what to watch out for when migrating site to hubspot

An outdated website won't represent your brand well.

Web design experts recommend a site redesign every two-three years to keep up with web standards and blueprint trends. This can often be accomplished with a uncomplicated facelift or re-skin. All the same, in some cases, you may be up confronting a site migration.

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What is site migration?

A site migration describes the process past which a website gets largely revamped in areas that impact visibility on search engines. By and large, these areas are design, user experience, platform, site location, and structure.

The stop issue of a site migration may include a cleaner interface, a new or improved user feel, an easier editing experience, and more than. However, the choice to drift your website should non be taken lightly. If executed poorly, yous could end up with status lawmaking errors, negatively impacted SEO performance, and even irritated website visitors.

Why might you lot migrate a website?

Here are the circumstances in which you might need a site migration over a simple redesign:

You demand to movement your site's location from 1 server to another.
Y'all are changing the CMS platform your site operates on.
You are changing your domain name or URLs.
Y'all need to brand major changes to your site's architecture (not just aesthetics).

Website migrations can be done on your ain or professionally. (For example, HubSpot offers migration services to customers switching to HubSpot's CMS.)

If y'all're considering a website migration, keep in heed that you must go out yourself time to fix and execute. Migration specialists usually take about three weeks, so programme accordingly. At present, allow'southward get into the details of migrating a website.

Website Migration Checklist

Crawl the existing site.
Record your benchmarks.
Map your URLs.
Brand sure you're retaining titles, meta descriptions, and HTML markup.
Try out the new build on a test server (aka sandbox).
Choose the correct engagement for the migration.
Fix to update your site'due south DNS settings.
Launch.
Crawl the new site.
Identify and resolve missing and duplicate content.
Check for redirect chains.
Ensure Google Analytics and Google Search Panel are implemented.
Marker the engagement in Analytics.
Submit sitemaps.
Monitor performance.
Run site audits.
Update your platforms.
Have publishers update backlinks.

Pre-Migration

1. Clamber the existing site.

A website crawler retrieves the URLs and markup on your site, "seeing" this data similarly to how Google would.

Performing a crawl gives yous a starting point for your URL mapping (more on that later) besides as a list to refer to in case something gets lost in translation. You can clamber your website yourself with a third-party tool such as Screaming Frog.

two. Record your benchmarks.

In some cases, analytics information can get erased during a site migration, and this historical benchmarks can be valuable, so information technology's best to retain it.

You should also take the time to review your analytics and ensure you know how visitors currently navigate the site and which pages are your most valuable. This context can help inform your redesign and site architecture decisions.

iii. Map your URLs.

If y'all're making major changes to the URLs on your site, you'll need redirections in place to guide Google and your website users from your old URLs to your new URLs.

From a usability standpoint, if a page no longer exists, yous don't want your users to become a 404 status code error. Instead, they should exist guided to the page that has taken the old folio's place.
Improper redirects can hateful a big hit against your SEO. They tell search engines and visitors of your website that a page has changed, whether information technology'due south been removed, or no longer exists. They also tell search engines what new pages accept replaced old ones.
From an SEO perspective, you don't want to lose all of the history, backlinks, and (in essence) "authority" that the old page built up. A redirect tells Google where to aspect those signals instead.

To get redirects implemented, you must kickoff strategize by mapping your URLs. This involves building a spreadsheet with two columns: i for the one-time URL and one for the corresponding new URL.

Don't be concerned if there aren't "perfect" replacements for every slice of content. Only do the best you can to directly your users based on their original intent.

If you accept tons of pages, manual mapping probably isn't in the cards for you, so to save fourth dimension, look for patterns in your URLs that can be redirected in groups or sections.

Existing redirects should be migrated equally well. Effort to keep equally many existing redirects as possible to lessen the workload, and make sure your URLs are mapped before y'all exam redirects, to make sure yous have backups if you lose them.

For more information on how to update URLs, check out this article.

four. Make sure y'all're retaining titles, meta descriptions, and HTML markup.

Recall that website migrations help with website arrangement. As such, pages should be compatible and contain the same information as they did before. To illustrate, if the HubSpot Marketing Blog underwent a site migration, the content and descriptions for each weblog post would be the same, just look unlike.

You tin always update or rewrite titles, meta descriptions, and HTML markup, simply you should nevertheless ensure that each page includes the proper information.

5. Try out the new build on a test server (aka sandbox).

Seeing mockups or testing in a local surround will not requite you lot a total picture of the new site'due south functionality and implementation. For a seamless transition, accept information technology online for a examination drive before the official migration.

six. Choose the right date for the migration.

Hiccups will happen no matter what, but you tin minimize them by fugitive summit hours.

Day of Migration

7. Prepare to update your site's DNS settings.

If you're moving your site to a new server, part of the process volition include "pointing" to the site'due south new location. Coordinate with your spider web/Information technology team and/or your hosting providers (new and one-time) to accomplish this.

8. Launch.

Set up your forwarding redirects, unpublish, and implement.

If DNS changes were involved, the site may be down momentarily.

If you lot're not switching servers or platforms, the migration should exist nearly instantaneous.

9. Crawl the new site.

Once the new site is alive, yous tin can do a clamber to come across if it has been migrated how you expected information technology to. One thing yous want to expect for is proper indexability and crawlability.

10. Place and resolve missing and duplicate content.

Using the crawl written report, run across if you detect whatsoever anomalies, including duplicate content or 404 errors and broken links. In addition, you should click effectually the new site and look for issues.

eleven. Cheque for redirect chains.

At present that your site has been migrated, you accept a lot of new redirects on your hands. If redirects already existed, chains may have been created.

Hither'southward what I hateful:

If you were already redirecting A to B, your migration may take added a redirect from B to C.

This creates a chain of redirects: A to B to C.

Redirect chains can slow your site down and impact performance. You can avoid this by breaking the chains, redirecting A to C and B to C.

12. Ensure Google Analytics and Google Search Console are implemented.

To avert any gaps in information and reporting, these should exist up and running the aforementioned day.

13. Mark the date in Analytics.

Google Analytics allows you to make "Annotations" of important dates or events. This can help yous contextualize the information and measure out performance pre-and post-migration (unless you opted for a new Analytics setup).

14. Submit sitemaps.

One time everything is upwards and running, ensure your XML site map has no errors. Then, you tin can submit the sitemap in Google Search Console to invite Google to crawl the new implementation.

Post-Migration

15. Monitor functioning.

While temporary dips in traffic are mutual after a migration, you should still exist keeping a pulse on your analytics to ensure nothing big was missed that could be affecting performance.

xvi. Run site audits.

Sometimes, 3rd-party tools tin can find issues you didn't know well-nigh. SEMrush's site accountant is excellent in situations like this.

17. Update your platforms.

If you lot have ads running or other platforms that may exist using erstwhile URLs, be sure to add fresh links.

xviii. Have publishers update backlinks.

If your redirects have been implemented correctly, y'all'll still become traffic and authority from your backlinks. Still, it's still best practice to use the freshest URLs possible. With that in mind, reach out to the publishers of your highest value links to notify them of the swap.

Website migration can be a lengthy process, but it's not incommunicable. With preparation, you tin have a migration that's successful and friendly with your existing SEO efforts.

Editor'due south notation: This post was originally published in December 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Originally published Jan half-dozen, 2021 seven:00:00 AM, updated January 06 2021