Website migration

• You avoid a drop in traffic
  By implementing proper redirects, you move users to the new website, ensuring that your customers do not have trouble finding your products and services online.
• You maintain high rankings in search results
  You minimize any potential drops in your site’s rankings on Google and other search engines. You won’t need to start SEO from scratch, and any position fluctuations are quickly stabilized once the algorithm scans the new site.
• You don’t lose content or files
  You are assured that all content from the old site, as well as files, comments, user accounts, and other elements essential for the site’s proper functioning and user experience, are transferred during the migration.
• You facilitate search engine algorithms’ “work”
  You know that the site has a proper URL structure, canonical links in place, and an updated sitemap.xml, allowing search engine crawlers to easily scan the website. This ensures that the website migration will not negatively impact organic rankings.
• You avoid unnecessary stress
  The website migration is well-planned and divided into stages, ensuring a smooth process, which helps you avoid problems and unnecessary stress.

The course of work for a website migration depends on many factors, and the type of migration plays a key role in determining this. Some types of migration are relatively simple and take no more than a few days, while others may require several months of preparation. The most common types of migrations are:

Hosting Change

This type of migration involves changing the hosting provider and is relatively easy to carry out. For example, if we find that the hosting fees are too high or the hosting service does not meet our expectations, we can switch to a competitive offer and simply move the site so that all content and files are hosted on a different server. This change is invisible to users and does not require any redesign, making it the least challenging during the migration process.

Domain Change

This is a much more complex type of migration that involves changing the website’s URL address. In this case, it is essential to create permanent 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones for all subpages within the site. However, this is just the beginning of the process—changing the domain requires many other actions. The entire internal linking structure needs to be updated, as well as external links collected over the life of the website. It is also necessary to update the sitemap.xml file and Google Ads campaigns, as well as settings in Google Analytics and Google Search Console. As you can see, changing the domain in Google search is a busy time for any SEO specialist, and we are happy to handle it for you!

CMS System Change

Another type of website migration involves switching to a new CMS (Content Management System). If the current CMS is outdated or non-functional, and we want to use a different one, there are several necessary actions to prepare for the migration. First, all content, files, images, user accounts, comments, and other elements that were on the site must be transferred to the new system. The new CMS must replicate the entire site structure, ensuring identical URLs to avoid 404 errors. This is a complex process that usually requires thorough preparation and a significant amount of work.

Website Design Change

This type of migration involves changes visible to the user, such as a new design, updates to the menu and site structure, text formatting (e.g., headings), or other elements important for SEO. The difficulty of this migration, when implementing a new site, depends on several factors, such as the size of the site and the number of changes being introduced.

Merging Websites or Creating a Subdomain

The first situation occurs when two websites are to be merged into one. This is a demanding migration type because it involves migrating from two domains. The second type of migration is essentially the reverse of a merger—it involves separating a part of the website into an independent domain. This can happen when, for example, you are developing a brand, and a product or service line evolves into a subsidiary, or when you want to separate a blog from your website. This is a much simpler migration to carry out.

Of course, there may be more types of website migrations, and they often combine with each other, making the process even more complicated. Therefore, thorough preparation, a detailed plan, and the involvement of all parties who influence the success of the activities (e.g., web developers, SEO specialists, analysts, and UX experts) are crucial.

Website migration must be preceded by the creation of a plan that sets the framework for actions and schedules the migration elements over time. What should be done to carry out the migration process smoothly?

Choose a Migration Coordinator

Designating one person to oversee the process, track progress, and control what still needs to be done will streamline operations and help avoid chaos.

Choose the Right Time for Migration in Google Search

Plan the website migration for a time when there is relatively low activity in your industry. For example, if you run an online toy store, you definitely don’t want to undertake migration right before the holidays or Children’s Day, and if you run a seaside guesthouse, you can’t afford to have your site down during or just before the peak summer season. Make sure the migration won’t interfere with achieving your business goals.

Create a List of Migration Elements

Collaborate with experts to ensure that all elements that need to be migrated are accounted for (subpage list, redirects, files, graphics, internal links that need to be replaced, email accounts, etc. – depending on the type of migration). This way, you can be certain that no data will be overlooked during the migration process.

Work in a Staging Version of the Website

It’s safest to make changes in a test environment while keeping the old website live until the migration is complete. This allows for making changes at a steady pace, checking everything carefully to ensure it works as expected. However, it’s important that the test site is not public or at least excluded from Google indexing.

Engage Experts in the Process

Especially for complex migrations, involving specialists with experience in such transitions is the best approach. You may have experts within your IT or development department. If your team hasn’t handled similar migrations before, it’s advisable to hire an external specialist or agency to ensure a smooth and, equally importantly, correct migration.

More complex types of migrations can have a noticeable impact on the website’s search rankings. This is a complicated process that will likely be reflected in traffic levels and keyword rankings in the top search results. However, actions can be taken to minimize losses and plan the migration in such a way that a quick return to high rankings is possible. This way, you won’t lose all your hard-earned results and will avoid starting from scratch.

The best confirmation of this is our case study with e-okularnicy.pl, who approached us during their migration to a new e-commerce platform. After one year of collaboration, we achieved the best results in the domain’s history — a visibility increase in TOP3 from 58 to 345 keywords, and in TOP10 from 364 to nearly 1200. The traffic parameter in SEMSTORM, calculated based on the number of keywords, their visibility, and searches, rose from 268 to 10,425. As a result, the company saw a 46% increase in transactions and a 67% increase in revenue.

It is important, however, to inform the SEO specialist managing the website as soon as the decision to migrate is made. If you haven’t used SEO services before, it is still worth considering involving an agency that specializes in SEO in the migration process. Every website naturally gains visibility, traffic, and positions for certain keywords, as well as builds domain authority, which is valuable to maintain. While developers and IT specialists will certainly handle the technical side of the migration well, they often lack the necessary SEO knowledge to carry out the process with minimal ranking losses.

The worst mistake clients make is migrating without informing the SEO specialist. Once the site is migrated, the results that were achieved are often irreversible, and the process of building visibility in search engines essentially starts from scratch.

An SEO specialist does not personally carry out the migration. However, if involved in the process, they can take part in planning the migration and provide recommendations on actions to take in order to minimize visibility drops. For example, they may recommend exporting entire subpages (at least the most important ones from an SEO perspective), including alternative text for images, meta descriptions, etc. The SEO specialist also advises on how to avoid content duplication, implement canonical links, redirects, and many other actions necessary to maintain traffic. While it is impossible to avoid losing visibility during migration, following the SEO specialist’s recommendations ensures that any drops will be temporary and easily recoverable.

Website migration does not have to be a stressful or difficult process if it is entrusted to specialists! By working with an agency, you not only have access to web developers but also UX experts, SEO specialists, analysts, and Google Ads professionals who can plan the migration with attention to important aspects from each of these fields. Comprehensive support ensures that the migration is carried out correctly, adhering to all necessary precautions so you don’t lose any SEO results or files and content.

Do you want to carry out the website migration with the help of professionals? Contact us and ask for a quote!