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Pubcon 2024 Replatformings

Pubcon 2024 Replatformings

Presentation by Zach Chahalis for Pubcon 2024 on SEO replatformings/migrations. October 16, 2024

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Zach Chahalis

October 13, 2024
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  1. Don’t Get Left Out In The Rain How To Ensure

    Your Next Replatforming Project Is A Success Zach Chahalis @ZachChahalis
  2. Zach Chahalis Vice President of SEO for Over 14 Years

    in SEO including over 75 replatformings with brands like: Balance of In-House and Agency SEO (iPullRank, Search Discovery, Response Mine Interactive) Socials: @ZachChahalis (X) and LinkedIn
  3. Replatforming A replatforming involves either switching from one platform to

    another or upgrading platform versions. This often results in URL or site architecture changes.
  4. Redesign 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.
  5. Migration 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.
  6. My Favorite Project (And One I Can Discuss) Led SEO

    Strategy (agency partner) for GameStop from 2014-2020 Legacy website was 10+ years old – Extensive tech debt and difficult to update Replatformed from legacy Demandware to Salesforce Commerce Cloud in March 2019 Process took 18+ months – And still launched too quickly. Originally wanted to launch before Black Friday
  7. For the year after the replatforming launched How Did That

    Turn Out? Total ranking keywords increased 53% (month before launch vs. three months post launch) Site Launch
  8. Be Involved In Platform Selection Every Platform Has Pros and

    Cons for SEO G2 Grid® for Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
  9. RTFM! Know how the platform works and how to manage

    SEO components Know what’s not “out-of-the- box”
  10. Take Things To The Edge Consider Edge SEO to allow

    for easier implementation in the future. Leverage Your CDN (such as Cloudflare) for redirects Check out @NickWilsdon for more here!
  11. Don’t Waste This Opportunity Replatformings are a valuable time to

    address tech debt and poor structure Image Source: https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/architecture
  12. Work With Designers – Start With Mobile Design for users

    first – Focus on mobile Scale your designs to desktop/tablet. Ensure SEO components are retained across all viewports
  13. Work With Developers – Speak Their Language Consider project headliners,

    features and stories Craft these requirements as developer-focused stories
  14. Preserve URL Structures When Possible This can be make or

    break for how complicated your project can become
  15. Redirects! Redirects! Redirects! When you change IA or URL structures,

    search engines see these pages as net new pages. 301 redirect the old URL to the new URL to offset. Limit chains Avoid 302s unless truly temporary VERIFY IMPLEMENTATION
  16. Wildcards/Rules Are Your Savior Use a single rule to capture

    multiple redirects with less overhead
  17. Leverage AI for 1:1 Rules Leverage AI to create your

    redirect mapping (Learn How with Kyle Eggleston)
  18. Tools To Make Your Life Easier Use a single rule

    to capture multiple redirects with less overhead HopScout is a dynamic Google Sheet built to monitor and check redirect status/chains Access it here - https://bit.ly/hopscout Redirect Map Template and Screaming Frog Checker Access it here - https://bit.ly/sf-redirect-checker
  19. Handle Errors Correctly Page Doesn’t Exist – 404 Page Is

    Gone - 410 4XX Avoid 500s – especially Robots.txt Avoid Serve a 503 for outages Serve
  20. Consider a “Dirty” XML Sitemap Combine legacy crawls and your

    redirect map to create a sitemap of “old” URLs to submit to search engines Serve this file temporarily (a few weeks)
  21. Thank You! Get The Slides – https://bit.ly/pubcon- 2024 Replatforming Tools

    HopScout - https://bit.ly/hopscout Redirect Map Template - https://bit.ly/sf-redirect-checker Twitter/X: ZachChahalis LinkedIn: zacharychahalis