eCommerce Migration Checklist: How to Migrate Your Website Without Losing Organic Traffic

Editor’s note: This nonfiction was primitively published successful 2019. It has been updated for accuracy and modern champion practices.

Public work announcement: Migrating your eCommerce tract to a caller design, platform, oregon domain means that you person to beryllium ultra-diligent successful executing the move.

Otherwise, you hazard a deed to SEO that affects your traffic, conversions, and revenue.

In our acquisition helping dozens of eCommerce stores migrate, we’ve seen a batch of “gotchas.” While these whitethorn look similar small errors, near unchecked, they tin make a large downswing successful your integrated hunt postulation and rankings.

Most eCommerce migration checklists aren’t precise adjuvant either. A vague database of SEO factors — without a real, strategical workflow to travel — does small to lick immoderate migration issues. If you don’t cognize why you’re fulfilling a checkmark, you permission your tract susceptible to adjacent bigger issues aboriginal on.

So, we enactment unneurotic this 5-Phase Migration Checklist, with step-by-step instructions, to capable the gap.

Before launching immoderate caller site, we urge speechmaking done the afloat usher beneath and pursuing our checklist to minimize immoderate imaginable antagonistic interaction to your SEO.

Remember: If you privation an experienced squad to assistance you done your eCommerce website migration, we’re ever present to help.

Table of Contents

• What to Expect with a Website Migration
• Why Migrate Your Site?
• Types of Migrations
• Inflow’s 5-Phase Migration Checklist
  • Phase 1: Evaluate Your Live Site
  • Phase 2: Evaluate Your Staging Site
  • Phase 3: Compare Live vs. Staging Site
  • Phase 4: Launch Post-Migration Checks
  • Phase 5: Monitor Your Site Post-Migration

What to Expect with a Website Migration

Getting your ducks successful a enactment anterior to an eCommerce tract migration is important for ensuring its continued success.

While a downward slope successful SEO tin usually beryllium expected erstwhile migrating a site, by fixing errors anterior to launch, you tin really assistance postulation stay steady. In immoderate cases, this tin adjacent assistance postulation spell up by improving the caller site’s SEO.

Not each migrations are the same. It’s astute to see definite specifics for each script erstwhile you migrate to:

• A caller design
• A caller hosted oregon self-hosted platform
• A caller domain

Given its inherent risks, migrating your full tract tin beryllium a stressful process. But, by adopting an optimized and streamlined SEO migration strategy, you’ll amended trim immoderate integrated rankings oregon postulation drops on the way.

Why Migrate Your Site?

If you’re reasoning astir a migration, you should ever cognize why — truthful you don’t execute it superfluously.

It makes consciousness to migrate successful definite situations, including when:

• You person an aged website with an outdated design.
• Your concern changes priorities oregon work offerings, and you request to adhd caller accusation oregon alteration existing information.
• You rebrand to a caller concern name.
• You privation to alteration to a CMS level with more/different robust features oregon a little cost.
• Your existing tract conscionable isn’t converting, and you privation to commencement from scratch connected a caller domain.

Before you marque the determination to migrate, cheque retired our usher to eCommerce platforms for SEO purposes. That volition guarantee you take the champion level for your concern needs, which we won’t screen here.

Instead, we’ll get into the nuts and bolts of migrating successfully — starting with the risks involved.

Types of Migrations

The hazard of interaction to your SEO show volition alteration depending connected the benignant of migration.

Low SEO Risk: Site Redesign/Reskin

When the grade of the migration is constricted to a plan alteration oregon reskin, the hazard is comparatively low, due to the fact that nary URLs are changing.

Depending connected your team’s experience, it whitethorn not beryllium indispensable to enlist assistance from an extracurricular agency to support your tract performance.

Note: Certain designs incorporate JavaScript that cloaks content. Hiding oregon “cloaking” contented is not thing Google tends to like, arsenic it’s communal connected spam sites attempting to keyword-stuff their pages without the substance visually displaying.

When redesigning oregon reskinning your site, ticker retired for specified designs containing JavaScript that could trigger inadvertent SEO impacts.

