Free Website Migration Checklist

Site migration can be very intimidating. Knowing how to migrate a website from one server to another means knowing how to reduce the potential risks. A successful website migration should not have an overly negative effect on your existing site traffic, but this can be a challenge to get right. If you manage your site migration to another server without following the right steps, then you can cause long-term damage to your site visits and conversionA conversion is a desirable result on a website that leads to an action such as completing an order, filling out a form, or simply clicking on a link. rates, and that can have a knock-on effect that can be hard to rebound from. If you’re considering a website migration, but you’re not sure how to make sure you avoid the risks, then this checklist should be adopted and utilized throughout the process.

1: Use Screaming Frog

This is the most popular crawling tool available, although there are alternative options. Crawl tools will give you a clear list of your existing URLs, and may even show you some that you weren’t aware of. Copy and paste your list of URLs into a spreadsheet.

2: Top Pages

Using Google Analytics, identify and then export your top pages report, and add that information to your spreadsheet in a second tab.

3: Link Analysis

Use a tool such as Ahrefs.com that will arrange your pages by linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages.. Locate your ‘Best by Links’ pages and copy and paste that data into another tab on your spreadsheet.

4: Data Compression

Once you have all of this data, compress it into three distinct columns. Next, make a decision on each website page. You will have to determine whether each page needs to be turned into a 301, 404, or something else entirely. Make sure that you make a note of each plan and record the URL that you want that page to now point to.

5: New Website

Set up your new website. It’s a good idea to block search engines from indexing your website until you are ready to publish. You can do this using tools like robot.txt. You will have to remove this block on the day that you launch your new website.

6: 301 Directs

This is one of the least time-consuming tasks of a website migration. Redirect your old pages so that site visitors will land on your new pages.

7: Testing

You will need to test that users are being directed to your new pages, even if they are using an older URL. There are testing tools like Browseo that can make this process faster and clearer.

8: Canonical Tags

These will need to be removed on your new pages because they will continue to redirect to your old pages. These will need to be converted into self-referencing canonical tags.

9: Finding Bugs

Hopefully, your website migration will be a seamless process, but there is always the risk of unexpected bugs. You will need to evaluate your existing live pages as well as your XML sitemapA site map is a list of pages on your site and their relative importance. Use sitemaps to make it easier for visitors to find what they're looking for, and to ensure that search engines can find all the information they need.. You can do this using the Google Search Console and the Fetch and Render feature. This will highlight any issues that you will need to address.

10: Tell Google

Once all of your pages and content have been migrated, open up the Google Search Console again. Use the ‘Change of Address’ option so that the search engine is fully aware that this is not an entirely new website and merely a change of URL.

Make sure that you try to recreate your old XML sitemap. Once you feel that your sitemap is right, submit it to Google Search Console. Keep an eye out for 404s, traffic changes, and crawl errorsGoogle crawl errors are errors that prevent Google from accessing a page.. Continue to build your links into your new website, and use your website migration as an opportunity to make improvements to your onsite SEO. This will mean that you are not just avoiding the risks of website migration, but using the process to make even more improvements to your online visibility.