FFS Let Your SEO Help With Your F**king Website Migration!

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Your web developer is not your fucking SEO team. Website

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Migration Edition. Hi, client. Do you need help

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migrating your website from.co.ukto.com

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I know you've redesigned some bits of it, so there's quite a lot to think

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about. No, thanks. We have it all in hand. I mean,

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are you sure? There's quite a lot to consider here. I said we're

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fine. Stay in your lane. Our web developers are handling it.

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A few weeks later, we have no. Traffic, our

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signups have ground to a halt and loads of our pages have been

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deindexed by Google. What have you done to our

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SEO? Well, did you map the 301

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redirect? Yes. Did

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you tell Google that you'd changed domain? Yes.

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Did you move all the metadata and structured data over to the new

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design?

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Hmm. Your homepage meta title says

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Home XYZ company. Do you know what

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your issue is? No, Nicky, what's our issue?

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You didn't let your SEO help with your fucking migration.

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This is SEO. Fucking what? I'm Nikki, and here's the deal.

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I've been in SEO for over 30 years before it was even called

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SEO. And I help people like you make money from your

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website by being found in search. Today, I want to talk

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to you about website migrations, because only last week I

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watched a business torch years of SEO work

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because their web developer said, don't worry, we've got the migration

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covered. It's not an SEO job. No. No,

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they fucking haven't. And yes, yes, it fucking

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is. If you're planning to redesign your website,

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change a domain, move platforms, or do anything that involves

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URLs, changing this episode might just save

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your ass.

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Why migrations go wrong. Right,

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let's talk about why this keeps happening. Because it does keep

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happening. All the fucking time.

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Website migration is like moving house. You've got

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all your stuff in one place, everything's working, people know where to find

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you. And then you decide to move somewhere new. Maybe because

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it's a nicer house, maybe it's got better foundations,

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maybe you just fancy a change. But when you move

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house, this is what you do. You tell people your new

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address, you set up mail forwarding. You don't just pack

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up in the middle of the night and hope everyone figures out where you've gone.

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Unless you're my Uncle Steve, but that's another story. And I hope they never find

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him. And I digress. But website migration works the

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same way. Except instead of telling the postman, you're just telling

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Google. And if you don't do it properly. Google doesn't just lose your

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post, it forgets you ever fucking existed. So why does this

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go wrong? Well, firstly, because web

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developers are not SEO experts in general. And that's

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not a dig at web developers. I love a good web developer. They build

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brilliant things and they do things that are way beyond my knowledge and skill set.

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But building a website and optimizing it for search are two completely different things.

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When a web developer says, we'll handle the SEO during the

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migration, what they usually mean is we'll set up some

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redirects and then we'll install Yoast to make sure your site isn't actively

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broken. That's not SEO. That's the bare minimum

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to not be completely invisible. Hello. Secondly, Nobody thinks

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about URLs until it's too late. Your old site had a

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URL structure. Maybe it was messy, maybe it was

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beautiful, but Google pretty much knew where everything was.

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And your new site probably has a different URL structure.

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Maybe the page that used to be a services

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SEO consultancy is now at

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Whatwedo Search Engine Optimization.

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But if you don't tell Google that those two pages are the same thing,

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it thinks that the old page has just disappeared and the new page

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is brand new content with no authority. All the links or the

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rankings that were pointing to your old page are useless. All

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that ranking power you'd built up has gone.

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Thirdly, people treat redirects as an afterthought. We'll sort the

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redirects later, we'll get to the 301s down the line. That's

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like saying we'll add the parachute after we've jumped out of the plane.

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Redirect after a migration aren't a nice to

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have. They're not something you do when you get around to it.

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They're the single most important part of any website

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migration. And if you launch without them, you are royally

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fucked. So what actually happens when you do cock it up?

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Let me tell you about a real client disaster.

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I've changed the name, but the pain was very fucking real.

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This business had been working with me on their SEO for about a year.

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They'd got great rankings, brilliant traffic coming in,

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leads were generating on a daily basis. And then they

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decided that their website needed a refresh, which was fair enough.

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But instead of involving their SEO person, hi, that's me.

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They huddled in a corner with their web developer and they worked on it

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as a dev project, not an SEO project. One

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of the first things they did was they changed the site from

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WWW to non www

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without implementing redirects, which basically

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wiped out their entire site. In Google's eyes, they also

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didn't transfer any of the blog content. So over 100 blog

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posts had just gone. And when I questioned them about 301

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redirects, the response was a casual yeah. We'Re getting round to the

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301s down the line. But that was 12 months of SEO work

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that I'd done they'd paid for. I'd worked with a

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copywriter on completely obliterated every

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single search engine listing. Now pointing to Pages that

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returned 404 errors, every bit of ranking

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authority had gone. All that carefully crafted

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content that was doing some good, invisible.

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But the killer blow was that they didn't even realize they were

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bleeding traffic or rankings until the damage was already

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done. And they came to me asking what I'd

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broken me. I hadn't touched a fucking thing.

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I stayed in my lane. But here's what happens when you launch a new website

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without proper planning. First of all,

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you get immediate traffic loss. Google can't find your content, so

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neither can your visitors. Your analytics will show a cliff edge drop.

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That's enough to make you dizzy. Then you'll see vanishing

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rankings, those page one positions that you worked so hard for.

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They'll disappear overnight as Google removes your old URLs

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from the index without knowing to connect them to your new ones.

