A website migration can feel a bit like a leap of faith. Whether you’re switching to a different CMS, changing your domain name or creating a whole new website – the stakes can be high.
A well-prepared migration brings many benefits. But a poor migration? That can lead to loss of SEO rankings and traffic, technical problems, longer loading times and an overall negative user experience. You don’t have to think about it, do you?
To avoid that, in this article we want to save you from the most common mistakes during website migrations, how to avoid them and how to solve them.
What is a website migration?
A website migration is a process in which a website is moved, modified or renewed on a technical, content or structural level. Here you can think of:
- Domain change
Moving your website to a new domain (for example, from oudedomein.nl to nieuwedomein.nl) - Hosting change
Switching to a new hosting provider. - CMS migration
Moving from one content management system to another (for example, from Wix to WordPress). - Website redesign
A website redesign is a strategic process, where the technical basis and structure as well as the visual elements of a website are closely examined and improved. - HTTPS upgrade
Switching from an insecure HTTP to a secure HTTPS connection. - Server migration
Moving a Web site to another server.
Website migration: The common mistakes
There are many different factors involved in migrating a website. From technical settings to content structures and from a lack of planning to additional SEO risks . This can make the process complicated. Therefore, it is not surprising that things go wrong here and there.
We’ll let you know what the most common mistakes are. Learn from them so that your website migration can go as smoothly as possible!
Mistake 1: insufficient planning and preparation
Many entrepreneurs and companies underestimate the complexity of a website migration. As a result, they often rush into it without any preparation or strategy.
You will find that without sufficient planning and preparation, you will quickly fall through. This mistake can lead to:
- Loss of important pages
Without a record of existing content, pages can be accidentally deleted. - SEO loss
Search engines get confused when redirects are not set properly, resulting in falling rankings. - Technical Issues
A migration without a clear workflow can lead to broken functionality, incomplete databases and error messages.
How do you avoid this mistake?
A trouble-free migration does not exist without a comprehensive migration plan. You can set one up by following a number of steps.
Step 1: Determine the type of migration
As you read earlier, not every type of website migration is the same. It is important to first be clear about what type of migration is involved (domain change, CMS migration, hosting change, website redesign, HTTPS upgrade or server migration).
After all, every migration has its own challenges, so your plan should be tailored to the specific risks and concerns associated with the particular type of migration you’re dealing with.
Step 2: Assemble a migration team
In fact, for a successful migration, we always recommend working with a team of specialists (or putting them together yourself)!
Who exactly do you need?
- Project Manager
This one oversees the migration process and monitors the schedule. - Web developer
This is responsible for the technical implementation of the migration. - SEO Specialist
This ensures that SEO factors are preserved. - Content Manager
This ensures that all content is transferred correctly. - UX/UI designer
This tests and optimizes the user experience. - Hosting provider
This supports server migrations and domain changes.
Step 3: Create a backup strategy
In the case of a migration, backups are enormously important. This is because they help prevent data loss and unrecoverable errors.
A good backup strategy includes a full backup of the database, a backup of all files and DNS settings as well as an export of all redirects and URL structures to avoid SEO losses.
With tools like UpdraftPlus or cPanel, you can easily create a full backup.
Step 4: Establish a timeline
Without proper planning and a timeline, a website migration can take much longer than necessary. And the longer it takes, the greater the risk of making mistakes.
You can divide an effective timeline into four phases: preparation, implementation phase, going live and aftercare phase.
- Preparation (2-4 weeks before migration).
- Conduct SEO audit and identify important pages
- Backing up the website and database
- Create redirect plan
- Setting up test environment
- Implementation phase (1-2 weeks before migration).
- Building and testing website on the test environment
- Testing and checking redirects
- Implementing content, meta-data and images
- Live (at a low visitor point)
- Make domain change
- Run final tests
- Starting monitoring to detect errors
- Aftercare and optimization (2-4 weeks after migration)
- Monitoring SEO ranking and organic traffic
- Fix 404 errors and broken links
- Website performance optimization and speed improvement
Step 5: Use a test environment
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when migrating is by working directly on the live website. This can cause huge problems. It is therefore recommended that you always work on a test environment.
