010: Website Migration Mistakes That Can Sabotage Your SEO

In this episode of The Website Success Show, host Jules White discusses the critical topic of website migration and its potential impact on your SEO efforts. Learn how even seemingly minor changes like switching website builders, changing domain names, or overhauling your website's content can have significant consequences for your search engine rankings and overall online visibility.

Jules shares real-life examples of clients who faced challenges and setbacks due to website migration mistakes, emphasizing the importance of having a well-thought-out plan to preserve your SEO "juice" and maintain your hard-earned online presence.

Discover the common website migration pitfalls that can sabotage your SEO, and learn how to navigate them with confidence:

• Changing content, structure, or design: Understand why gradual changes are preferable to a complete overhaul.
• Switching hosting providers: Be aware of the potential impact on your website's performance and search engine rankings.
• Changing domain names: Learn about the complexities involved and the need for a comprehensive migration plan.
• Changing website builders: Discover how the underlying code and structure can affect your SEO, even if the design looks similar.

Tune in to this episode for expert advice and actionable tips on avoiding website migration mistakes and ensuring a smooth transition that protects your SEO and sets your website up for success.

Need personalized guidance? Book a Power Hour with Jules White to discuss your specific website migration needs and develop a tailored strategy.

Transcript

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Introduction to Website Migrations

So I wanted to talk today about website migrations because this is a conversation that comes up regularly actually quite often in DMs where we'll be having, I'll be having a little chat with somebody and they'll say, yeah, I'm getting, I wouldn't, I'm getting a new website built or I'm going to move my website or I'm changing my website.

And I just wanted to talk a little bit about the SEO.

SEO Implications of Website Changes

implications of doing that because  we work hard on getting our SEO or even if we don't, even if we haven't worked hard on doing anything or worked at all on SEO, you will be creating in the background. Once you've had your website live for a while, then you will be creating an SEO strategy.

One will be created for you essentially. So that will be happening in the background. Google will be crawling your website. And will be coming to some conclusions and you, and you will start  showing up for some things in Google even if it's not the right things or it's not quite where you want to be or you're not showing up high in the rankings.

Google will start to draw Some information from your website. And even if the only information it's getting is about you and what you do, you still don't want to lose that valuable SEO juice. And  it can be even as much as just Google understanding that this is a real website that's been around for a while  and Isn't something that's that's just come up, you know, you know brand new domain Ranking a brand new domain is really it can be really hard So it's just worth thinking about that that we can't think.

Oh, yeah, I probably haven't got much SEO anyway, but it's certainly It might be happening in the background. I'm all about informed decisions. So if you can understand what's going on in the background first, before making any decisions about changing platforms or changing all your content or changing your domain name,  then all the better really.

Client Case Studies

So I've had a couple of clients this week. I've had one client that we did a power hour together. She had  created a new website in FEA create. And she's done an amazing job. It looks beautiful and she's done it all herself and she just got to a point where  She then migrated over so she had her she had both websites running for a little while And then she moved her domain name over to fea create  and that's when things started to go a bit wrong and from Google point of view.

So the things that were showing up in the Google search results pages were her old website and they, that was then going to broken links. So people, if you click on it, so it was showing up in the search results with the old descriptions and the old page names. And then if you click on them, it was just broken links.

And fortunately, It was only a month ago that she had actually done this, so there was still time to, to recover it without losing too much of her SEO juice and too much of her  domain authority in Google's eyes.  If it had happened a year ago and her website had been re crawled from Google, or if it, even if it, if it was a website that was crawled regularly, so if it was a website that's getting lots of traffic and it's one of the ones where Google crawls it more regularly than the average site, where it might be two months before Google comes around and has another look at what's happening on your website,  then that could be lost quite SEO juice.

And  The recovering from that can be really hard.  So  we spent some time together and we worked out what the main problems were, what was happening, why, why it was happening basically, and went into her Google search console, had a look on there and what search terms she was actually showing up for, worked out which pages were the ones that were the sort of priority to.

to fix and the problems that were the priority to fix to begin with and then,  I had a another  DM conversation, , from somebody in the group who had  moved it, moved over. So she'd made that decision. I can't either. I need to be with, I want to update my website every anyway. So I'm going to move over to FAA create.

And she did that. And then it all went wrong. She lost her old website. So she couldn't then get in to.  Copy all her blogs over and it was basically, yeah, she was in a real mess when she sent me a message. And we managed to, again, get it sorted. She managed to get it back onto her WordPress website so that everything's okay now.

Everything will be alright. And it just made me think, because I've also had lots of conversations over the last month or so, I've had so many conversations with people where it's like, well, hold on a minute, don't do anything drastic.

Common Mistakes and Best Practices

Don't do anything To begin with, that's  a big change all at once.

There's sort of four or five places where if you're thinking about doing this with your website, then stop,  have a chat with somebody, have a plan at least, or at least be able to make an informed decision around that. So  I'm,  As you probably know, I'm, I'm all one for you probably don't need a whole new website.

So we kind of think like, Oh, spring clean. I'm just going to start again. And we love that. We love that feeling of everything fresh and new,  but Google doesn't like that. It's, it confuses it. And  it's, it then robs away from your, your trust and your domain authority. So it's better from Google's point of view to not do everything all at once.

