Migrating a website poses significant complexity, mainly when it encompasses transitioning global sites spanning multiple markets. The challenges multiply exponentially in such scenarios.
This article offers a thorough roadmap for optimizing success in global site migrations while safeguarding organic search traffic. From initial planning to post-launch monitoring, it outlines crucial steps organizations must undertake. These include deeply embedding SEO best practices, preserving URL and content value, and streamlining the process seamlessly across international markets.
Single Site Migrations Versus Global Site Migrations
Migration encompasses significant domain, content, or URL changes commonly occurring during a website rebuild, consolidation, domain transition, or migration to a new content management system (CMS).
A single-site migration presents challenges, but the stakes escalate significantly when executed globally without meticulous planning.
Multinational corporations often opt to deploy the new platform in a smaller single market or region initially. This strategy allows them to iron out any issues using beta users or granting access to a small percentage of users to stress-test and evaluate its functionality.
Preparation Before Migration: Setting the Stage for Success
Your actions during the initial discovery and planning phases greatly influence the project. The more you integrate global search requirements into this early phase, the fewer issues you’ll encounter later.
- Assess Deployment Scope and Timing:
At the outset, evaluate the scale of deployment. Will it span all markets, resembling a CMS “lift and shift,” or entail a significant technology overhaul with architectural and content refreshments?
Consider initiating the new platform in a smaller single market or region for beta testing with fewer users. Timing and aligning with holiday and seasonal schedules across affected markets are crucial to mitigate disruptions caused by office closures or reduced staff availability.
- Embed SEO Best Practices:
While mentioning SEO integration may elicit skepticism from teams, stressing its benefits during the design phase proves easier than retrofitting later. Instead of overwhelming teams with generic SEO checklists, provide specific tasks such as template adjustments, significant content updates, and URL changes.
Encourage adherence to code, performance, and adaptability requirements even before mockups are finalized. Remind developers of varying internet speeds and device usage across markets, necessitating foundational performance standards for universal accessibility.
- Identify Content Edits and New Functionality:
Leverage this phase to incorporate market-specific content modifications identified through keyword research or entity mapping exercises. Ensure seamless integration into the workflow for localization and content teams.
During a “lift and shift,” assess content length suitability for the new design and address any discrepancies accordingly. Communicate the need for new functionalities like hreflang or schema upfront to facilitate coding or template adjustments.
- Ensure Internationalization Readiness:
While typically not an SEO task, preparing for internationalization is critical for user experience and SEO alignment. Key considerations include:
- Character Encoding: Ensure Unicode (UTF-8) compliance to support special characters in various languages.
- Layout and Design: Flexibility to accommodate text expansion, contraction, and direction in localized versions.
- Entity-Escaping XML Sitemaps: Encode special characters to comply with XML sitemap protocol, especially for markets with unique characters.
- Date, Time, and Number Formats: Account for local conventions to avoid discrepancies in measurements and date formats.
Addressing these aspects before migration lays a robust foundation for a smoother transition and optimized global site performance.
Navigating the Migration Development Process
Once the blueprint is in place, the migration journey truly commences with technology and content development. The global search team takes pivotal actions in this phase.
- Documentation of URLs and Content:
A common pitfall in migrations is the accidental removal or consolidation of webpages and valuable content, which can potentially harm rankings and traffic. This often occurs during content and workflow streamlining efforts.
To mitigate such risks, the SEO team should execute the following plan:
- Catalog URLs: Begin by aggregating all URLs across every market site alongside pertinent performance attributes. To compile comprehensive data, utilize diverse sources such as CMS extracts, sitemaps, Google Search Console, GA4, and diagnostic crawlers.
- URL Decision Status: Maintain an updated URL list with categorized outcomes, employing designations like Keep/Update/Merge/Remove to signify the action required for each page. Any status other than “keep” could impact the performance of associated content.
- Develop URL Value Scores (UVS): Assign a unique weighting to each URL and its content through the generation of UVS. This metric incorporates various data points like keyword rankings, backlinks, traffic, pageviews, and sales. The UVS facilitates data-driven decision-making regarding URL management post-migration, ensuring the proper redirection or handling of high-value URLs and their content.
- Formulation of an SEO Preservation Roadmap:
Crafting detailed project roadmaps for each language or market version is imperative. These plans should be seamlessly integrated into the overarching roadmap, ensuring clarity for all stakeholders regarding the optimization process and its alignment with their respective workflows. Document each action along with its timeline to facilitate verification and adherence.
Pre-Launch Assessment
The pre-launch assessment takes center stage in the days leading up to the official launch. Some companies rally all hands on deck for a comprehensive site review, which can exacerbate the resource constraints mentioned earlier.
In local markets, time constraints often limit reviews to spot checks, necessitating focusing on areas with the highest impact.
- Verification of Parent-Child Relationships:
Even straightforward “lift and shift” migrations can disrupt parent-child relationships between the leading site and localized pages. This disruption or delay in localization may render pages inaccessible or result in the creation of non-localized pages, leading to duplication or indexing issues in the markets.
A meticulously detailed URL list and UVS are indispensable for safeguarding critical child-only pages from loss.
- Preservation and Transfer of Authority and Equity:
This entails ensuring the correct implementation of all redirects, colloquially referred to as preserving and transferring authority and equity.
Post-launch SEO triages often pinpoint incorrect or missing redirects as the primary cause of traffic declines. If a page has accrued equity over the years, transferring it to the new page housing the content is imperative.
Post-Launch Monitoring Protocol
Following the standard post-launch checks is crucial, but conducting them across all language and market websites becomes more intricate, amplifying both the workload and complexity of the verification process.
Despite thorough pre-launch assessments, there’s a notable probability of changes occurring during the launch, particularly with localized website versions. It’s common for templates, entire sections, or language versions to undergo last-minute alterations requiring identification and rectification.
Below are key elements to monitor:
- Open Robots.txt:
It’s common to find websites where the robots.txt file is correctly configured for the leading U.S. website but remains blocked for all market sites. The first item on the checklist is ensuring that every website version allows access. Providing the expected settings can help eliminate any confusion.
- Validate Hreflang:
Especially with CMS changes or regional deployments, verifying the correct implementation of hreflang tags is essential as it expedites URL detection and reindexing. Incorrect implementation may lead Google to consider new URLs as duplicates until it processes the hreflang tags. Most SEO diagnostic tools can validate hreflang implementation while conducting other post-launch diagnostic crawls.
- Submit XML Sitemaps:
Once the site is live, remove outdated XML sitemaps and submit new ones, mainly if significant changes have been made, such as CMS or domain transitions. In domain consolidation or changes, a change of address notification should be submitted for each old domain.
- Update Country/Language Selectors:
The country or language selector is often overlooked during refreshes, typically found in the footer or on a dedicated page. Ensure that new or consolidated websites or URLs are reflected accurately in these selectors.
Ensuring Success in Your Global Site Migration
Executing a global migration is daunting, particularly for organizations with limited resources.
If there’s one thing you prioritize, it should be the seamless integration of SEO into the workflow from the outset, ensuring its smooth transition across all markets.
Vigilantly monitoring redirects and reindexing high-value pages across all markets enables early detection of issues for prompt resolution.
Emphasize preserving and enhancing performance-driving elements to align with development, content, and localization teams. If navigating this process feels overwhelming, consider exploring monthly SEO packages offered by external experts who can provide valuable assistance.
