The process of site migration in Dubai can be challenging. You need to find a smart way to migrate to a new site without losing any traffic. Hence, following a proper site migration SEO checklist can be your best bet.
You might have spent a lot of time and effort on link building, content creation, and search engine optimization (SEO) planning for your website. When moving to a new site, you don’t want all your efforts to go to waste. Also, you want to make it clear that your new site is the old site at the new address, not a new website on the internet.
Are you planning to redesign your website but are worried about losing the traffic? Fear not! Here we will discuss the best site migration plan without losing the existing web traffic. So, let’s get started
1. Is Site Migration The Right Choice For You?
First of all, you need to ask yourself whether site migration is the right choice for you or not. Site migration can be tricky – as Google needs some time for modifications and indexing them. For that reason, following the right site migration SEO checklist is essential. An effective site migration process causes fewer traffic changes. In fact, Google treats the new site as the original site.
Migrating to a new site offers SEO benefits to site owners, only if you stick with the basics of website development based on SEO perspective.
Site migration is worth it only:
- When rebranding is required
- When migration will create links
- When the site is required to move to HTTPS
Most site owners believe that site migration can help them boost their rankings. But this is definitely not the case. Also, it won’t eliminate SEO penalties.
2. Test Before Migrating
Now here comes the most important part. You need to always test your website before migrating. Ensure that redirects work before the migration goes public. If you don’t test the migration, it can set your website rankings back by weeks.
3. Crawl The Website Before Migration
Crawling your website before migration is also crucial as it will give you a deep insight into crawl errors or any redirects.
Remove or replace the links that point to 404 pages. Orphan pages (pages without any links) and external links should also be updated. A solid link game ensures smooth site migration.
Crawling can be done with crawler tools such as Screaming Frog and make sure to save the crawl for later.
4. Plan To Migrate During The Slow Period
Always plan the site migration for the short-term drop. Migrating your site during the slow period of the year can be your best bet. However, migrating your site before or during the holiday is not at all a great idea. After all, your goal is to avoid losing traffic to your website. Even if it loses traffic, make sure it loses when the business is slowest.
5. Update Internal Links
Another most crucial point in the site migration SEO checklist is updating internal links. You need to ensure that every link in your website should point to the new site and not the old one. However, leaving the links unchanged can affect your website. It may affect the overall speed of your website.
To streamline the rewriting links process, it is wise to conduct a search and make replacements. Here, seeking professional help from a leading digital marketing agency in Dubai can be your best bet. The experts will update the internal links appropriately.
6. Benchmark Your Analytics
Having data by your side can help you identify which web pages have lost the traffic. However, if any traffic is lost, export the analytics data and run it side-by-side for comparison with the old website to identify which pages have lost the traffic.
Also, you can use Ahrefs to identify the top linked-to-pages. Once your site migration is successful, you need to pay extra attention to these pages and monitor them closely. These pages contribute a lot to your authority, so losses here may affect the overall performance of your website.
Conclusion
If site migration is done without following the right site migration SEO checklist, you can lose search engine traffic in the process. Consider the points discussed above to streamline your site migration plan without losing enough traffic.
We are a top-notch SEO agency UAE where we offer end-to-end digital marketing and SEO services to our clients globally. With over 10 years of experience, we have helped more than hundreds of clients to successfully migrate to a new site without losing traffic.
Fill out the inquiry form below and our experts will reach out to you with a master site migration plan.
