Website Migration – these two simple words can mean a lot of work for the webmasters or the website owners. Any SEO company in Melbourne would concede that it’s a decision that must be taken after weighing all the pros and cons. From an SEO point of view too, website migration can have a deep impact. Let’s start from the basics.
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What Is Website Migration
Any significant and deep change in the website of an organisation can be termed as website migration. The changes in a website that fall under website migration are –
- Changing the UI or layout or skeleton of the website
- Moving from one hosting provider or server to another
- Moving from one CMS to another
- Changing the domain name of the website
- Creating mobile-friendly versions of the same web pages
One latest addition in this list of website migration work is
- Creating amp pages for your existing web pages.
All these works can impact your site’s ranking – for the worst. So, you must be extremely careful while deciding whether you would make changes to your website. Here’s a list of things that you and any SEO company, Melbourne must keep in mind during the site migration process –
1. “If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It”
If your website is working fine and there is no need to make any significant changes then don’t! Site migration is not a matter of joke.
2. Give Your Visitors the Option to Revert Back to Old UI in Case of a Layout Change (For Some Months)
If you are familiar with Google Search Console, you will see that Google offers legacy tools and reports. Google Search Console migrated to newer tools a long time ago. Yet it offers the old the tools to give the users a sense of continuation. Do the same thing with your website after a UI change. It will be extra work for you or the web development, Melbourne agency, but the site visitors will remain happy.
3. Submit A New Sitemap After A UI Change
A layout change might result in the addition or dropping of menus, categories, anchors etc. A sitemap of a website is made up of these kinds of elements. So make sure that you ask the SEO company, Melbourne to create and submit a new sitemap to Google Search console after the UI change.
4. Make Sure That Your New Hosting Provider Is Located in The Same Country
Because opting for a new hosting provider that has business elsewhere might hurt your ranking. A change in the geo-location of the server will not be good in the eyes of Google.
5. Don’t Change The URL of The Web Pages While Switching CMS
Remember, you are changing the CMS – not the domain name. So, before opting for a new CMS make sure that the new one supports the URL structure that the old CMS have. If at all you need to change the URL of some web pages, don’t forget to create a 301 redirect on the old webpage ( And that means, you have to keep the old CMS running for a while).
Additionally, as Semrush in this post suggests, opt for the CMS that have the same overall rules as those of the old CMS. For example, Wix lets you set different sets of words for h1 and title, but Hubspot doesn’t. Ask the web development, Melbourne agency that you are taking help from – what changes you can expect after migrating to a new CMS.
6. Keep The Old Domain Name for Atleast One Year
If you changed your domain name, of course, the first thing is to set up 301 redirects. How long should you keep these redirects? Google suggests that you should keep them ( and thus, the domain) for at least one year.
Only after you see that the majority of the visitors are coming to your new domain via Google search results or by typing the in the new domain name directly, you can remove the redirects and the old domain.
7. Creating Mobile Optimized Pages
People who manually upload HTML pages of the website instead of using a CMS must make sure that the HTML code is optimized for mobile screens. It is not feasible to make whole new webpages for mobiles – that would be an SEO nightmare. Rather make the same web page mobile-friendly. Using the HTML viewport, streamlined CSS, making the buttons bigger, avoiding flash, creating a minimalist layout, hiding complex elements from the mobile version etc are some of the ways to make a website mobile-friendly.
8. Creating AMP Pages
If you use CMS like Wix or WordPress, opt for the AMP page creation service offered by them. If your website uses manually uploaded HTML files, tell your web development, Melbourne developer team to create AMP versions of the web pages. Google is pushing hard for AMP. There are instances where ‘AMPified’ sites are favoured by Google and hence they rank higher.
Apart from creating mobile-optimized and AMP pages, all the other site migration decisions can impact your website hard. Keep the above checklists in mind while migrating your site.