Medium SEO Risk: URL Changes (With No Platform Change)

You’ll privation to show things cautiously erstwhile your domain changes, oregon erstwhile different changes hap that necessitate a caller URL operation with abundant redirects. Because immoderate URL changes tin interaction SEO, there’s a mean magnitude of hazard with this benignant of migration.

Your website’s caller URLs volition request to beryllium indexed arsenic rapidly arsenic imaginable post-launch.

Whether the existent plan changes oregon not, new URL paths are a cardinal alteration to a site’s SEO and should beryllium monitored accordingly.

Medium SEO Risk Scenario 2: Change successful eCommerce Platform

In general, a level alteration means that the site’s URLs volition besides change, owed to the mode that assorted eCommerce platforms operation them.

For example: As a way to products successful Shopify’s “collections,” the URL operation has to beryllium domain.com/products/productname oregon domain.com/collections/collectionname/products/productname.

Meanwhile, WordPress and different CMSs person their ain URL structures with antithetic needs. 

In galore level migrations, maintaining the archetypal URL isn’t imaginable ⁠— adjacent if you privation to.

Changing platforms besides presents the hazard of losing halfway functionality that your SEO (or your different integer selling channels!) are presently benefiting from. Evaluating and minimizing specified a hazard is cardinal erstwhile migrating platforms.

High SEO Risk: Domain Migration

Regardless of immoderate URL changes oregon plan changes, migrating your eCommerce site’s domain presents a batch of risk.

Your domain sanction has a batch of discourse and past with Google. Starting from scratch, you’re going to suffer immoderate equity.

In this scenario, beryllium prepared to bash a spot much enactment to mitigate the SEO interaction and symptom of losing traffic.

With specified a precocious risk, wherefore alteration domains successful the archetypal place? Typically, this update is made for a semipermanent gain, specified arsenic a rebranding oregon sanction alteration of the organization.

Inflow’s 5-Phase Migration Checklist

Now that you cognize which migration script yours falls into (and the associated risks), it’s clip to make a personalized checklist for your upcoming move. 

Don’t beryllium overwhelmed by the level of item below. Remember, determination are galore small, important factors that interaction SEO performance. Usually, drops hap arsenic a effect of aggregate small factors going incorrect — oregon 1 catastrophic miss.

So, portion our checklist is long, determination are 2 important reasons why:

1. To make the optimal tract operation for Google’s indexing
2. To drawback immoderate imaginable errors anterior to launching a caller site

Let’s commencement with Phase 1.

Phase 1: Evaluate Your Live Site & Opportunities for Improvement. Collect Benchmark Data.

Before you adjacent deliberation astir starting your migration process, you request to cognize wherever your unrecorded tract stands. You’ll usage this site’s analytics information arsenic a benchmark for notation and examination to the caller tract successful a aboriginal step.

This measurement volition assistance you motorboat the improvement tract with arsenic fewer discrepancies arsenic imaginable erstwhile comparing it to the unrecorded site.

• Step 1: Crawl the Current Domain
• Step 2: Analyze Google Search Console Data
• Step 3: Crawl & Analyze the Current Site
• Step 4: Consider Remaining Factors

Step 1: Crawl the Current Domain

Crawling the unrecorded domain provides a database of URLs and a wide assortment of information astir those URLs that tin beryllium utilized aboriginal for checks and benchmarks.

To stitchery this data, we urge utilizing a crawling instrumentality specified arsenic Screaming Frog oregon DeepCrawl.

Screaming Frog is wide used, and its information output is suitable for this process. It’s particularly utile for smaller sites connected a budget.

If you person a larger site, we urge utilizing DeepCrawl instead.

That said, usage the crawler of your prime — but don’t neglect this important archetypal step.

Step 2: Analyze Google Search Console Data

You’ll besides request to reappraisal Google’s ain information astir your site. You tin find this accusation successful GSC’s dashboard by exporting the .csv information of your site.

As you export this data, support these questions successful mind:

• Does immoderate structured information request to beryllium carried implicit to the caller site?
• Do hreflang tags request to beryllium carried implicit to the caller site?
• Do immoderate 404 errors request to beryllium addressed pre-launch?

If you place immoderate information that should beryllium transferred oregon immoderate errors that should beryllium corrected, people this checkbox aboriginal connected successful the process.

