When it’s time to refresh your website, migrate domains, consolidate websites, or give your brand a new look, it’s critical to understand the SEO implications. At SparkLaunch, we always tell our clients: everything you do online can impact SEO—either directly or indirectly. When URLs are changing, it’s essential to involve an experienced SEO team to ensure everything goes smoothly.
Our approach to SEO breaks this process down into five core areas:
- Architecture & Internal Linking
- On-Page Optimization
- Technical SEO
- Keyword Research & Content
- External Brand & Link Building
In this guide, we’ll walk you through an in-depth checklist for tackling each of these areas during a website refresh or domain migration. By following this step-by-step, you’ll protect your site’s search rankings while positioning your brand for future success.
Are You Making the Right Decision?
Before diving into the technical details of a website refresh or migration, it’s important to pause and ask: Are you making the right decision for your business? Taking on a project like this is significant, and it’s crucial to evaluate whether a migration or redesign aligns with your long-term goals.
Here are some of the most common questions we hear from clients when embarking on these projects:
Should we combine our multiple domains?
In most cases, the answer is yes. Many businesses manage separate domains for different parts of their company, or they’ve accumulated old, historical domains over the years. While this might make sense internally, from an SEO perspective, consolidating into one primary domain with subfolders is almost always the better choice. Here’s why:
- Easier to Manage: Maintaining multiple domains means dealing with separate SEO strategies, content creation, PPC accounts, and development resources. Most teams are already stretched thin managing a single website, let alone two or three.
- Stronger SEO Signals: Combining your websites strengthens your marketing efforts by consolidating authority, backlinks, and rankings under one domain. A singular, cohesive website also simplifies the user experience and makes it easier for search engines to understand your site.
Our domain doesn’t match our brand name, but it ranks well. Should we change it?
This is a common dilemma. On one hand, there are branding considerations—aligning your domain with your brand name sends a clear, consistent message. On the other hand, SEO comes into play. If your current domain ranks well, switching can feel risky.
In most cases, we recommend aligning your domain with your brand name. Having consistent branding across your domain, logo, and messaging is crucial for long-term growth. The only exception might be if your old domain resonates significantly better with your audience than the new one. In those cases, it could be worth reconsidering a rebrand or finding a compromise that keeps your SEO intact while evolving your brand image.
How can we avoid losing revenue during a migration?
Managing expectations is key here. In any domain migration or website refresh, there is often a transition period where traffic and revenue may temporarily dip. This is normal, as search engines re-evaluate your site and rankings adjust.
We typically see a 2-3 month adjustment period, during which you’ll experience some volatility in rankings and paid search performance. But with the right strategy, you can mitigate long-term risks and build a stronger foundation for growth. At SparkLaunch, our goal is to walk clients through this process step by step to ensure they’re confident and comfortable as we navigate these changes together.
What do we need to accomplish a successful migration?
To ensure a seamless migration, it’s important to have the right team in place. A successful project requires coordination across multiple roles, including:
- Project Lead: Keeps all stakeholders aligned and tasks organized.
- Experienced Developer: The quality of your developers can make or break a migration. They should be highly communicative and collaborative.
- SEO Expert: Ensures all technical SEO elements, content, and redirects are handled correctly.
- PPC Specialist: Ensures paid campaigns adjust to the new domain with no disruptions.
- Content Writers: Either in-house or contracted to ensure all critical content is carried over.
- Designers, Operations Teams, Leadership: Involved to maintain the brand’s vision and ensure the site aligns with business goals.
At SparkLaunch, we often assist with project leadership, ensuring your teams stay organized and the project stays on track.
Before You Start
Before starting your migration, it’s crucial to have some key steps covered:
- Use a Sandbox: Ensure development happens in a safe, test environment that doesn’t affect your live site.
- Crawl Your Website Beforehand: Conduct a full crawl of your site to identify any potential issues before launching the migration.
- Migrate During a Slow Period: Avoid peak traffic times to minimize disruption.
- Snapshot Your Rankings: Capture baseline data on rankings, traffic, and performance through tools like SEMRush and Google Analytics.
