When migrating from another provider, you'll need to manage your SEO (Search Engine Optimsation) factors to make sure that you don't lose your organic traffic to your new site. Below is a (non-exhaustive) checklist of items that you should consider.
If you have any queries on any of the points below please reach out to your Stor Customer Success manager for assitance.
- Crawl your site before the migration
- Use a tool like Screaming Frog to crawl your site and list your sites URLs (web addresses).
- Make a copy of your Google Analytics data
- You will need this information so that you can quickly identify if any traffic is lost after the migration if you’re changing your Analytics account.
- Map all changed URLs from old to new (for redirects)
- Don’t drop too many pages from the old to new site. Losing pages and content may adversely affect your SEO due to existing backlinks leading to pages that no longer exist.
- Update all internal links
- In the course of building your new website you’ll need to update any internal links between pages to ensure the customer doesn’t hit a missing page.
- Manage and submit new sitemaps
- For Google you can submit your Sitemap within their Search Console.
- For Bing you will need to submit it in their Webmaster Tool
- Install Google Analytics
- As at Sept 2022, there are 3 ways to link your Google Analytics to your web site, these are through a Universal Analytics (UA) ID, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) ID or through Google Tag Manager (GTM).
- There’s no right answer as to which one you should choose but if this is the first time that you’re creating a Google Analytics account then you will be automatically set up with a GA4 account as UA is being phased out.
- Redirect all changed links
- Once you have your new website setup you’ll need to redirect any changed URLs to the new or equivalent page.
- For example Shopify call Categories “Collections” and this is within the URL and will therefore need to be redirected.
- Update all the links from your social media platforms, Google My Business Profile, etc. if needed.
- Monitor traffic & performance
- You can’t affect what you can’t track. Keeping a regular eye on your analytics - fortnightly or monthly - is useful to track trends, patterns and user journeys through your site.
- It’s also worth setting up ‘Goals’ within Google Analytics to track events like customers adding products to the cart or going through to the payment page.
- Update your PPC campaigns
- If you’re running any Pay-per-Click campaigns then you’ll need to update your URLs within the relevant tool or social media to ensure you’re directing traffic to the right place (and not wasting money!).
- Check for 404s and redirects
- Finally, once everything is up, live and being tracked now’s a good time to triple check your site for any 404 (page not found), missing redirects, missing links or dropped backlinks.
- A tool like Ahrefs is extremely useful for this and can run regular SEO audits for you.
If you have any queries about this feel free to get in touch with our Support team on Live Chat or via email.