Step 6: Create a detailed redirect plan
Incorrect or missing 301 redirects are a common cause of losing your SEO results. Fortunately, a good redirect plan can prevent such problems!
What does such a plan look like?
- Map all old URLs
- Determine the new URLs and create a 301 redirect to them
- Check for a redirect loop (you want to avoid this, after all), with tools like httpstatus.io
Insufficient planning and preparation is one of the single biggest pitfalls in website migrations. By creating a detailed plan, putting together a strong team, testing extensively and using a backup strategy and redirect plan will prevent mistakes, stress and chaos.
Mistake 2: No SEO audit prior to migration
Another common mistake with website migrations is not conducting a thorough SEO audit before the migration. Without a clear baseline measurement, it’s easy to lose track of which pages are performing well, which keywords are generating organic traffic and which backlinks are valuable. This can lead to:
- Loss of organic traffic
If important pages are not transitioned properly, they lose their ranking. - Broken links
Backlinks can end up on a 404 page, losing their SEO value. - Loss of keyword positions
Pages can no longer be found well on Google as a result.
How do you avoid this mistake?
Well, logical right? By conducting a comprehensive SEO audit! This will help you secure all the information about your strongest pages, keywords and backlinks. This is going to help you tremendously when you focus on transitioning correctly.
Step 1: Collect and analyze your best-performing pages
So what are your most important pages? They are the pages that provide the most organic traffic, have managed to collect the most backlinks and have the highest conversion rates.
With tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics, you can create a list of the top 50 most important pages. In doing so, note the most important keywords, backlinks and the page’s SEO value. Make sure that all these pages are transferred 1-to-1 during the migration.
Step 2: Analyze your most important keywords
If you don’t know what keywords you can be found on, there’s a chance you could accidentally lose important SEO positions.
Therefore, make a list of your most important keywords and their corresponding pages. Make sure that all these pages are included in the migration.
Step 3: Analyze all your backlinks
Backlinks are links on other domains that point to your website. Google sees these links as positive reviews. Backlinks are hugely important to your search engine ranking.
Therefore, if pages with many quality backlinks disappear without a redirect, you lose valuable authority!
Use Ahrefs’ free Backlink Checker and download a list of all the backlinks to your website. Sort them by “domain rate” (DR) and analyze which pages receive the most backlinks.
Redirect all pages with many backlinks to relevant new URLs and contact key referring sites and ask them to update their links if the URL changes.
Step 4: Create a detailed redirect plan
Once you know which pages and backlinks are important, you need to make sure their value is not lost. You can do this with a 301 redirect plan (see step 6 under mistake 1).
Step 5: Check meta-data and structured data
Many websites lose important data after a migration, such as meta titles, descriptions and structured data. This can have a huge impact on your SEO. So it is important to take a step to preserve this information.
You can do this by exporting all meta titles and descriptions with a tool such as Screaming Frog. For structured data, use the Schema Markup Validator. Now that you have this information, you can implement the same data on the new site.
Step 6: Test after the migration!
Unfortunately, you’re still not done after the migration. You should always keep testing your new website after going live.
Perform another SEO audit to check for errors. Check that all pages have been adopted properly and if there are any SEO losses. Only then can you celebrate your migration!
Mistake 3: Poor or missing 301 redirects
One of the biggest mistakes in a website migration is not setting up 301 redirects properly. This can lead to:
- Loss of SEO value
Search engines such as Google can no longer find old URLs, causing strong rankings to disappear. - Broken links (404 errors)
Visitors and search engines get error messages, which degrades user experience and indexation. - Loss of backlinks
External websites link to pages that no longer exist. As a result, your link value will disappear. - Poor user experience
Visitors using an old URL end up on an error page and most likely leave your site.
How do you avoid this mistake?
The answer is simple: A redirect plan!
Creating such a plan consists of four stages: taking an inventory of all URLs, creating a redirect folder, implementing the redirects and monitoring after the migration. Don’t worry, we’ll explain it to you in detail!
Step 1: Take an inventory of all old and new URLs
To create a complete redirect plan, you must first know which old pages are still valuable and what they should point to.
Using tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Screaming Frog or SEMrush, collect all your existing URLs. Make an overview of this yourself and prioritize the pages that generate the most traffic and have accumulated the most backlinks.
