Comments on web migration from an SEO expert

[Irfanabdulla1111]

Can you give us an example (without naming names) of the most serious error you have seen during a migration that negatively impacted website traffic?

I saw this case years ago, in a multimedia content brand.

Its largest volume of traffic did not come from the brand itself (as is usual for large brands), but from searches related to the authors of the multimedia content.

Well, at a certain point the brand decided to change its name and that affected the domain name.

When migrating, they moved part of the content (but not all) to the new domain, using a non-worked architecture and with only a 301 redirect.

You can imagine which one, right?

From the old Home to the new Home.

Result: They only transfer their branded searches, automatically losing the largest percentage of organic traffic.

What type of migration do you think and from your experience is the most complicated to do correctly and why? From http to https, changing the domain name, URL, site browser, to a new hosting, to a new CMS, redesigning the site, adding a mobile version? Any anonymous examples you would like to share with us?

Today, for me the most complicated is a redesign, since it involves:

New architecture.

Contents that appear and disappear.

Multi-device viewing.

New technologies with Javascript rendering (for example).

And it is not only complicated by how Google is interacting with current migrations (it applies actions that do not correspond to the theory), but also by the number of teams with which the process must be coordinated in a company: IT, D email database lists poland evelopment, UX, CRO, Content, Brand, etc. where a balance must be found between the needs of each of them and the SEO requirements necessary today by Google.

Although as a comment, I have to confess that in my case, the most complex migration I have experienced was the unification of 3 brands into 1 new one (3 domains to 1 new one), where originally there were similar architectures and somewhat similar content and a lot of manual work had to be done, both in defining the new architecture (which would continue to accommodate the 3 old brands), and in the correspondences between contents.

Of all the mistakes that can be made in a web migration, which is the most common? Do you have any theories about it?

For me, the most common problem in 99% of projects (if not 100%) is the fact of not progressively validating the new project on the current website.

Except for migrations to HTTPs or hosting changes, I would say that all other cases involve changes in the HTML code that, therefore, affect the display.