Global site migrations can be a daunting task, but with careful planning and execution, organizations can maximize success while protecting organic search traffic. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore eight key steps to ensure a smooth and successful global site migration.
Before diving into the steps, it is important to understand the difference between site migrations and global site migrations. Site migrations refer to any significant changes in domain, content, or URL that typically occur during a website rebuild, consolidation, domain change, or move to a new content management system (CMS). On the other hand, global site migrations involve transitioning global sites across multiple markets, which adds complexity and challenges to the process.
Step 1: Consider the breadth and timing of deployment
During the initial planning stages, it is crucial to assess the size and scope of the deployment. Will the migration be across all markets or just a smaller subset? Timing is also important to consider, as holiday and seasonal schedules may differ across markets. Avoid planning a launch close to the end of the year or during the summer when resource availability may be limited due to vacations or office closures.
Step 2: Ensure SEO best practices are integrated
Integrating SEO best practices from the beginning is key to success. Although teams may initially be resistant to SEO integration, emphasizing the benefits and providing specific tasks can help ease their concerns. Tasks such as template adjustments, significant content updates, and URL changes should be incorporated into the planning process. It is important to enforce code, performance, and platform adaptability requirements early on to ensure a fast and mobile-friendly website.
Step 3: Identify content edits or new functionality
This step involves integrating market-specific keyword research and entity mapping exercises into the workflow. By sharing the output of these exercises with localization and content teams, they can make necessary edits or adaptations. Additionally, if new functionality like hreflang or schema is needed, it should be communicated during the planning process to ensure proper coding and template adjustments are made.
Step 4: Ensure internationalization readiness
Preparing the new site and templates for internationalization is crucial for compatibility with localized content. Considerations such as character encoding, layout and design flexibility, entity-escaping XML sitemaps, and date, time, and number formats must be taken into account to provide a seamless user experience across different languages and markets.
Step 5: Document URLs and content
To minimize the impact on rankings and traffic, it is important to carefully document URLs and content during the migration. Collecting all URLs for every market site, updating their status, and developing URL value scores can help make data-driven decisions about redirects or actions post-migration.
Step 6: Develop an SEO preservation roadmap
Creating a detailed project roadmap for each language or market version is crucial for optimization. By integrating these plans into the main roadmap, everyone involved in the migration understands how optimization fits into their workflow. Documenting each action and its verification time ensures accountability and helps track progress.
Step 7: Check parent-child relationships
During the prelaunch review, it is important to check for any broken parent-child relationships between the main site and localized pages. This can prevent pages from being available or cause duplication or indexing problems in different markets. A detailed URL list and URL Value Scores can help prevent the loss of critical child-only pages.
Step 8: Preserve and transfer authority and equity
To ensure a smooth transition, it is important to implement correct redirects. Incorrect or missing redirects are often the main cause of traffic drops post-launch. If a page has built equity over the years, it must be passed on to the new page for that content.
Post-launch monitoring is also crucial to ensure everything is functioning as expected. Checking open robots.txt files, validating hreflang implementation, submitting XML sitemaps, and updating country/language selectors are key elements to monitor.
In conclusion, global site migrations require careful planning and execution to maximize success. By following these eight steps, organizations can integrate SEO best practices, preserve URL and content value, and streamline the process across international markets. Remember that deeply integrating SEO into the workflow early on and monitoring redirects and high-value pages can help detect and fix issues early, leading to a successful global site migration.
