
Webflow vs WordPress - Which Should I Choose for My Website?
Process. - 3 minute read
Process. - 3 minute read
Written by Flying Saucer Studio
When you’re contemplating a website redesign, the idea of migrating your existing blog and search engine cred can leave you sweating at inopportune moments. When it’s done wrong, it can lead to a loss of traffic and revenue, but when it’s done right? You can upgrade your website’s design and user experience while keeping your hard-earned optimization.
We know a successful website migration involves planning ahead and various post-launch tests. It might seem intimidating, but the good news is, we’re experts at it!
Here are some things that we’d like you to know:
Don’t be overwhelmed if there are hundreds of pages on your website.
Once the redesign is finished, we will prioritize the pages with a high number of traffic, authority, and conversions. We use tools like Google Analytics to find pages with the highest organic traffic.
If a landing page is primarily used to convert customers, we can conduct A/B tests and usability tests before we make any moves - just to make sure everything is as it should be before going live.
Don’t forget to keep a list of URLs of your current site so you can keep checking in to make sure the post-migration continues to be successful in the future!
The URL of the landing page should ideally be the same one used on the previous website. We do this because it transfers the link juice (aka ranking power), authority and keyword rankings to the new page. Presto-change-o - everything moved with you.
Something to consider though? If the URL isn’t optimized for search engines to easily find your content, it’s time for a change. Search engines prefer human-readable URLs because visitors will know what to expect when they click the link. Here's the difference between an unformatted vs. optimized URL from Moz:
That being said - we’ll make recommendations if we feel like some of your links could be performing better for you.
BONUS: For more information on URL redirecting - check out these handy tips and tools
At this stage, we know that the website migration has happened smoothly - because we’ve been in touch all the way through the process, walking with you as we make the transition. Once the process is done, there’s a lot of important things that we check, just to make sure everything is top-notch:
Once the website has launched, we keep existing XML sitemaps online for a few weeks. This trick enables Google to index the 301 redirects which lead to the new URLs. After some time, we replace the sitemap with an updated version.
Hold on, I know you thought you were done here, but the migration process isn’t over yet! We’re still making sure we have no broken links, crawl errors, and changes in performance. We’re also checking to see if there are any HTML changes we can make that might improve on your existing traffic - the more traffic, the better, right?
We like to try site searches through Google (i.e. site:example.com) to find out how the website was indexed and if the old URLs are still in place. We look for any drastic changes in metrics like conversion rate, bounce rates, and social shares.
So, there you have it, folks! This is our basic process for migrating a website, and especially blog content, to your newly redesigned website. I think we can all appreciate the amount of time and effort that goes into making sure that your site remains optimized and you don’t lose any of your precious search engine ranking. We know that some of you might feel comfortable doing this on your own (Godspeed!), but if this was the concern you had that stopped you from pulling the trigger on that redesign of your dreams - feel free to schedule a quick call. We’ve got you.
Unlock your exclusive access to our entire library of free resources. From handy cheatsheets to comprehensive guides, you'll have everything you need to grow your business, build your brand and boost conversion rates.
Download All Resources →Here's a Preview of What You Get...
Our Swipe-File of High-Converting E-Commerce Emails
100+ Growth Marketing Ideas You Need to Steal (Ranked for Your Convenience)
Casper's $750+ Million Marketing Toolkit (Our Favorite)
Our Content Relaunch Framework (The Same Framework We Used to Increase Our Organic Traffic by 290.67% in 3 Weeks)
Our Marketing Department-in-a-Drive (Our Most Important Checklists and Processes)
Plus 17+ Other Resources (and Counting).
Article written by Monique Danao
Process. - 3 minute read
Process. - 3 minute read
Process. - 3 minute read