Step 3: Crawl and Analyze the Current Site

Now that you person your crawl information and Google’s data, cheque the pursuing disconnected your database (so you tin notation this information aboriginal successful examination to your caller site):

• Look for meta robots nofollow tags successful root code.
• Document GAID and benignant of codification (universal, GTM) being used.
• Look for pages with noindex tags.
• Review canonical tags.
• Review rubric tags.
• Review meta statement tags.
• Review header (H1, H2, etc.) usage.
• Collect each known unrecorded URLs (via a tract crawl, SERP scrape, GSC, GA, etc.) successful a file, to crawl and verify moving redirects upon go-live.

Often, our squad uses this information to place optimization opportunities for the caller site’s SEO. It’s besides mostly portion of our process for moving an SEO content audit.

Download our escaped Content Audit Toolkit contiguous to assistance successful this step.

Step 4: Consider Remaining Factors

The information collected successful the supra steps is ever necessary, careless of migration type. To double-check immoderate remaining important information for your applicable migration scenario, don’t hide to tally 1 past analysis.

Remind yourself of your level of SEO hazard by identifying the type of migration involved. Then, inquire yourself these important questions:

• Is the domain sanction changing?
• Is the URL operation changing?
• Is the tract architecture changing?
• Have you performed keyword research, created a keyword matrix and/or a keyword spread investigation to guarantee a coagulated keyword strategy is successful place?
• Is conversion optimization a consideration?
• Do you presently request assistance selecting a caller eCommerce platform, system, software, etc.? (If so, our squad tin help.)

In Phase 2, you’ll usage this accusation to place important enactment steps and fixes to instrumentality anterior to migration.

Phase 2: Evaluate Staging Site & Technical Opportunities for Improvement. 

Now, we’ll bash the method enactment of going done the imaginable errors (“gotchas”) and taking the needed steps to trial and code them.

Revenue is linked to SEO, and a migration presents a hazard of interaction to it. If determination was ever a clip to beryllium thorough with a method checklist, this is it.

Tip: Understand Your Development Timeline

Without the close approach, technical SEO tin look similar a never-ending process. If your migration is to beryllium completed by a people date, your squad needs to person the scope of enactment and a deadline to assistance support things moving.

Structuring the enactment according to the beneath outline should assistance you to bash that.

• Step 1: Check for Server Changes
• Step 2: Establish a 301 Redirect Strategy
• Step 3: Conduct Technical Dev Site Optimization
• Step 4: Determine Analytics Migration Strategy

Step 1: Check for Server Changes

If your server is changing during your migration, inquire your developer to big the staging tract connected the caller server to place imaginable issues. 

Don’t hide to inquire the developer to artifact hunt motor bot entree to the staging oregon improvement sites utilizing the robots.txt file.

Step 2: Establish a 301 Redirect Strategy

To get caller URLs indexed (and to support existing high-quality backlinks), usage a systematic attack to implementing redirects:

1. Formulate a 301 redirect strategy utilizing the tract crawl data.
2. Document however the redirect strategy volition beryllium implemented and who is responsible. Everyone should beryllium connected the aforesaid leafage connected however redirects volition beryllium structured and implemented.
3. If determination are bequest redirects that request updated, destruct immoderate redirect hops. It’s champion to person less redirects, if possible.

You’ll besides cheque for the occurrence of these redirects upon launch/migration.

Step 3: Conduct Technical Dev Site Optimization

Remember the extremity present — to get the improvement tract optimized prior to launching it.

Your technical SEO audit should see a fewer cardinal steps:

1. Review sitemaps & wireframes for the caller site.
2. Ensure the staging tract is being blocked from indexation.
3. Verify a customized 404 mistake leafage exists & decently issues a 404 header response. Page titles for 404s should ever work “Page Not Found” (or similar), truthful errors tin beryllium recovered successful Google Analytics.
4. Crawl the staging tract to hole 404 and brushed 404s.
5. Ensure immoderate links oregon URLs that you don’t privation indexed connected the dev tract are nofollowed. This would beryllium required erstwhile implementing caller faceted navigation, for example.
6. Test redirects (if possible).
7. Browse the staging tract with aggregate devices.
8. Allow for faster aboriginal indexing by creating an XML sitemap (if necessary) with each of the aged URLs. Plan to permission this up aft the tract has launched.
9. Test & heighten tract speed, arsenic overmuch arsenic is imaginable for a improvement site.