Then check which URLs fit into the new website structure and which are no longer needed.
Make sure all important pages have a logical ending.
Step 2: Create a redirect folder
A redirect folder links the old URLs to their new version. A complete directory prevents broken links and preserves all SEO value.
But how do you create such a redirect folder?
- Create a spreadsheet with the following columns:
- Old URL
- New URL
- Reason for redirect
- Link the old pages to the most relevant new pages
- Avoid redirects to the home page
This is because Google sees this as a “soft 404” - Minimize redirect loops
Step 3: Implement and test all redirects
After setting up your directory, the time has finally come. The time has come to set up the 301 redirects.
If you use WordPress (our favorite CMS), you can easily set up redirects with a plugin. For example, consider the plugins Redirection or Rank math SEO.
However, it is important to make sure that all your redirects are permanent (301) and not temporary (302). This is because this helps search engines index the new pages, thus maintaining SEO value.
Step 4: Monitor and optimize your redirects after migration
Even after setting up redirects, you should continue to monitor them to minimize errors and loss of traffic.
With Redirect Checkers or tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console, you can keep a close eye on everything!
Common mistakes with 301 redirects (and how to avoid them)
Error 1: Redirecting to the homepage
Search engines see this as a “soft 404,” meaning the page is considered deleted. This can lead to lower rankings!
Solution: Redirect old pages to the most relevant new pages, not the home page. In fact, redirects should lead visitors and search engines to the most relevant content (in most cases, the home page is not the most relevant).
Mistake 2: Redirect loops (infinite redirects)
A redirect loop causes the page to never load, frustrating visitors and blocking search engines.
Solution: Test with Screaming Frog or Redirect Checker and avoid multiple redirects in a row.
Error 3: Using 302 redirects instead of 301
and 302-redirect indicates that the change is temporary, so search engines continue to index the old URL and link value is not transferred.
Solution: Make sure all permanent redirects are 301-redirects.Error 4: Forgetting to redirect mobile and AMP pages
Users searching via mobile may end up on error pages, and search engines may detect duplicate content issues.
Solution: Make sure mobile and AMP variants are also redirected correctly.
Mistake 5: Poor testing before going live
A common mistake in website migrations is inadequate testing of the new site before it goes live. This can lead to:
- Bugs and broken functionalities
Forms, search functions, buttons and interactive elements can break and thus be put on the new website without working properly as a result. - Slow load times
Non-optimized scripts, images and database queries can greatly reduce speed. - SEO Problems
Missing metadata, incorrect redirects and indexing problems can negatively affect organic search performance. - Poor user experience
Broken navigation, incorrect page layout or unreadable content can frustrate visitors and reduce conversion rates.
How do you avoid this mistake?
To be 100% sure that everything works, it is important to conduct extensive testing in a test environment.
A good testing process consists of four different phases: setting up a test environment, conducting functional testing, SEO and performance testing, and simulating the go live.
Step 1: Setting up a test environment
A test environment, also called a staging environment, is really nothing more than a 1-to-1 copy of the website. But on such a staging environment, you can safely test changes and migrations without affecting your “real” website.
How do you set up a test environment?
Step 1: Use a separate subdomain
Think for example test.yourwebsite.com or yourwebsite.com/test
It is important that you ensure that search engines do not crawl and index your test environment. You can do this by adding noindex tags to your robots.txt file.
By the way, keep this staging URL properly private with password protection!
Step 2: Use a test database and back up the live data
Step 3: Make sure the test environment has the same server settings as your real site
Verify that PHP version, caching and CDN settings match the production environment.
Step 2: Perform functional testing
You’ve heard it many times now. You need to test, test, test. But what parts exactly should you test then?
- Internal links and navigation
Click through all menu items and links to check that they work correctly and use tools like Screaming Frog to find out errors. - Forms and interactive elements
Test search bars, filter functions and contact forms. Also check that the forms are submitted and that notifications arrive in the backend. - E-commerce functionalities
Verify that discounts and shipping costs are properly reflected and test the checkout process. - Cross-browser and mobile compatibility
Check if the website works well in different browsers, such as Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Edge. Then also check if the website works well on both desktop and mobile.
