Whether it's upgrading hosting, improving your URL structure or simplifying information architecture upgrades to your web presence are inevitable for every company.
As more companies reach the limits of their current web investments, many are worried that significant change will impact their organic listings and SEO performance. I've even seen a company maintaining two websites, frightened that merging would reduce their organic rankings, even though it was near impossible for users to find anything.
Whether you are an in-house marketer or an agency specialist, in my experience if you are able to plan ahead and factor in SEO migration tactics to your project you will find a smooth transition. Often the very fact you engage with the search engines can provide improved rankings on the other side.
In this article I look at 5 tactics to help you in the event of a large scale migration or upgrade.
Sounds obvious but do you know exactly how visible your site is currently? To effectively establish your current position and to be able to understand the impact of site changes, there are two areas to focus on; web referral levels and SEO inclusion.
Site verification is a process that Google Webmaster Tool and other search providers use to ensure that only genuine site owners can see detailed diagnostics, statistics and other information about their search engine inclusion. Webmaster tools is really the best tool we have to tell us if there"€™s a problem with Googlebot"€™s crawl of a site, so verify and benchmark before starting any significant changes.
Your inbound links are critical in providing strong organic search listings, you need to be aware of them and ensure that they stay connected to relevant content.
Inevitably with all the best efforts there will be times when users (and robots) will find missing content and when your referrer levels will fall. With large scale changes there will be long periods of waiting, as much as 10 weeks, before you see a return to near normal levels. In the example below taken from Econsultancy, you can see the 'roller coaster ride' that the team experienced after a domain migration in December 2008.
You've done all you can, the nameserver has been changed, the design is live and there's no turning back. Now you must rely on your migration dashboard to keep you informed of progress. Remember to keep calm, be consistent, and trust in your preparation and research.
In my recent client work in this area I have come across many articles which may help, here are some of my favourites;
Have you undergone earth-shattering change, if so how did SEO cope? Feel free to share your tips and recommendations in the comments below.
By Chris Soames
Chris Soames is a Smart Insights blogger and consultant, he has worked in digital marketing for over 6 years with the last few years managing international web strategies for a leading travel brand. Now the Commercial Director at First 10, an Integrated marketing agency, he helps clients get clarity on their marketing strategy and create campaigns engineered to engage with their consumers to help drive sell-through. Most of all, Chris enjoys working with talented people who want to create great (& commercial) things not just tick boxes.
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