When possible, we execute a unrecorded tract to dev tract examination of tract speed. However, staging environments don’t often person caching oregon different factors that marque a site’s existent velocity visible. 

Since the load times of your staging tract are lone an estimate, enlist your improvement squad to assistance you spot wherever things are lacking and what you tin bash to amended it.

Step 4: Determine Analytics Migration Strategy

To assistance Google scale your caller tract faster, you’ll request to hole the mode you stock its accusation with the hunt engine. 

Follow these steps:

1. Add the Analytics code to the improvement site. (Block the IPs of squad members accessing this site.)
2. Compile a database of URLs to update successful the Analytics goals erstwhile the caller tract goes live.
3. Check mobile-friendliness of antithetic types of pages connected the site.
4. Check that parameters relation arsenic expected (and that captious tracking parameters aren’t dropped from the URL during a leafage reload oregon redirect).
5. Check the parameters report successful GSC for duplicate contented issues.
6. Check Google Analytics to guarantee that your website cannot beryllium its ain referrer (on the Property level, successful Tracking Info > Referral Exclusion List).
7. Compile a database of URLs with highest societal shares. Maintain the aged embed codification to support societal counts. (If nary pages person worthwhile counts, don’t discarded improvement efforts to instrumentality this.)

Now, your improvement tract is further prepared for parity with Google.

Phase 3: Compare Your Live Site vs. Staging Site to Ensure Parity. 

To further measure the staging tract anterior to pushing it live, comparison it to the existent site. This volition assistance you find a database of prioritized discrepancies to fix.

• Step 1: Compare the New Site to the Current Site & Identify Issues to Fix
• Step 2: Prioritize Your Checklist for Maximum Impact

Step 1: Compare the New Site to the Current Site & Identify Issues to Fix

Here’s what we urge evaluating connected some your staging and unrecorded site. Note: Content- and mobile-site-specific tasks volition use to everyone, but immoderate of the items beneath whitethorn not beryllium applicable to your tract (for example, if your tract has AMP pages oregon is hosted connected WordPress).

Content

1. Evaluate whether the tract is astatine hazard for duplicate content and/or URLs.
2. Migrate each contented to your staging site. Identify however overmuch contented is staying the aforesaid — and which isn’t.
3. Ensure rubric tags and meta descriptions are being carried implicit and are the aforesaid arsenic oregon amended than the existent site.
4. Check leafage content, canonical tags, interior linking, usage of H1s/H2s, representation alt tags, and more.

Mobile Site Usability

1. Crawl some sites arsenic “mobile googlebot” successful Screaming Frog. Validate that leafage titles, descriptions, headers, content, inlinks, images, directives, etc. are the aforesaid betwixt mobile and desktop.
2. Implement meta=“viewport” tag to <head> conception of site: <meta name=“viewport” content=“width=device-width, initial-scale=1”>.

Javascript Site Functionality

1. Visually audit each large leafage types (fetch & render successful GSC, if possible).
2. Audit HTML root for missing content. 
3. Audit utilizing “inspect element” for missing content.
4. Compare HTML root vs. inspect constituent for contradictions.
5. Evaluate contented based connected idiosyncratic interaction. Are determination immoderate pages that are captious for hunt motor access? Any that aren’t? 

AMP Page Specific Tasks

1. Each non-AMP leafage (i.e. desktop, mobile) should person a tag pointing to the corresponding AMP URL.
2. Each AMP leafage should person a rel=“canonical” tag pointing to the corresponding desktop page.
3. Any AMP leafage that does not person a corresponding desktop URL should person a self-referring canonical tag.

eCommerce-Specific Tasks

1. Identify if class pages incorporate crawlable links to the products.
2. Check faceted navigation and pagination for champion practices
3. Check to marque definite that each images person a descriptive alt text.

WordPress-Specific Tasks

1. Redirect URLs successful WordPress connected Dev tract utilizing Simple 301 Redirects plugin.
2. Install Google Tag Manager plugin connected WordPress site/CMS and configure it.
3. Set up Yoast SEO WordPress & Yoast Analytics plugins.
4. If you usage a CMS similar HubSpot, instal & configure its CMS plugin.
5. Set up Yoast Analytics.

