unique requirements that must be considered to ensure the site meets its goals. Platforms The platform you use for your site will impact how it's built and optimized for SEO. Business Model Whether your site is B2B or B2C will influence how it's optimized for search engines. Tech Debt Technical debt is the cost of fixing or upgrading outdated code. It's important to assess any technical debt before migrating to a new platform. Template/Component Quantity The number of templates and components on your site can impact its speed and SEO performance.
marketing let you know when a replatform is being discussed? • Involve SEO team from the beginning. • Don't wait for marketing to inform you. • Consider SEO in replatform decision-making. • An optimized site leads to better visibility and increased traffic.
the SEO team can help with: KPI benchmarking and reporting * Ensure revenue, conversion, and website engagement metrics are included in addition to SEO
ensure: - New designs are crawlable and search engine friendly. - Content continues to to be crawlable. - Nothing broke during the process. A redesign is focused more on changing and updating page templates. This is often just a style update rather than a major re-architecture or platform change.
ensure: - All legacy authority is migrated to new URLs (when changing). - Designs are crawlable and search engine friendly. - SEO technical debt is limited. A replatforming involves either switching from one platform to another or upgrading platform versions. This often results in URL or site architecture changes.
content moving from one location to another. In this case, SEOs should be involved to ensure that: - Content is fully migrated. - Redirects are added. - Efforts are taken to get the new content indexed. Sometimes a migration can be to a new host or changing an aspect of your technical stack. SEOs should be involved to ensure everything continues to function as it did prior to the migration.
From a design and SEO perspective, start with mobile first design. Ensure you’re providing a good mobile experience that scales appropriately to tablet and desktop viewports. Mobile First
a website migration, it's important to set a baseline. Benchmark these metrics: • Focus Keyword Rankings • Site Visits/User Metrics • Conversion/Leads Create a new analytics account if necessary, but maintain measurement continuity.
framework/CMS selection is vital to the SEO migration process. Select the platform that best meets your needs but keep SEO in mind during your platform selection process. Involving your SEO can help to identify problems before it is too late. G2 Grid® for Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
vs. Custom Some CMS systems handle SEO components very well out-of-the-box while others require more configuration or customization for SEO components such as structured data or page metadata.
a site should retain its information architecture when replatforming. This can help to limit fluctuations when re-launching as search engines don’t need to understand new URL structures. Image Source: https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/architecture
A new platform allows for optimized IA design without legacy website structure constraints. By improving IA during replatforming, you can: • Simplify navigation and improve user experience. • Improve SEO by organizing content in a more logical and user-friendly manner. • Ensure the new platform can accommodate future growth and expansion. Image Source: https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/architecture
you change IA or URL structures, search engines see these pages as net new pages. No previous authority. 301 redirect the old URL to the new URL to offset. The permanent nature of this redirect tells search engines to pass its value to the new page - though not all of it will pass through. Note: 302 redirects shouldn’t be used unless it’s truly temporary as this won’t pass along any authority and can also prevent the legacy URLs from being deindexed. The SEO team should lead the development redirect mapping and advise on URL rewrite rules.
go back to legacy page redirects and update them to avoid multiple hops. Each hop: • Wastes crawl budget. • Results in a loss of authority. • Can increase site load time with additional hops.
the right status code is served: • If a page is meant to resolve, return a 200 • If a page isn’t meant to resolve return a 404 • If a page was never meant to exist and was permanently removed (not valuable enough to redirect) return a 410 Gone • Avoid returning 500 status codes especially on your robots.txt file • If your site needs to go down for maintenance, return a 503 Service Unavailable IMAGE Avoid Soft 404s (200 status code but error copy)
Canonicalization is key to helping search engines understand the preferred version of a page when duplication occurs. • Unless your site is built on parameters (not ideal), ensure your canonical tags strips off unwanted parameters and identifies the main page • Ensure the canonical is in the <head> of the page (also that it doesn’t move when the page renders) • The canonical URL should also be used for any internal linking or sitemaps.
Multiple languages or countries? When leveraging alternate pages or sites, ensure that pages are tied together using hreflang alternate tags. This helps Google treat pages as synonyms to one another rather than as unique pages. * Separate mobile site? Carefully implement so desktop has an alternate tag to mobile and mobile canonicals back to desktop.
and optimize it for users and search engines. This process would include: • Revisiting or developing your keyword portfolio. • Developing page title tags and meta descriptions. • Potentially A/B testing these components on the current site to measure ranking or click-through rate benefits.
Having your SEO team involved throughout the process allows them to get hands on with page template wireframes and designs before they move into development. This allows your SEO team to: • Identify potential crawlability issues. • Address accessibility or site performance concerns. • Guide the design and development teams on balanced solutions. IMAGE
project is a key time to work with your SEO team and develop enhanced structured data scripts and templates for the new site. Key opportunities include: • Organization/Corporation • Breadcrumbs/webpage • FAQs (Making a comeback??) IMAGE Source: Schema.org *Kudos if you have a fax number.
a go-live checklist that includes final testing of your: • Redirect mapping • SEO stories • On-page requirements • Schema • Robots.txt file • Sitemaps Perform these tests before going live and ensure that any critical bugs/issues. IMAGE
Ensure that your SEO team is involved with QA, UAT as well as any “go/no-go conversations.” If there are SEO concerns that will negatively impact performance or revenue, ensure that you have a full picture of that impact and make the appropriate go/no-go decisions.
• Ensure your final robots.txt file accounts for any needed exclusions and that it doesn’t block the site for launch. • Generate and test your XML sitemap for accuracy and errors. • If your URLs changed, consider a “Dirty XML Sitemap.”
• Perform your go-live testing - Run your checklist! • Mission critical items may necessitate a rollback. • Ensure that any high priority items are addressed within a few hours or a few days of launch. • Monitor your reporting dashboards.
in the details Especially in cases with URL changes, ensure that you’re consistent with: • Canonical URLs • Internal Linking • XML Sitemap • Schema URL References Inconsistencies confuse search engines! They may ignore your directives if you’re inconsistent. IMAGE
Submit a change of address to Google and Bing for new domain of subdomain. This helps them more readily understand the domain change and migrate authority quicker.
can result in fluctuations for a few days or even a few months. If SEO recommendations are followed, it can shorten this window. Executives need to be aware of this fluctuation period
Replatforming Nuances Submitting a temporary (static) XML sitemap with your legacy URLs can help to prime search engines to recrawl old URLs and understand the changes/redirects.
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