So if you're thinking about, Changing or changing the content on your website. If you're thinking about rewriting all of the copy on your website and Or, you're thinking about re changing the design of your website, and I think we tend to focus on design first. We tend to focus on the way it looks rather than what it actually does and what it says, which is probably one of the most common mistakes that I see happening, where people are thinking they need, I need to do something with my website, it looks awful,  but really without giving any consideration to whether it's actually converting, whether your pages are setting, set up in a way, That's converting because you can have a website that's quite unattractive.

And if the content is set out right, and you've got the right elements that people need to be able to make that, that decision to purchase or to sign up for your email list or whatever you want them to do, then that website can still do really well, even if it's not the prettiest website out there. And, you know, I love a, I love a beautiful website.

I'm all about things looking good, but not.  I would certainly wouldn't focus on that first. And it's not the, it's not the primary concern that we should be thinking about with our websites. So if you're thinking about changing all of the copy on your website, if you're thinking about changing the design, if you're thinking about changing the structure of your website.

So if you're thinking about getting rid of old URLs and changing the pages around or changing what you've actually got within the pages on your website,  That's one area where you need a migration plan around that because  it's best not to change your whole website at once because, as I say, Google doesn't like that.

Google doesn't like a fresh start. So if you're, if you were thinking about doing that, you would want some kind of plan so that you can do that without actually it being, you know,  Sudden change in Google's eyes. So you'd maybe think about starting with changing some of the copy. Then you would think about changing some of the design and then you would maybe think about changing some of the structure, but you would have a plan in place so that you're not losing anything in Google eyes and also in your customers eyes as well, because we, we, People come to our websites expecting to see our brand and expecting to see  some of the, there's kind of a standard layout for websites that people expect and we tend to think we need to be a little bit clever with it or just do something a bit different.

But actually, from a user's point of view,   It's a bit jarring and we know what we expect when we go to a website and we need to make sure that we're actually providing that for our clients as well. So that's the first one.

Creating a Migration Plan

So if you're changing lots of your websites, content, structure or copy or design, then you need a migration plan.

If you're changing hosting providers, you need a migration plan  because by changing hosting providers, that can then affect your,  It can affect your URLs, but it probably wouldn't as much as if you were changing domains, but it can still affect what happens with your website and just, it's just good to have a plan around that.

And changing hosting providers can be if you're, if you've got a WordPress site and you're moving from one host to another, or if you've got a WordPress site and you're moving to FEA Create. So not only then are you changing the structure of your website and changing the website builder, you're also changing hosting providers then as well.

So that's like a double whammy. Then you've got, if you are changing domain names, this is a big one because if you're changing domain names, you're, you need a plan for all of those old URLs on your old website and how you're going to handle redirecting those. And that's something that can take months to plan.

And we may think that we've only got 10 pages on our website, but there will be images, there will be, you know, infographics, there will be backlinks, there will be so much stuff going on in the background that you don't necessarily know about that. You could lose a really valuable backlink just without realizing that it actually even exists.

So I would definitely say with that, you need to have a plan. You need a migration plan for that as well. And then if you're changing website builders as well, this is a big one because this essentially, you might think that you're That you're recreating your website in one place and re, so say you've got a WordPress website, you're, you're recreating that in FEA Create.

And I've done that quite a few times for clients.  But, it might look pretty much the same, but the backend structure of that website is going to be completely different. It's different code, it's different, you know. Elements that Google will actually read so it's really important to make sure that that is part of you need That's why you need a migration plan for that basically  and the thing is if you  Get all of these things in together So if you're doing your if you're changing your content, so you want a whole new website and while I'm doing that I'm also going to move providers.

I'm going to move from WordPress to FEA create or FG funnels or whatever  I'm going to, or I'm going to move from Wix to WordPress or Wix to Squarespace or whatever.  And then I'm also, then you might also have the changing hosting providers thrown in the mix there as well in the background going on and not realize it.

And then if you're also changing domain names as well, then that's, that basically you're starting from scratch. So you might think, okay, I'm not going to worry about my SEO juice, but it can be really valuable. So I think we can undervalue how much. It's already happened, especially if you've had a website for longer than two years.

Even if you haven't had it longer than two years, I had, I created a new page and on my new domain, um, for the SEO for podcast workshop. And within a week I had actually had a click from Google. So it's something that yes, SEO is a longer term plan, but you can get results quite quickly. And as soon as you start building that domain authority, which having the age of domain can make a big difference.

So I would. Just be aware of that. Just As I say, this is all about making informed decisions, really. So,    all that to say, it's just basically worth having some kind of plan.

Conclusion and Services Offered

So if you're thinking about anything like this, what I can do to help with that is I do power hours. So you could spend some time with me and we could just look at what's happening.

Look at what your plan is for what you want to do. Or look at what, you might not even have a plan. Look at what you're trying to achieve. And work out the best way for you to move forward with that. So you can understand, okay, what's the next steps that I need to do? What are the things I need to be aware of?

How do I even understand what's happening with Google? How do I know what, what I'm showing up for, what I'm not? Why am I showing up? Why am I not? So, yeah, that's something that I can offer. And I hope it's helpful. In terms of  Just some of the things you need to consider, but if you do need some help, then you can head to my website and book a power hour or let me know, drop a message, drop me a DM or send a message, it's, as I say, I would end this with it with, just with that reassurance that you probably don't need a whole new website. There will be things there that we can use and we can preserve to make sure that you're not starting from scratch again. So I hope you have a lovely day. And I'll see you soon.