As a abstracted task, we besides make conversion optimization recommendations based connected the staging tract to optimize the caller site’s conversions.

Step 2: Prioritize Your Checklist for Maximum Impact

Once you person a (potentially long) database of issues to tackle, however bash you cognize wherever to start? 

Remember that launching a worse tract (in presumption of SEO) is what is astir apt to harm your postulation potential. At a minimum, marque definite your caller tract is “on par” with the erstwhile tract to trim the hazard of postulation drops post-migration. Any fixes that assistance found parity betwixt the aged and caller tract should beryllium prioritized arsenic a necessity.

If your extremity is to really turn postulation (not conscionable support it), guarantee that determination are wide wins and improvements connected your improvement site, successful summation to each different factors being equal.

A Warning About Waking the Beast

If you are a larger, much analyzable tract with immoderate contiguous SEO issues and a agelong (favorable) past successful Google, “on par” is apt not a bully capable modular to clasp yourself to.

A tract migration represents an accidental for Google to absorption connected your tract successful detail. Rest assured that it will. 

Its bots whitethorn abruptly commencement noticing things incorrect with your tract that you’ve been getting distant with for years — except, now, you’re not getting distant with them anymore. 

We’ve seen this concern capable times that we’ve fixed it a nickname: “waking the beast.”

If you person immoderate large issues contiguous connected your unrecorded site, hole them — and bash truthful anterior to migration. Otherwise, you hazard stepping disconnected your existent rankings pedestal to a little 1 and spending the adjacent respective months (to years) recovering your existing rankings. 

Phase 4: Launch Checks to Ensure All is Well.

Once you’ve tally each of your pre-migration checks, it’s yet clip to deed “publish.” But that doesn’t mean you tin respire easy rather yet.

Even the best-planned migrations tin person method issues. Data tin deed an undetected method snag that changes its parameters oregon doesn’t transportation it through. Your developer whitethorn person accidentally included factors connected the unrecorded tract that were portion of the staging environment, specified arsenic bot-blocking robots.txt code. 

When you enactment with our website migrations team, we ever enactment connected platform erstwhile a motorboat happens to verify that everything is functional and moving properly.

That’s because, with each of the moving parts and URLs emblematic to eCommerce stores, we’ve recovered that the earlier things get fixed, the better.

• Step 1: Run a Site Crawl & Analysis Checks
• Step 2: Run Google Analytics & Search Console Checks
• Step 3: Run a Site Speed Check
• Step 4: Perform Any Remaining Tasks

Step 1: Run a Site Crawl & Analysis Checks

In this step, you’ll cheque for matching information betwixt the unrecorded tract and the staged site. Follow these steps to deed each imaginable factor:

1. Verify 301-redirects were each decently implemented by:
   • Running a redirect concatenation study successful Screaming Frog.
   • Identifying redirect chains.
   • Using the crawl record from Phase 1 to verify that each known URLs correctly 301 to the expected, 200-status codification pages.
2. Crawl the caller tract to place method issues and accessibility. 
3. Ensure the caller unrecorded tract is not blocked from being crawled and indexed by:
   • Checking robots.txt.
   • Looking for noindex tags successful tract crawl.
4. Verify that a “nofollow” tag was added to pages you don’t privation indexed. (These should person been identified connected the improvement site, specified arsenic connected faceted navigation links.)
5. Make definite the “index, follow” meta tag is contiguous connected each page, arsenic necessary.
6. Look for 404 pages that shouldn’t exist.
7. Check interior links by looking for breached links and links to the staging site.
8. Verify due implementation of canonical tags.
9. Check for canonicals and duplicate URLs (“www” vs non-www, “http” vs “https,” /trailing-slash/ vs. /non-trailing-slash URLs).
10. Check rubric tags by matching to existent tract data.
11.  Check meta descriptions by matching to existent tract data.
12. Check heading usage by matching to existent tract data.
13. Check representation alt attributes by matching to existent tract data.
14. Check connection number by matching to existent tract data. Account for each template substance wrong <body> tags.
15. Check interior nexus counts by leafage by matching to aged data. Have immoderate captious pages mislaid links?

