Plans to change or migrate your website? Follow my 3 simple tips and keep all the good SEO positioning, how much time and money it cost you to have!

Plans toredesignyour web page,change the webto a new version ormigrate it to a new web domain ? In any of these cases, it is crucial that we follow some key guidelines so that, during this delicate process, tomaintain and preserve all the good SEO positioningthat the website already has and how much time and / or money it cost us to achieve.

When migrating the web page to a new domain or changing to a new version of it, it is crucial that we do it based on aprevious strategic plan , according to theSEO Web positioning requirements for your platform and CMSandpositioning trends SEO of web pages , tomaintain ourprevious SEO .

About to change or migrate your web page? Stop! Protect your web positioning and SEO optimization with a well thought out strategic plan, do it yourself or demand it from your web designer!

Only then will we avoid the possible devastating and irreversible consequences for positioning our web page in web search engines, which would cause our brand to be diluted on the internet and a significant decrease in the volume of visits and sales through web search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo among others.

Change web and SEO;how to maintain positioning when migrating your website

With the experience of years and hundreds of web migrations behind us, from Xplora we have prepared a list of the most important elements in SEO optimization that we must constantly take care of and review during this process of migration, transfer or important change of our website.

However, during this delicate process, we consider it vital to have the SEO services of experts to carry out a professional SEO audit, which would study our case in detail and develop a customized action plan.

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Analyze your website in detail before changing

When changing or migrating a website, it is necessary to take into account several SEO aspects before publishing or updating the website .

Although the web changes are maintaining the same domain name, as in the previous version, it is common that the addresses (URLs) of certain sections or content that make up the web may have changed or disappeared. In these cases it is vital to correctly inform the search engines of these address changes when before, using the response codes and HTTP headers (type 301 redirection).

Analyze your website in detail before changing or migrating it

Otherwise, if we do not notify, we do it or we do not do it correctly, almost certainly we will lose many positions of our website in the internet search engines and, even, we could be penalized and disappear almost entirely from the results lists of searches, because these systems would choose to "restart" our SEO positioning from scratch, which would be a real disaster for any company.

Therefore, in order to avoid risks, it is important that we list all the addresses of the current website, prior to any significant modification we are going to make, identify which sections or web contents are going to change direction or disappear, and perform the necessary programming tasks to redirect these routes to the new addresses of the updated pages, BEFORE applying the changes.

We also consider it vital that we perform these redirection tasks manually , without automatic programs that are on the internet and that can cause errors, and for all the contents of the web , not only the most important as many web design companies perform, because even Less visited content has important SEO and internal linking value.

The redirects of the Web page must be by means of code 301, manually, for all the contents and to the same address as before, well done and without shortcuts!

In the same way it is important to ensure that all redirects take us to the same section or content that was in the previous version of the web , before migrating the web. In the event that such content no longer exists on the new web page, it is related to the previous content, in order to maintain the SEO importance of the link as well as maintaining the good user experience when accessing that previous web address.

During that period and once the web is updated, it is important to carry out continuous revisions in the web browsers to verify that when updating the old web contents, the updated results of the new web version already appear. Until that time it is highly recommended not to make any other update on the new website that could hinder these consolidation phases of the new website and the update in the databases of web browsers.

Analyze your website before changing or migrating to preserve your SEO

In parallel during this process, if you are migrating the web page in a new domain, it is vital to add it to Google Search Console as soon as possible and start working on all the suggested configurations and optimizations that this tool offers us.

Research inbound links before migrating the web

Inbound links (the result of a Linkbuilding campaign ) are those links to our website that are made from other web pages external to ours, either as text or as a graphic (banner). These types of links are key to the SEO positioning of our website, as it gives you authority from web search engines .

When changing or migrating the web, we must request that they update the incoming links, to our website, from other external web pages.

Again for this, especially in the case that the company does not have the necessary time or technical knowledge, it is advisable to have expert SEO technicians, to perform an SEO audit and create a list , of the incoming links that will be affected by the changes we are making on our website.

Once we have a list of all the web pages that link to ours, we must carry out the corresponding steps (automatic change or request to make this change) for updating. In the event that it is not possible to achieve this change, for any reason, we must establish the redirects (301) so that, from the old address, it points to the new web address (URL).

Do an SEO audit of the web and make a plan

On a couple of occasions in this article we have recommended the advice of professionals to perform a correct SEO analysis of the web before changing or migrating it. With professional help during this delicate process, we will be able to develop an SEO audit that helps us identify the weaknesses and strengths of our current website , as well as the risks and opportunities of the update process that we are going to start.

Having this detailed information we can develop a strategic plan with the actions to be carried out , during that process, and take advantage of it to implement changes that even help us improve from the beginning the SEO positioning of the web with respect to the previous version.

Do an SEO audit before migrating or changing the web and make a plan

Although the SEO audit is complex and is completely tailored to each web page, in general we could summarize the points that are reviewed in:

Robots.txt file nonexistent or with bad configuration.

Website map (XML Sitemap) nonexistent or outdated.

META tags (title, description or keywords) nonexistent, duplicate or too long / short.

Duplicate content or with non-existent or misused canonical URL tags .

Labels of non-existent, duplicate or badly hierarchical headings.

Titles of non-existent, duplicate or too long / short sections of the web.

Alternative texts (ALT text) of empty or not optimized images.

Indexing status by web search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo.

Wrong external or internal link addresses (broken). Also remember to customize 404 errors from pages not found !

Structure of web content and names of URLs.

Improve the initial loading speed and performance of the website.

In parallel to the SEO audit, at a general level we must carry out continuous revisions of our website through the Google Analytics system to know in detail the results to the practice of this update and detect possible points to improve, such as the compatibility of the web on mobile devices or even mobile first ! About this application not long ago we commented on how we could improve all our digital marketing actions thanks to Google Analytics data .

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Conclusions; Protect your SEO by changing or migrating your website!

Although a plan to change, move or migrate our website to a new version are complex processes that can take more work or time than initially contemplated, it is vitally important to dedicate the time and resources necessary to ensure that what we are doing is going to bring real value to our web project, both in image, technical configuration, user experience and, very importantly, to its SEO positioning so that it is not harmed.

Because what is clear is that, even if you have a fantastic website, " if they don't find you on the internet, you don't exist ."

If you are interested in delving into this topic, we give you someSEO ideas to better position you in web search engines .

And as always, GSS Webtech will be happy to help you with your online project.