Architecture & Internal Linking
A solid site architecture and internal linking structure are the foundations of good SEO. Here are some key considerations:
- Ensure a Proper Hierarchy: A well-organized architecture makes it easy for both users and search engines to navigate your site. Your site should have a clear hierarchy from the homepage, down to categories and subcategories.
- Logical URLs & Menus: URLs should be clear, descriptive, and follow the site’s architecture. Avoid jargon or overly complex URL structures.
- Unique Intent for Each Page: Avoid redundant pages (e.g., “custom jackets” vs. “customized jackets”). Instead, combine related content and optimize for broader topics.
A good keyword map can help ensure that every page has a unique purpose, improving the overall user experience and helping search engines crawl your site more effectively.
On-Page Optimization
Now that you’ve set up the proper architecture, let’s move into on-page SEO basics:
- Meta Titles: Ensure every page has a unique, engaging meta title that includes relevant keywords.
- Header Tags: Verify that header tags (H1s, H2s) are correctly implemented and reflect the page’s theme.
- Meta Descriptions: While meta descriptions don’t directly impact rankings, they influence click-through rates (CTR). Ensure they’re compelling and include targeted keywords.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is critical to ensuring your site performs well post-migration. Here are some key areas to focus on:
- 301 Redirects: Set up redirects for all old URLs to their new counterparts, ensuring no loss of link equity. Redirect chains should be avoided to improve user experience and SEO performance.
- Robots.txt & Noindex Tags: Ensure that all pages are properly accessible to search engines. Don’t block public pages via robots.txt; use the noindex tag if you don’t want a page indexed.
- Sitemaps: Submit your XML sitemap to Google and Bing, and ensure your site map is up to date with all pages.
- Structured Data: Make sure structured data (e.g., reviews, product info) is properly configured and carried over to the new site.
- Page Speed: Optimize page speed by compressing images and improving load times. Faster websites provide a better user experience and improve SEO rankings.
Keyword Research & Content
Migrating your content properly is crucial. Here’s what you need to keep in mind:
- Carry Over All Critical Content: Ensure all content that drives traffic and rankings is migrated properly. If a page that ranks well on the old site is missing from the new site, expect traffic losses.
- Avoid Content Duplication: Don’t create duplicate content during migration. Use canonical tags where appropriate.
- Focus on Quality Content: Add new, high-quality content that helps answer users’ questions and addresses their needs. Content is key for both user experience and SEO performance.
External Brand & Link Building
While focusing on internal SEO is critical, don’t forget to update your external presence as well:
- Update External Links: Where possible, update external sites (e.g., social profiles, partner links) with the new URL.
- Announce the Migration: Communicate the change to customers via email, social media, and other channels to ensure they’re aware of the refresh.
- Update Google Business & Bing Places: Ensure all business listings are up to date with the new URL.
Post-Launch Monitoring
After launching the new website, it’s crucial to closely monitor performance:
- Check Analytics & Rankings: Track your site’s performance post-launch and compare it with pre-launch data.
- Monitor Conversion Rates: Ensure that changes haven’t negatively impacted conversions or lead generation.
- Check Indexed Page Count: Ensure all new pages are being indexed properly.
- Check for 404 Errors: Crawl the site again to ensure that no important pages return 404 errors.
- Monitor PPC Ads: Make sure all ads are pointing to the correct URLs and adjust quality scores as needed.
- Annotate Launch Date: In Google Analytics, add an annotation for the launch date so you can clearly see performance pre- and post-migration.
Next Steps
Remember these key principles with the acronym MIGRATE:
- Measure your baseline and set clear goals
- Involve all stakeholders early and often
- Guard your SEO equity through proper redirects and content preservation
- Review and optimize your site architecture
- Align your on-page and technical SEO elements
- Test thoroughly before, during, and after launch
- Evaluate and adjust based on post-launch data
By adopting this MIGRATE framework, you’ll be well-equipped to handle the complexities of a website overhaul while preserving and even enhancing your SEO performance.
Want help preserving your SEO while migrating, or dealing with the SEO fallout of a migration that went wrong? Let’s chat – no pressure, no sales talk. Just good advice.