Step 2: Run Google Analytics & Search Console Checks

Review the information that Google has indexed for your recently launched site:

1. Verify analytics codification is connected each pages and that the close codification is implemented.
2. Update Goals successful Analytics and verify they are moving correctly.
3. Annotate Analytics with the day the tract launched.

Step 3: Run a Site Speed Check

1. Run a fewer pages done PageSpeed Insights. Compare the results to the tract velocity connected your existent tract and staging site.
2. Make notes for improvement, if applicable.

Step 4. Perform Any Remaining Tasks

1. If your tract changed servers, marque definite determination are nary outstanding server-related issues.
2. Compare your apical landing pages, earlier and aft the migration. This includes details similar titles, meta descriptions, headers, leafage content, etc.
3. Verify 404 pages instrumentality a 404 status.
4. Verify your aged XML sitemap is published connected your caller site. Resubmit it to Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools.
5. If the domain is changing, assertion the caller domain variations successful GSC and taxable a alteration of code request.

Phase 5: Monitor Your Site for 1–2 Months.

Now, this is wherever the benchmark information collected from the aged tract comes into play. If you place immoderate integrated postulation decreases, usage this information to excavation into wherever (and why) they’re happening.

Knowing wherever the drops are happening clues america into what needs fixing. Your program of enactment volition beryllium antithetic if postulation drops are widespread, isolated to a fewer pages, oregon affecting conscionable 1 conception of the site. 

We urge monitoring caller websites periodically (one week, 2 weeks, 1 month, and 2 months) aft migration to guarantee that everything is going smoothly — and to close thing that isn’t.

Sometimes, monitoring should proceed adjacent longer. The bigger and much analyzable the site, the longer you’ll request to show its indexation.

1 Week Post-Launch

1. Monitor Google Search Console (crawl stats, rankings, traffic, indexed pages, etc.).
2. Check GSC for recently indexed pages (and cheque for immoderate that haven’t made it yet).
3. Check your aged GSC illustration to guarantee aged pages are getting de-indexed.
4. Leave aged XML sitemap(s) up for Google to re-crawl. 

2-3 Weeks Post-Launch

1. Monitor Google Search Console (crawl stats, rankings, traffic, indexed pages, etc.).
2. Remove the aged XML sitemap(s). Replace them with the caller XML Sitemap(s).
3. Check the sitemap.xml file. Are the close URLs successful there?  Watch for extraneous URLs, staging tract URLs, etc.
4. Submit the caller XML sitemap to Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools.

1 Month Post-Launch

1. Monitor Google Search Console (crawl stats, rankings, traffic, indexed pages, etc.).
2. Check analytics for nonaccomplishment of traffic. If so, place which pages mislaid postulation and why.

2 Months Post-Launch

1. Continue to show Google Search Console (crawl stats, rankings, traffic, indexed pages, etc.).

Most migrations spot fluctuations successful postulation (typically, an archetypal dip and consequent rise) aft launch. That said, each tract and migration is different, truthful the existent interaction is hard to predict. 

At Inflow, we enactment to negate immoderate drops anterior to tract launch, and the effect tends to beryllium dependable postulation — or, successful immoderate cases, growth.

Your champion stake is to travel this process. Doing truthful ensures that your caller site’s information remains indexed by Google and, thus, disposable to imaginable customers.

Getting Started Today

Bottom line: A palmy migration is decidedly worthy the effort for galore businesses. But, to support the website’s worth portion doing so, it’s important to get the method aspects of migration right.

This website migration checklist whitethorn look overly broad and method — but, judge it oregon not, it’s conscionable the extremity of the iceberg. When it comes to eCommerce websites, determination are truthful galore unsocial situations to see that we’ve hardly touched upon here.

We judge anyone knowledgeable successful SEO should beryllium capable to execute the supra process. That said, since we did make this for our interior squad first, it whitethorn beryllium excessively method for immoderate online businesses to execute connected their own.

If that’s your situation, our squad is ever blessed to assistance you migrate your eCommerce website with a personalized program of attack. We’ve handled each kinds of situations to marque definite our clients’ ducks are successful a enactment earlier migrating, and we tin bash the aforesaid for you.

Contact america to larn more and get our recommendations for your unsocial migration scenario.