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All those lovely links from other sites are now leading to error

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pages. So the authority they pass to you, your site, whatever it was,

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has gone. And if those website owners have got any sense, they'll be removing

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those links because their systems will be telling them that they're linking to

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404s and then you've got the user experience disaster.

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Because nothing says professional quite like sending customers to a page that

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doesn't exist. And those users are going to hit their 404 errors

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and just bounce. They're going to go away, they're going back to Google, they're

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looking for something else. And come on, you know they're not coming back, right?

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And that puts everything into a trust free form. Because Google starts

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thinking, if they can't be bothered to maintain their site properly, why should I send

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visitors there? Your site's credibility takes a nosedive.

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And unlike a lot of SEO mistakes, botched migration

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has immediate catastrophic consequences

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that are visible within days. So

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here's the fix and what you need to do.

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Here's the fix and what you actually need to do. Whether

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you're planning a migration or you've already launched and things have gone a bit tits

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up. Here's what you need to know if you haven't done it yet, before you

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even think about launching. Step 1 Create

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complete URL map. Document every single URL

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on your old site and where it should point to on the new one.

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Every single one, including those blog posts from 2015

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you'd forgotten about. Use a spreadsheet, old URL in column a,

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new URL in column B. What action are you taking in column C?

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Is it a redirect? Is it getting deleted? Is it staying the same? Every

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single page? Use something like screaming frog to call your site if you've got

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access. Don't guess, don't estimate. Know exactly what you've

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got. Step 2 Prioritize your high traffic

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pages. Use your analytics, whether it's GA4 or

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Clicky or whatever, to identify your most important pages.

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Because these are your money pages. The ones that bring in traffic, the ones

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that convert visitors, the ones with links pointing at them, the ones with

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rankings, the ones that make sales, the ones that track events.

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These are the pages that get extra attention. Double check the

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redirects. Triple check them. Because if you fuck up a page that gets

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500 visitors a month, that's 500 visitors now hitting a

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404 error and thinking you're just a little bit shit.

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Step 3 Set up your redirects properly. A 301

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redirect is your forwarding address. It tells Google and users

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that this page has permanently moved. Not a 302, which is

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temporary, a 301 permanent. And for

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the love of all that is holy, don't redirect everything to

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your homepage. That's like telling everyone who visits your old house,

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just drive around the neighborhood, you'll find us eventually. Every

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old page needs to redirect to its equivalent new page.

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If there isn't an equivalent, redirect it to the next most

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relevant page. Only redirect to the homepage as

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an absolute last resort. Step four

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Move your metadata. And this is where so many redesigns

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fall over. You've got page titles, meta descriptions,

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heading structures, alt text on images, schema,

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structured data markup, all of that needs to come across to the

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the new site. If your old homepage had a carefully crafted title

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tag that was ranking beautifully, and your new homepage

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says home company name, well, you've just told Google that

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this is a completely different page and Google has no idea what

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that page is about. Export all your metadata before the

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migration. Make sure it gets imported to the new site. Check

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it after launch. Don't assume your web developer has

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has done this. It's entirely likely they haven't. Step 5

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Tell Google what you've done. If you're changing domain,

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use Google Search Console's change of Address tool. It's literally a button that

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says I've moved my site from here to here. Please update your records.

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Submit your new XML sitemap. Let Google know where all your new

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pages are. This speeds up the process of getting your new site

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indexed properly. Step 6 Test everything before you

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launch. Set up your redirects on a staging site. Click through

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every single one. Check that they go where they're supposed to go. Check there aren't

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redirect chains where one redirect points to another, which points to another,

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which points to another. Because every hop in a redirect chain

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loses a little bit of authority. You want direct connections, not a

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maze. And step seven Monitor this like your fucking

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business depends on it. Because it does. After

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launch, you get need to be looking at Google Search Console for crawl

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errors, your rankings for key terms, your traffic levels, your

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conversion rates. If something's broken, you need to know about it

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immediately. Not next week, not when you get round to checking

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now. Set up alerts. Check at least daily for the first week,

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weekly for the first month. This is when problems show up, and the faster you

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can catch them, the easier they are to fix. But what if you've

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already fucked it?

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If you've already launched without proper redirects, I want to say

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don't panic, but you probably already are and you really should be.

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So panic a little bit, but then act. Get your redirects in place

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now. Even late is better than never. Every day those

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redirects aren't working is another day you're hemorrhaging

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visitors. Check Search Console for crawl errors. See what

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Pages are returning. 404s and fix them. Priority goes to the

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pages with the most authority and the most traffic. Submit your new

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sitemap. Help Google find your new pages faster.

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Contact those sites with your most valuable backlinks.

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Ask them to update their links to your new URLs.

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Yes, this is fucking tedious. Yes, it's worth

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it. And if everything's gone completely pear shaped, you might

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need to roll back to your old site while you fix things properly. And

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this is why you always, always keep a

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backup. You did keep a backup, right? So there you

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have it. Website migration isn't black magic, but it

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does require attention to detail and a solid plan. And more

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importantly, it requires actually involving your SEO

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person before you launch, not after everything's on fire and

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you're looking for someone to blame. And if this helped, don't keep it to yourself.

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Share it with your web developer. Share it with your marketing manager. Share it

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with anyone who's about to make a very fucking expensive mistake. Make

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sure you're following SEO. Fucking what? In whichever app you're listening to right

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now so you don't miss the next episode. Until next time.

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Get found, make money. And for f sake, let your SEO

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help with your migration.