that in nearly all instances a website domain transfer is going to have your website SEO quality being the exact same as it was before the site migration. In the event that it’s not here’s what you can do to be maintaining rankings after website migration. If any of these steps are beyond your capacities then you can always reach out to your new host and request assistance and / or explanation with what can be done to restore good SEO for a website here in Canada. Visibility to prospective customers is super important, and there’s a direct correlation between SEO and having that for yourself. So this is definitely a topic worth discussing. Let’s get right into it.
Migration Workings
It’s helpful to start with knowing that website migration involves substantial changes that could be detrimental to search engine visibility, or alternately be beneficial for it. Contributing factors could be a domain name or protocol change (including from HTTP to HTTPS), switching to a new CMS, redesigning the website, or going from one hosting platform to another. The primary reason website migration is undertaken is to improve site functionality, user experience, and search engine performance.
Where it can be less-than-ideal is when it’s done without a thorough SEO plan. In these instances a migration can lead to traffic drops, broken links, an possibly lost rankings too. While some initial change in performance are to be expected during a migration, it’s advisable to be paying attention throughout the entire process to ensure that your site’s SEO value isn’t lessened because of site migration / domain name transfer.
So yes, website migration (or any extensive website redesign too) can impact site SEO, and it’s all attributable to the complex nature of search engine algorithms. Search engines rely on a variety of signals from your website when it’s gauging relevance and ranking. These signals can be disrupted when you migrate your site, and if the disruptions are extensive enough it can mean lost rankings, decreased traffic, and a potential loss of revenue if the website is serving business interests. And in Canada that’s quite often the case.
What can go wrong exactly? How about we start with broken links. Ones that lead to a 404 error can disrupt the user experience and signal to search engines that your site is unreliable.
Lost metadata is also a possibility and something you will want to keep in mind with maintaining rankings after website migration. Missing title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags can reduce your site’s relevancy in search results.
Be on the lookout for duplicate content too. When content is duplicated and isn’t standing on its own it can confuse search engines and take away from your ranking potential. The same can go for changes in URL structure, with altered URLs possibly affecting rankings and user experience if not properly redirected. Avoiding all of this is much more likely if you have a website migration SEO checklist to increase the likelihood of a smooth transition while maintaining your search engine rankings.
All 11 for Continued Good SEO
There are going to be unique considerations for every migration, but it’s almost always that the same pressing concerns exist for every website migration as it happens. Here’s a detailed checklist that covers the must-do moves for every website owner as they get ready to start a website migration and want to make sure their site’s SEO stays intact through the move.
- Audit your existing site by performing a comprehensive SEO audit to understand your current SEO performance. This will include analyzing ranking keywords, backlinks, and site structure to provide a baseline to measure post-migration success.
- Benchmark key metrics by recording your current rankings, traffic, and other key SEO metrics to compare post-migration performance. This is very helpful for helping you identify any issues quickly.
- Create a detailed URL map to outline old URLs and their corresponding new URLs to ensure proper redirection. This step is crucial to maintain the link equity of your old pages.
All of this will be a lead-up to an ‘SEO audit’ of sorts, and this is also very recommended before you begin the migration. Tools like SEMrush, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or Moz can provide detailed insights into your site’s current SEO health. Take the time to identify top-performing pages that drive the most traffic and conversions, and these are the pages that should be getting the lion’s share of your focus during during migration and after it.
Have a firm understanding of your backlink profile too, and tools like Majestic or Ahrefs are good for this to ensure you don’t lose valuable links during the migration.
SEO Migration Pre-Launch
- Establish 301 redirects from old URLs to new URLs to preserve link equity and make it so that users land on the correct pages. This promotes less traffic loss and maintains your site’s SEO integrity.
- Update internal links so that they reflect the new URL structure. Internal linking is vital for user navigation and SEO, and reviewing and updating links isn’t difficult and won’t take much of your time.
- Review and optimize content for SEO, and this will apply to titles, meta descriptions, header tags, and keywords. Doing this ensures your content remains relevant and search engine friendly.
- Test the new site. What you’ll do here is build a simple staging environment to identify and fix any issues, testing for functionality, usability, and SEO factors. Ensure your new CMS or hosting environment supports SEO best practices, and is conducive to fast load times, mobile-friendliness, and has the right SSL certificates if your site is serving eCommerce interests and handling transactions for customers.
A technical SEO review is also a good idea to check that aspects like robots.txt, XML sitemaps, and canonical tags are configured accurately in the new setup. Taking a complete inventory of your content using a content management tool makes it less likely anything is lost during the migration.
SEO Migration Post-Launch
- Monitor traffic and rankings. What most webmasters will do here is use Google Analytics to track your site’s performance. Your focus here should be to determine that no significant drops in traffic or rankings are occurring. Immediate post-launch monitoring can help catch and resolve issues early.
- Find & fix broken links. Crawler tools can be used here to identify and fix any broken links or 404 errors. Broken links will detract from SEO and deter user experience and so it’s wise to find them and fix them after any migration and before you site launches with the new Canadian web hosting provider. This is also a focus is your aim is to be maintaining rankings after website migration
- Submit an updated sitemap to Google, Bing, or other search engines to help them index your new site structure quickly. This step ensures your site is crawled and indexed efficiently.
- Monitor, review and adjust your site and make necessary adjustments to optimize performance. Regular reviews can help maintain and improve your site’s SEO over time.
Be aware that it is of real importance for Google Analytics and other tracking codes to be correctly implemented on the new site. This is a big part of verifying that data is being collected accurately. Google Search Console can be used to monitor for any crawl errors and fix them as they appear, regularly checking the Coverage report for any issues. Collecting user feedback can also help identify any navigation or usability issues that may have arisen post-migration.
Additional Site Migration Checklist Suggestions
It’s also a good idea to be communicating with all stakeholders throughout the migration process. If they need to be managing expectations or having concerns addressed it will always go better if you’re proactive in communicating with them. Be prepared in advance of that by having a backup of your old site before initiating the migration so you’re able to revert to the original setup if anything goes wrong during the migration.
The last thing we’ll recommend here with maintaining rankings after website migration is to run targeted SEO campaigns after the launch. This is especially advisable if SEO has taken a dip for reasons out of your control, and in these cases targeted SEO campaigns can regain any lost rankings and boost the site’s visibility. Consider content marketing, link building, and social media promotions.
