Migrating the domain has always been a challenging area in technical SEO. It always comes with a risk of breaking the site as well as its Google rankings.
Google’s John Mueller shared a list of things you need to keep in check for successful site migration. In a recent Google Search Central video, Mueller said that changing the domain URLs has indeed implications on SEO and how Google crawls the website.
In simple language, if you change the URL of the website then all the ranking data such as Page Rank, Link Weight etc is lost with the previous URL. So you need a way to successfully transfer that data to the new URL.
Here is a list of basic recommendations for site move:
Do Your Research
Do your research first before carrying out the site migration. Focus on your purpose behind the site migration and what your development team needs to know.
Create a List of Old and New URLs
This list will help you with:
- 301 Redirects and,
- Internal Link Updates
Implement The Migration
Finally, you can implement the migration by setting up redirects from old URLs to the new URLs. Also, you need to make sure that each old URL mentioned in the website is replaced with the new one.
Monitor the Migration
Keep monitoring the migration in the search console. You should see new URLs reported by the search console. Keep checking the search console for any possible error.
Search Engine Code Team is comprised of SEO experts and strategists having more than 20 years of combined experience. We keep testing and delivering knowledge of SEO for the community of SEO.
Leave a Reply