Migration day is the most critical part of your site migration process. It’s where all the groundwork laid out in the previous phases comes into play. If done correctly, it ensures that the new site performs well and that SEO rankings remain stable. In this part of the series, we’ll walk you through the necessary steps to ensure a smooth transition.
1. Verify the Migration Process
Start by closely following the client migration checklist and SEO migration checklist. These documents should guide every action and step you take, ensuring that nothing important gets missed. This phase involves verifying that all essential elements of the migration are addressed, from content to functionality.
2. Testing and QA of the New Website
Before pushing the new site live, live test the website during the migration. These tests will help spot any issues in real time. Here’s what you need to do:
- Crawl the old website: During the migration, check that redirects are properly implemented from the old site.
- Crawl the new site: Test the new site to confirm that all pages are discovered correctly and URLs are set up for proper redirection.
3. Verifying URL Redirects
An essential part of SEO during migration is ensuring that no valuable URLs are lost. This means:
- Crawl a list of URL redirects: Confirm that all redirects from old to new URLs are working properly, particularly for important pages.
- Verify proper redirection: This ensures that users and search engines alike are directed to the correct pages after the migration.
4. Analytics Testing & Real-Time Monitoring
Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console for real-time testing during migration. Key things to monitor include:
- Mobile & desktop performance
- Organic vs. direct traffic
- Behavior on the home page vs. internal pages
- Real-time reporting and UX/UI issues
5. URL Validation and Crawl Checks
- Ensure all new URLs return a 200 OK response (this shows the page is live and available).
- Make sure there are no “noindex” or “nofollow” tags that could inadvertently block search engines.
- Check that self-canonical tags are properly embedded on all pages.
6. Regular Crawl for Indexing Verification
After the migration, it’s crucial to do a regular crawl of the new website to confirm that all pages are discovered and indexed correctly.
- Ensure that no 404 pages exist and fix any problematic links that may arise.
- Compare optimization levels: Check that the new site matches or improves upon the previous site’s optimization.
- Compare incoming links: Ensure that the number of backlinks to the old and new URLs remains consistent to avoid losing authority.
Migration Day Checklist:
To ensure everything has been covered, at this stage, you’ll need to compile:
- Make sure to serve a 503 status code for downtime (for the new site)
- Update the DNS settings
- Update/upload the new robots.txt
- Enable redirections
- Remove by 404/410 everything else that was not set to be redirected
- Publish a user-facing message announcing the migration on the website
- Remove all temporary website blocks from the new website (robots.txt, meta robots, x-robots, password protection, etc)
- Make sure to remove the old websites’ robots.txt files
- Update website links in all other platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, ad campaigns, google my business/bing places, etc) and marketing campaigns
- Validate the new websites’ tracking codes (GA, Adwords, GTM, etc)
- Mark the migration dates (annotate) in Google Analytics
- Publish social media posts announcing the migration
In the next part of our series, we’ll dive into Post-migration phase, including what to do after the site goes live, how to monitor performance, and more
