How to Migrate from Magento to BigCommerce Without Losing SEO Rankings

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Why Magento to BigCommerce Migration Is Essential

Businesses are now looking for ways to reduce costs and technical overhead. The benefits we get from Migrating to BigCommerce are

• User-friendliness: With its intuitive dashboard and less technical overhead, the BigCommerce dashboard makes maintenance easier.
• Cost efficiency: BigCommerce’s subscription model includes security updates, hosting, and unpredictable expenses from hosting and custom development on Magento. 
• Reduced technical Overhead: BigCommerce is a SaaS platform that can handle server management, long-term maintenance costs, security, and hosting. This feature lets you free yourself from the technical complexity of Magento.
• Improved performance: Magento stores become slow as the product catalog grows, whereas BigCommerce is optimized for speed and performance. This ensures faster page load and gives a smoother shopping experience.
• Built-in feature: BigCommerce provides more built-in features, and this reduces the need for third-party plugins. Some of the features, like faceted search, full-featured reporting, multi-currency support, and powerful API integrations, are standard components of the platform. But Magento requires purchasing third-party plugins for essential features. 
• Marketing tools and SEO: BigCommerce has built-in marketing and SEO tools. This promotes better search engine rankings and promotional campaigns. 
• Security and Compliance: BigCommerce handles security very well. Being a PCI DSS Level 1 Certified SaaS platform, security patches, platform updates, DDoS mitigation, and firewall protection are managed by BigCommerce itself. The BigCommerce platform ensures that it is aligned with regulatory standards.

Step-by-Step Magento to BigCommerce Migration Process

The Magento to BigCommerce Migration process typically involves preparation, data migration, and store setup. The steps involved in the migration process are

1. Audit the Magento store: Analyze the Magento store and identify specific data entities such as products, categories, customers, orders, reviews, CMS pages, etc. Create a backup of the Magento database and files. Export CSV/XML of products, customers, orders, categories, CMS pages, and metadata. Export sitemap and current robots.txt capture Google Search Console (GSC) and Analytics access and settings. Make a list of necessary things on what must move, what can be retired, and what should be redesigned or improved. Find the BigCommerce equivalents for the Magento extension. This is the first step of preventing data loss during the Magento to BigCommerce migration. Identify the potential SEO spots, such as Custom URL, structures, and content templates, and note them down.
2. Set up the BigCommerce store: Do a basic BigCommerce store set up, choose a stencil theme, and start with design customization. To maintain the SEO ranking, mainly focus on a mobile-responsive theme and a user-friendly interface. 
3. URL mapping plan: Map every old Magento URL to its equivalent BigCommerce URL in a separate sheet. Make it redirect to 301. This is the most crucial step in preserving the SEO rankings. Export all SEO related data, such as page titles, metadata, image alt tags, H1 tags, and product descriptions.
4. Data Migration: This is the step where data is transferred from Magento to BigCommerce. Choose a migration method either through apps, partnerships, or manually. Start migrating the data from Magento via CSV and import it into BigCommerce. Essential data entities such as products, categories, customers, order history, and reviews are to be migrated to BigCommerce. Verify that the migrated data has all SEO data for products and categories. Set up the payment gateways, shipping zones, tax rules, and integrate third-party apps (ERP, CRM, and Email marketing). 
5. QA and Testing: Rigorously test the data on the staging site. Test all key functionalities like product page, category pages, and blog. Confirm that the migrated content is displayed correctly and the loading speed of the page is optimized.
6. Implement 301 Redirects: Transfer page titles, meta descriptions, H1s, alt text, and structured data. Implement 301 redirect for all URL changes using the created list in BigCommerce Redirect Manager. This is the most important step in preserving the SEO rankings. It redirects the search engine and the user from the Magento URL to the BigCommerce URL.
7. Validate data: On the staging server, perform a free migration with a small data subset to preview how the migration will work. Validate the demo for its data accuracy, completeness, and data integrity.
8. Launch BigCommerce: Once all the data is migrated to the staging environment, it is time to migrate the full data. Update your DNS settings to point to BigCommerce and then launch your new store. Continuously monitor the BigCommerce store’s performance, user experience, and SEO. Make changes to the settings when needed.

Post-Migration Checklist to Ensure Smooth Operations

Migration is not completed till the post-migration steps are carried out. The checklist below ensures the functions are working correctly.

• Do data validation: Verify that all the products, categories, customer profiles, and order histories are migrated completely.
• Test core store functions: Try to order a product in the BigCommerce store by using all the main functionalities. This includes product search, shopping cart, checkout process, and payment gateways. 
• SEO preservation: Ensure SEO metadata, URLS, and 301 redirects from Magento to BigCommerce URLs are properly set up. This is necessary for maintaining the search rankings. Validate robots.txt and sitemap files are optimized for search engine crawling.
• Review and enforce user roles and permissions for store admins in BigCommerce.
• Point DNS settings to BigCommerce, which ensures minimal downtime.

Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Migrating from Magento to BigCommerce brings several key challenges. The ways to overcome them are

• Complexity: Customized Magento stores that have complex data structures are difficult to move. All the products, categories, customers, and orders can be mismatched if not handled properly. To overcome this, take professional help to support the Magento to BigCommerce migration and test the imported data in BigCommerce before going live.
• Functional gaps: Due to the open-source nature of Magento, unlimited customization is possible. While BigCommerce has a different architecture. Themes of Magento are incompatible with BigCommerce’s Stencil theme framework. To handle this, rebuild the themes again in BigCommerce. Find and test alternative BigCommerce-compatible extensions or rebuild a custom one to function correctly. 
• URL and SEO issues: Errors in migration can lead to 404 errors. This will affect the SEO rankings and organic traffic. To mitigate this, implement a 301 redirect for all old URLs to point to the new BigCommerce URLS. Make sure to take a backup of SEO URLs before starting the migration.
• User adoption: Teams might have gotten used to the Magento store, and moving to BigCommerce is a big deal to get them accepted. To overcome this, provide training sessions about BigCommerce features and the advantages we get from it.
• Operational downtime: Migrating a live Magento store risks downtime and data loss, such as losing orders placed during migration. To overcome this, perform data sync and maintain the Magento store live until the BigCommerce store becomes operationally stable.

Why Entrans Is Your Trusted Partner for Seamless BigCommerce Migration

At Entrans, we specialize in Magento to BigCommerce migration. Our team of skilled experts ensures seamless migration with minimal downtime and maximizes efficiency. We provide end-to-end services from planning to carrying out the post-migration steps carefully. We bring a lot of experience from the migration projects and help you avoid common problems.

Want to know more about how our services can simplify your Magento to BigCommerce without losing SEO rankings?. Book a consultation call.