Website Migration: A Complete Enterprise Guide to Low-Risk, Zero-Downtime Moves

What is a website migration?

Website migration is a process of making significant changes to a website’s structure, content, design, or location. This means transferring all the website’s content, files, databases, and configurations. Common types of website migration are domain migration, protocol migrations, platform/CMS migration, hosting/server migration, structural/architectural migration, and redesign migration.

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Why website migrations are risky for SEO and business outcomes

Website migrations are considered risky for SEO and business outcomes because they often result in search engine rankings, lost organic traffic, and revenue disruptions. Below are some of the reasons 

• Missing or Incorrect Redirects: Incorrect or incomplete 301 redirects lead to crawl errors, lost link equity, and lower domain authority.
• URL Structure: Website migrations may completely change how URLS are organized, risking broken links if redirects are not precisely implemented.
• Data Loss: During a website migration, databases and some important files can be lost or corrupted. This will result in SEO value.
• Loss of Organic Traffic: A Decrease in Search rankings directly drops the number of customers visiting the site. They impact the sales, leads, and ad revenue.
• Poor site speed: A New server can show us a decrease in load times if not properly configured. This performance issue will frustrate users and negatively impact both conversions and SEO.
• Brand Name loss: If the search visibility is lost, then that will result in damaging the online reputation. This becomes a block for long-term growth.

Types of website migrations explained

The most common types of website migrations are

• Platform or CMS migration: This migration denotes moving a website from one content management system (CMS) to another (e.g., WordPress to Shopify). This involves transferring the whole content, functionality, and structural change.
• Domain Migration: This migration is about changing the primary domain name. It is mainly done for rebranding, mergers, or acquisitions. This type of migration is risky for SEO as it needs 301 redirects from every old URL to the corresponding new URL.
• Hosting Migration(Server Migration): This migration means transferring website files and data from one hosting provider to another server. This is mainly done for better performance, consolidating content, or reorganizing categories.
• URL Structure Migration: This migration involves changing the structure of existing URLs, such as renaming directories, removing parameters, or restructuring categories.
• Protocol Migration: It means switching the website’s security protocol from HTTP to HTTPS. It gives security benefits and provides SEO benefits.
• Design or UX Migration: This sort of migration means making changes to the website’s design, layout, or user experience. Without affecting URLs, a redesign can affect SEO elements like Mobile-friendliness and page speed.
• Hybrid Migration: It combines multiple migration types in one single migration. This increases the complexity and risk.

Pre-migration discovery and audit

Pre-migration is the critical step in any website migration. The key components of the Pre-migration steps are

• Define the scope: Before planning to start website migration, cross-check the project requirements and ensure SEO is integrated into the migration plan. Analyze and get the answer for the questions like what the migration basically solves, what improvements are expected, and how its success is measured.
• Keyword Research and Organic Traffic: Identify the keywords that drive the site’s organic traffic and determine which pages receive the most visits. This helps prioritize the preservation of top traffic-driving content on the new site.
• Content Audit: Thoroughly audit the website content and identify valuable pages, outdated materials, or duplicate content. Don’t migrate everything; migrate only the necessary things.
• Mapping URLs and Redirect Planning: Note down the old URLs and corresponding new URLs with 301 redirects. This is required to maintain user experience and SEO rankings. Avoid broken links and 404 errors.
• Security and Compliance Review: Security audits evaluate current SSL certificates, data protection standards, vulnerable plugins, and access control policies.

The ultimate website migration SEO checklist

The website migration checklist is a comprehensive set of steps needed to successfully transfer a website without losing search engine rankings or organic traffic.

• Define clear migration goals, including SEO objectives.
• Take a backup of your current site’s files and database. 
• Do an SEO audit for the current website and identify critical pages, content, and backlink data.
• Create a staging environment to test the new website.
• Plan 301 redirects to avoid broken links and preserve the link.
• Choose a low-traffic, low-impact time for proceeding with migration.
• Verify the SEO elements such as titles, meta descriptions, header tags, and image alt text.
• Validate each step through testing on staging.
• Monitor organic traffic metrics compared to baseline.
• Measure the user experience and site speed.

Migration project plan and timeline for enterprise sites

Planning for website migration involves steps like planning, assessment, execution, and post-migration.

• Discovery and Audit: Identify what is being migrated, the desired outcomes, and its boundaries. It will take approximately one to 4 weeks.
• Designing Strategy: Define the blueprint for the new website environment. That includes information architecture planning, URL structure design, Taxonomy, navigation planning, and database and server configuration strategy. It will take two to three weeks.
• Execution: This stage involves moving the old site to the new platform accurately and efficiently. Typical project timeline to finish this is 3 months.
• Testing, validations, and quality assurance: This phase involves the full testing of the new website, from site components, forms, and navigation. Validate the migrated data and functionality after the full website migration. It will take around Timelines to finish this phase are 2 to 4 weeks.
• Post-migration support: After launching the new website, monitor traffic, rankings, and server logs. Resolves issues rapidly and updates the stakeholders. It will take around 2 to 4 weeks.