And no, you don’t test such things just once. Keep testing until you are fully convinced that everything is working properly. And then one more time.
Step 3: SEO and performance testing
Once your Web site seems to work functionally as it should, you should run some other tests. In fact, there may be other hidden problems.
- Check redirects and URL structures.
Check that all 301 redirects are working properly and make sure there are no 404 errors or redirect loops. - Checking metadata and structured data
Check again that all meta titles and descriptions are properly filled in. And go over the schema markup one last time. - Check XML sitemap and robots.txt
Generate a new XML sitemap and test it in Google Search Console. - Load speed testing
Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to test your site’s speed. Your goal should be to be under a 2-second load time. Is your Web site slower than that? Then consider lazy loading or compressing your images. - Server response and caching optimization
Use a caching plugin to improve the speed of your Web site. In addition, check several times that your browser caching is set properly.
Step 4 (we’re almost there): Simulate the live corridor
Before finalizing the migration, we recommend that you run a live run simulation. This can help you fix the last bugs so that the real live run can go smoothly.
Is it time to really go live? Then perform this website migration at a time when there are few visitors to your website. Think about the weekend or at night. This way, the impact of the migration on your visitors will be minimal.
Error 6: No monitoring after migration
“The migration is complete as soon as the new website is live!” This is a fallacy that many entrepreneurs and companies make. Actually, going live is only the beginning. Without active monitoring after the website migration, many things can still go wrong:
- SEO loss
Declines in search traffic due to Google misindexing the new site or failing to find old URLs. - 404 errors and broken links
Deleted or misdirected pages cause frustration for visitors. - Speed Problems
Without performance monitoring, unoptimized scripts and servers can increase load times. - Conversion loss
If tracking codes are not set up properly, you miss crucial conversion data.
How do you avoid this mistake?
To avoid this, implement a structured monitoring plan. This consists of four steps: check indexing status, analyze traffic and rankings, detect errors, and measure load times and conversions.
Step 1: Check the indexing status of your new site
After a migration, it is important that Google correctly indexes your new Web site as soon as possible. If it doesn’t, you could lose search positions and organic traffic.
Submit your new XML sitemap via Google Search Console and verify that Google crawls and indexes all your pages correctly. Is that not the case? Then you can manually request indexing through Search Console.
Another important point, is to check that your test environment has not accidentally retained the noindex tags. If it does, it is impossible for search engines to read and index your page.
Step 2: Analyze traffic and rankings
Use Google Analytics to track your traffic and rankings. After all, a sudden drop may indicate an error. The better you keep track of everything, the faster you can react if something has gone wrong.
Be sure to monitor your rankings and organic traffic daily for the first four weeks after going live.
Step 3: Detect errors
One of the most common problems after a migration is that old URLs don’t redirect properly, which can lead to 404-errors. Fortunately, you can figure out these errors through Google Search Console.
Here you can check which pages are still getting traffic but no longer exist. Using this tool and information, make a list of all 404 errors and implement 301 redirects.
Keep testing all your pages until you no longer receive error messages.
Step 4: Measure load times and conversions
After migration, your website may load slower, which affects both SEO and user experience. Check how your website’s load time is doing after migration. Is your site slow? If so, you can make the following optimizations to improve speed!
- Optimize images
Use compressed formats like WebP and optimize images with tools like TinyPNG or Squoosh. These tools make your images “smaller” without sacrificing quality. - Enable caching.
Use caching via WP Rocket (WordPress) or set up server-side caching via NGINX/Apache. - Remove unnecessary scripts and/or plugins
Remove unused plug-ins and minimize CSS and JavaScript with Autoptimize or WP Fastest Cache. - Hosting upgrade
Upgrade to a faster VPS or managed hosting.
Prevention is better than cure
A website migration can have a big impact on your online visibility and user experience. As you’ve seen, mistakes are easily made-from incorrect redirects to lost rankings. But with proper preparation and monitoring, you can avoid these pitfalls.
Is all this technical talk getting too much for you and have you been reading this blog hands down? Then it’s smart to leave your website migration to specialists. Gaia Digital is happy to help you! Shall we have a cup of coffee soon?
