We make sure the stage is set before the curtain is raised. We always start with a migration plan that has a long enough timeline to ensure that all the work can be completed. After setting up this plan we help review and validate the new page templates, URL structures and information architecture for the site.
In this stage, we undertake keyword research and benchmarking to make sure we can determine the impact of the migration on your most important metrics such as traffic, indexation and ranking. Know before hitting go.
We’ll break a leg but not a link before we go live. Once the developers provide a staging environment we do a full technical SEO audit of the site to catch any errors or discrepancies before going live. The reviews will be repeated to check for issues and once they are resolved, the site will be ready to migrate.
We do all URL checks IRL. We do URL mapping to make sure that all old pages and images are redirected to the equivalent page on the new site so that we don’t lose authority and rankings.
Once you say ‘I do’ to a migration, we make all the arrangements for a successful transition. It’s important to make sure extra development resources are available to action any initial issues that might arise when the big migration day arrives. We provide a full checklist of what to do as well as what to check for after the migration has been completed.
Unlike happy hour, migrations are not meant for Friday evenings. We follow two of the golden rules at this stage – never migrate on a Friday and always have a rollback plan in place in case of any nightmare scenarios.
We can’t stop, won’t stop, don’t stop once the migration process is done. We make a plan to fix any existing issues in order of importance to make sure it doesn’t impact your key metrics.
We compare the pre-staging benchmark report with performance over the next couple of months to provide digital analytics on the traffic, indexation and ranking metrics for the site. As you may have guessed, we’re pretty used to getting good grades.
The migration process is broken down into the four main stages of pre-staging, staging, migration and post migration.
Audit and enhancement of current site.
Benchmarking current KPIs and metrics.
Audit and enhancement of staging site which is repeated until it is healthy and ready to go.
Plan of all URL and image redirects to ensure authority is maintained and content is mapped in a relevant way.
Migration day to launch the site following a specific best practice checklist.
Support during migration to monitor and detect potential errors, check and validate the tracking, redirects and technical aspects.
Ongoing impact measurement to compare and analyse metrics and provide recommendations as necessary.
The given risk of any migration is based on how many aspects of the existing website are changing and the level of new aspects coming into play. These can include moving to new CMS platforms, changing domain names, updating the URL structure or implementing a secure browsing experience (HTTPS). No matter what the reason is, migrating is a risk. The idea is to minimise the impact as much as possible. Our technical SEO expertise ensures that you don’t damage your site’s performance and lose valuable organic traffic which can be extremely difficult to regain. A proper migration plan is vital if you want to maintain your search engine rankings and keep your SEO performance up.
Migrate without losing faith. Or traffic. Find out how.
In Marketing We Trust helped grow the organic footprint for Castlery in the US market
The key SEO strategy for the competitive US market was to drive an increase in the organic market share. This was driven by a largely content-first strategy that used research to create keyword opportunities, product profitability data and user trends for specific products and categories.
Castlery saw their overall organic footprint increase, cannibalising market share from key competitors and driving users to popular product categories which resulted in beating their annual KPI by 19%.
Organic revenue since migration (US)
Ahead of annual organic revenue targets
Increase on non-brand keywords
Shichen Yang
Senior Growth Marketing Manager
We needed an agency that was experienced in domain consolidation and website migration.
In Marketing We Trust offered risk minimisation when it came to impacting SEO through their well-thought-out strategies, which was very important to us. While we experienced some short-term drops in rankings post-migration, we knew to expect this because of their advice and we know we would have been in a worse position without them.
They had successfully helped other businesses make large-scale changes, and were flexible enough to work with us on what was a pretty tight schedule, which made all the difference.
Marius, or Sprongie as he’s known, refers to himself as Manager of all things SEO and a website doctor. As a sea...
Marius lives and breathes SEO and optimising meta descriptions is his nemesis.
Based in
Vietnam
Languages
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Benoit Weber has been a part of the team at In Marketing We Trust since 2015 and as the Head of Digital Analytic...
If Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager get you excited too then Benoit could be your new best friend.
The main aspects of an SEO migration works within the overall website migration to make sure you aren’t losing your existing organic value. This involves making sure all pages are indexed properly and optimised for search engines. A proper plan is in place to redirect old URLs to their new counterparts so that website visitors don’t get lost, and any link juice is preserved. SEO migration also ensures that no duplicate content is created when the migration takes place.
At In Marketing We Trust, we can help you migrate from a variety of Content Management Systems (CMS). We have extensive experience with popular CMSs such as WordPress, Sitecore and Drupal, as well as a variety of others. We can also help you migrate from more bespoke CMSs.
Our team can provide you with advice on the best CMS for your needs, as well as the best way to migrate your content and existing setup. We can also provide you with full support throughout the migration process, so you always have someone to turn to if you have any issues.
When considering website migration, the key factor to consider is whether your current website meets the needs of your business or not. If the answer is no, then it’s time to start thinking about migrating websites. Signs that you should consider website migration include slow page load speeds, outdated content, lack of security, limited user experience, and compatibility with mobile devices. In addition, if your site is not ranking well in search engine results, you may need to migrate to a more search engine friendly platform.
If you’re unsure if your current website is meeting your business needs, our team of experts can help. We can assess your website, analyse your current performance, and provide a detailed report on the best course of action for your business. We’ll ensure that your website is optimised for search engines, provides an excellent user experience, and is secure to protect your customers’ data.
If you don’t migrate all of your content and metadata, it can affect the performance of your website. Without complete migration, it is possible that some content may not be displayed properly, and any metadata associated with it won’t be transferred, which could cause search engine ranking and visibility issues. Additionally, user experience will suffer if the new website does not have the same amount of content and features as the old website.
We have a team of experienced web developers who can help you with the entire process. We will audit your existing website, plan and execute the migration. We will also monitor the new website over 8 weeks post migration for any issues with indexation and rankings to help maintain and grow organic performance.
Migrating a website can be a complex process, and the time it takes depends on various factors. The size of the website and the hosting platform you’re moving it to are both important considerations. The overall process takes around 12 weeks with the migration itself generally taking place in one day. Most of the time is taken beforehand to ensure that everything is accounted for and you won’t lose valuable rankings, authority and traffic post migration.
There is also the period of time post migration to monitor performance and rectify any issues that may have taken place during the migration process.