Testing and pre-launch validation

Testing and pre-launch validation should be done in several key areas.

• Functional and Content Testing: Testing all core features such as navigation, forms, search, checkout, and third-party integrations. Check all interactive elements like login, registration, and profile management.
• Cross-Browser and Cross-Device testing: Check how the website is shown in different browsers and environments. Various browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Popular OS versions.
• SEO validation: This testing is done to check the search engine rankings and traffic. These checks, like the 301 redirect map, are correctly configured and working in the staging environment.
• Redirect Testing: URL structures are often changed during migration. Ensure that broken redirects are not there. It may lead to 404 errors and lost authority.
• Integration Testing: Many of the third-party systems are used in the website. Validate connectivity with CRMs, payment gateways, marketing automation tools, and Single Sign-on (SSO).
• Staging environment validation: A staging site should mirror protection, validate environment configurations, feature toggles, SSL certificates, and CDN caching rules. 

Post-migration monitoring and SEO recovery plan

A successful website migration requires post-migration monitoring steps and correct planning. Here is a structured plan for Post-migration monitoring and SEO Recovery.

• Monitor Search Console and Indexing Behaviour: Test and validate all 301 redirects to ensure none are broken. Using the URL inspection tool, test several old URLs to confirm they return a 301 redirect to the correct new URL. And test new URLs to ensure they are indexable and live.
• Redirect verification: Run a full site crawl and confirm every URL returns a 301 status code, and check the final destination. Look for redirect chains.
• SEO Recovery Actions: The top priority is to fix the incorrect 301 redirects immediately. Even a single missing redirect can cause massive loss.
• Backlink Auditing: Use a backlink tool to check for backlinks pointing to old 404 URLs. Analyze Bounce Rate, Time on Page, and conversion Rates in Google Analytics.

Common migration mistakes and how Entrans prevents them

Common website migrations can affect SEO, user experience, and technical stability. With extensive expertise and methodology followed by Entrans, we can mitigate the issues.

• Insufficient Planning: Planning is important for all tasks. Starting a website migration with proper planning can lead to overlooked risks and uncoordinated tasks. To overcome this, we need to thoroughly audit and identify all critical SWO elements, URL mappings, backlinks, and potential risks.
• Incorrect redirect mapping: Missing or incorrect redirects lead to 404s, authority loss, and a drop in the rankings. To mitigate this, redirect pre-launch at scale, build granular redirect maps. 
• Broken Links and Missing Pages: Incorrect URL mapping or incomplete migrations will cause 404 errors. This results in damaged user experience. To overcome this, conduct rigorous testing, cross-browser, functional, SEO ad performance testing in staging environments. 
• Slow page loading: Platform or hosting changes introduce new performance bottlenecks. Entrans prevents it by testing core web vitals, pre- and post-launch, and implements CDN and caching optimizations.

Tools and scripts we recommend for safe migrations

Specialized tools for automated processes and general tools for planning, auditing, and monitoring. Tools may vary depending on the type of migration.

CMS-Specific Migration tools:

• Duplicator: It is a popular WordPress plugin that packages the entire site and automates unpacking at the new host. It supports zero downtime and multisite networks.
• Migrate Guru: It is specialized for large WordPress sites that offer one-click server-to-server migrations with real-time progress notifications.
• UpdraftPlus: It is a reliable backup plugin. It also offers migration capabilities, which are useful for creating a safety net during the process.

Cloud and Database Migration tools:

• AWS Database Migration Service: It is a fully managed service for migrating and replicating databases to AWS with minimal downtime. It supports both homogeneous and heterogeneous migrations.
• Azure Migrate: It is a centralized platform to assess and migrate on-premises workloads.

Performance and UX Tools:

• Google Page Speed: This tool tests whether the new site renders fast. Test the staging site before launch to ensure performance is maintained.
• Load Testing: This tests the website's performance under various expected loads. By this, we can prevent downtime that occurs upon launch.

Execution scripts:

• Take a backup of your files and databases before any migration using a tool.
• Use migration tools or server-side scripts to automatically update internal links and file paths to match the new site structure.
• Follow pre- and Post-migration site crawl and audit scripts using APIs of tools like Screaming Frog or Google Search Console.
• Backup and restore automation scripts to ensure data integrity and quick rollback capabilities.

Entrans Migration Services: How We Deliver Value

Hiring a team of migration experts like the team of Entrans takes away the risks that come with a website migration. Our skilled experts have deep knowledge of all major Content Management Platforms, like Shopify. WordPress, etc., We help in rebuilding the difficult layouts and securely move all the data from one website to another. 

Through refactoring and replatforming, we employ business continuity throughout the process by ensuring zero downtime of the website. We utilize our AI-first engineering expertise to implement DevOps, CI/CD, and advanced security protocols directly into the new cloud infrastructure. We also deliver value through technical rigor, automation, and deep specialization by improving the performance of your most complex systems.

Want to know more about how we increase your team’s agility and maintain zero downtime?. Contact us today.