Whether you want to launch a new website or renew the current website structure: in terms of SEO, migrations are not always easily. They often cost you positions in the Google search results, while you have worked so hard for them.
To avoid this, a strategy before the migration is necessary. Those who know what they are doing will avoid mistakes and problems. That way, your ranking remains intact and visitors can continue to find you.
An SEO migration is about migrating your website in such a way that it does not change the positions in the search results of Google and other search engines. An important part of this is the proper redirection of old URLs to new URLs. There are different types of website migrations:
Whatever form of migration, it is important to prepare well for the migration of your website so that your SEO rankings remain intact.
Good preparation is half the battle, especially with website migrations. With a clear step-by-step plan, you ensure that everything runs smoothly so that you do not lose any positions in the search results and any visitors.
To ensure a smooth SEO migration, we use a migration plan with 7 clear steps for each website migration. These 7 steps are:
If you substitute new URLs for existing ones and don’t direct search engines to the new pages, they will find a 404 page. This notification indicates that the URLs no longer exist, which will cause your positions and pages to drop significantly in search results.
The new pages are usually not yet indexed and, moreover, your URLs have built up a certain value in Google during the period that your current pages are online.
If the migration is not properly managed, the value of the old pages is not passed on to the new ones. The new pages will therefore not be able to rank as high as the old pages because those pages had already accumulated a lot of value.
This means that you have to start all over again to obtain good positions in the search results. This can take quite a while, during which time you lose many visitors, conversions and sales. If the migration is not correct, the impact on your online business will be considerable. In some cases, a decline in leads and sales can even be fatal for your business.
You wouldn’t be the first company to experience a significant decline in sales due to a faulty website migration; countless (large and international) companies have made the same expensive mistake. Enough reason to take care of your migration.
The migration of a website is often highly underestimated. And yet, the risks and consequences can be gigantic. The consequences of a bad migration are not easily overcome.
To ensure that your website migration goes smoothly, it is therefore useful to enlist the help of an expert with extensive experience in the field of SEO migrations. This goes beyond just SEO knowledge, it is important that the expert also understand the technical side. Only then is the migration done in the proper way.
Our consultants have the knowledge and experience to make any website migration successful. As the link between your marketers and developers, we know exactly what needs to be done. It is no coincidence that we have already carried out countless website migrations, from small (50 pages) to large (migration of 40 websites with over 4,000,000 URLs to one platform). This way, we ensure that you do not lose any positions in the search results and that you attract at least the same number of visitors as before.