eCommerce Migration Checklist- How to Migrate Your Website Without Losing Your SEO
Have you thought of migrating your eCommerce site to Shopify, Magento 2, BigCommerce, and any other platform? The goal behind your migration may be to update the store design, and you think it will have a positive effect. However, without a proper step for migration, you can find an adverse effect on your website’s traffic and organic rankings, you can also opt for leading ecommerce SEO Company such as Brainvire. To avoid SEO risks and retain your revenue, you have to make an eCommerce website migration checklist.
Things to remember before migrating to a new platform for eCommerce business–
- eCommerce website migration needs a detailed strategy. Thus, it is essential to solving errors and issues to ensure no effect on SEO indicators.
- Every migration unique- You can migrate your digital store to a new hosted platform and new design. The most notable factor is to identify the risk of traffic drops.
A comprehensive eCommerce migration checklist–
One of the best tips is to create different teams to deal with the migration process. Then, you can focus on the following checklist.
Manage your website hierarchy–
When you think of adding new categories, it is essential to reconsider how they will affect your website structure. Every category must be different, and it should relate to the right subcategory. You have to ensure that the most important pages are easily accessible to your website visitors.
Migrate and overhaul the content–
Although you do not like to change the content, you have to upload and format it properly for the new website. To migrate content, you must check for-
- The copied content
- Video and image files stored in your database
- Compressed images re-uploaded to your website
- Page titles and descriptions have the right keywords
- Proper setup of the blog categories and their tags in the new site.
You may also rewrite the content to match it to the new eCommerce website design. However, it is important to be careful to avoid any issue with keywords. Google will look at your page differently while you have added new content.
Check for the website URL–
There is nothing to be concerned about SEO rankings when you have not changed the page URLs.
But, there are 2 solutions while you have changed the URL-
- You may designate your legacy pages as 404 pages.
- You can redirect them to 301 pages.
To choose between any of these two options, you have to analyze the backlinks and organic traffic. 301 redirects help in retaining your website authority and page ranking. This option is also the right choice to transfer your inbound links to the new site.
Assess the Metadata–
Metadata, like meta descriptions and title tags, are the most overlooked elements in your site migration process. However, they are highly important to make the migration smooth. The metadata related to blog and category can drive a high volume of traffic to your eCommerce site.
The metadata of your static pages (like the Home page and About Us page) is not always included. That is why you have to add them to your new platform manually.
Moreover, you have to focus on page titles and title tags, as they are vital factors in the SERP results. Based on your title tags, you will get clicks from the searchers.
Check for internal links–
Links are the most important factors for the search bots. When you have edited your old site’s internal links, you will find a difference in the website’s position in the search result.
Removal of internal links can affect your SEO status, revenues, and traffic of your pages. To avoid any negative effect on your eCommerce SEO, you should retain all the old internal links. The most important ones are links to blog pages and category pages.
Product pages with links have the potential to increase the conversion rates. Thus, when your product pages rank high and you have removed their links, it can lower your SEO rank.
Assess your eCommerce website’s domain authority score–
You can choose a reliable link analysis tool to analyze your site’s domain authority score. The DA score represents how Google and other engines decide on the position of your website in SERP. A higher score denotes a higher placement.
When you have successfully migrated your eCommerce site without changing URLs, you will retain your past SEO value. You will find the original DA score.
You must take steps while you notice a sudden drop in the score. The migration of multiple sites to a new platform increases your DA score.
There may be different reasons for your store migration. However, every eCommerce business desires an undisrupted workflow during the process. The eCommerce website migration checklist presents you with some factors that need your attention. By analyzing these factors, you can ensure that there will be no potential SEO problem with your new site.
