How to Switch Website Platforms without Losing SEO Visibility
Your website is often the first impression that people get of your company, much like an introductory handshake or fancy business card. This is especially true if your website has a high level of SEO visibility. Hopefully, potential clients are finding your website through search engines every day.
But what happens when your website needs not just an update, but a complete overhaul? Will the years of SEO visibility you’ve built on your current platform be lost during a site migration? This is a common fear, but it doesn’t have to be. Completing a site migration is a worthwhile undertaking in most instances. Read on to learn why the benefits of moving to a more modern platform outweigh the minimal risk of temporarily losing your SEO ranking.
Why You Might Need a Site Migration
Websites built on outdated platforms like Wix or Weebly were probably easy to set up, but it shows. These platforms aren’t very user-friendly, often have technical issues, and are very template-based, leaving little room for creativity and customization. Additionally, they tend to be less mobile-friendly, a non-negotiable in today’s world, which hurts SEO rankings. If your website is living on an outdated platform, it’s likely time to migrate your site. While this may seem like a scary undertaking, it will pay off in the long run. Here’s why.
Modern platforms like WordPress, Squarespace, and Shopify have many advantages. In addition to offering greater versatility and layout variety, they also have SEO tools built in. WordPress has numerous SEO plug-ins, with Yoast being the most popular, while Squarespace has many built-in tools to help boost search engine rankings without any additional downloads or costly upgrades. The same is true for Shopify, which also offers an excellent suite of SEO tools. But deciding you need a new website platform is only the first step. Read on to learn how to make the migration without compromising your SEO rankings.
Review Your SEO Rankings
Before you begin your site migration, review your site’s SEO analytics to gauge whether or not your site’s search engine visibility is strong or weak. There are many tools to help analyze your current search rankings, such as Google Search Console, which will list every keyword that your site ranks for. If your website isn’t ranking high to begin with, there’s no reason to fret about your site migration, as it’s sure to offer an improvement. But, if you have excellent or rising SEO rankings, pay attention to which pages are being visited the most. Those should be kept the same during your site migration. Then, you can make updates and optimize the copy and design sometime in the future after the migration.
Map Out Your Site Migration
As you prepare your site migration, start by mapping your existing content. There’s a good chance you won’t need to move everything. For whatever does make the cut, do your best to keep both your domain name and URL slugs the same. For instance, if your Contact page has the slug /connect, your SEO will take less of a hit by keeping it the same, as opposed to changing it to something new, like /getintouch. The stronger your current SEO rankings are, the less you want to change on the backend. If you’re already targeting the audience you want to reach, keep your site’s title descriptions, page descriptions, and meta descriptions the same as well. If you are pivoting to a new demographic, consider adjusting these to address the needs and wants of your target audience.
Another key part of a successful site migration is ensuring your old website redirects users and search bots to your new one. Without a redirect, you risk bringing up a 404 (“page not found”) error, which tells search engines to remove the old URL from search results. While a blanket redirect will avoid 404 errors, a page-to-page redirect is ideal. If this feels daunting, don’t be afraid to hire a professional to migrate your blog content to your new website. This will ensure your content isn’t lost, and that you are still capturing relevant search queries.
More Ways to Boost Your Site’s SEO Rankings
Of course, the website platform you choose is only one factor in your site’s SEO rankings. As you revamp your website, be sure to follow these five steps for greater SEO visibility.
Post high-quality content that is written with SEO rankings in mind—and do so on an ongoing basis. Google and other search engines love fresh content.
Optimize your design and site layout, as making it more user-friendly will boost SEO.
Improve load speeds. This often happens as part of a website redesign. Faster load speeds boost SEO, while slow load times drastically decrease it.
Check your website for bad links, as they harm SEO rankings. You can use Google Webmaster Tools or Broken Link Check for this.
Stay ahead of SEO trends. Google changes its algorithm often, meaning you will need to tweak your website accordingly. This is another reason hiring a professional to help with your website migration and maintenance is a good idea.
Site migration can seem daunting, especially if you’ve spent years diligently building up your SEO rankings. But if you plan your site migration carefully, all that hard work won’t be lost. You’ll be able to keep what’s working and improve what’s not, offering potential clients a better first impression and improving your SEO visibility in the long run.