How Long Should An SEO Migration Take? [Study Updated] via @sejournal, @TaylorDanRW

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Website migrations, specifically domain migrations, are often seen arsenic 1 of the much analyzable parts of SEO.

They are becoming progressively much communal arsenic businesses are consolidating websites and assets to trim costs and consolidate efforts arsenic much channels and platforms travel into play.

As SEO professionals, we are tasked with mitigating arsenic galore risks and variables arsenic imaginable truthful that the concern doesn’t spot organic show issues – either astatine each oregon for a longer than indispensable play of time.

When we ran this survey successful 2023, we looked astatine 171 migrations and recovered that it took 229 days (on average) for third-party tools to bespeak integrated postulation for the caller domain to instrumentality to the aforesaid pre-migration levels of the archetypal domain; 42% didn’t instrumentality astatine all.

The crushed we’ve repeated this survey is that we deliberation it’s important that businesses (and SEO marketers) person information to enactment disconnected to marque informed decisions erstwhile readying domain migrations.

Over the years, I’ve been successful a fig of transportation meetings wherever the different agencies pitching person promised nary postulation nonaccomplishment astatine each during migration, and much often than not, capable mentation work, monitoring, oregon anticipation mounting has been done.

Study Methodology

This survey aims to probe and supply a data-led reply to “How agelong should an SEO migration take,” to assistance some in-house SEOs and consultants supply amended estimations and communications with non-SEO stakeholders of their migration projects.

This is gathering disconnected of past year’s survey successful which we looked astatine 171 domain migrations. This year, we’ve expanded the dataset to 892, acknowledgment to chap SEO professionals responding to accusation requests connected assorted Slack channels and X (Twitter).

Using third-party tools, we past measured the fig of days it took Domain B (the caller domain) to execute the aforesaid estimated integrated postulation measurement arsenic Domain A (the aged domain).

Data was collated connected October 22nd, 2024.

Bias Factors

Bias successful a quantitative survey refers to systematic errors that tin importantly skew the results, starring to incorrect conclusions.

These biases tin originate astatine immoderate signifier of the probe process, specified arsenic successful the design, information collection, analysis, and mentation stages.

Bias undermines the validity and reliability of the study’s results and tin pb to misleading conclusions.

Where possible, we person taken steps to mitigate immoderate bias from impacting the study.

Selection Bias: We person worked to destruct this arsenic overmuch arsenic possible, with a precocious percent of the information coming from Ahrefs (unfiltered) and an unfastened petition to the SEO community. This should negate our ain inputs from sectors we specialize in. This has led to a assortment of domains successful a assortment of sectors.
Measurement Bias: As we’re utilizing a third-party tool, the bias present is constricted to the scope of the tool, database updates, and the keyword set. As we’re comparing 2 domains and making the presumption that they lucifer successful presumption of the people keyword set, this bias should beryllium mitigated.
Confounding Bias: As we’re comparing day periods wrong the aforesaid tool, nary correlations are being made successful presumption of information analysis.
Publication Bias: This survey was going to beryllium published and submitted careless of percentage/data findings. So, this bias is mitigated.

The information acceptable contained domains of varying usage, from pb procreation successful SaaS, legal, and concern to blogs, section retail, and ecommerce.

Study Findings

The cardinal takeaways from the domain survey are:

On average, it took 523 days for Domain B to amusement the aforesaid level of integrated postulation arsenic Domain A.
The shortest times recorded were 19, 22, 23, and 33 days.
17% of domain migrations successful the illustration didn’t spot integrated postulation instrumentality to the aforesaid levels aft 1,000 days. This is simply a important betterment versus the 42% from the erstwhile study.
We classified 3 migrations arsenic “In progress” arsenic they were little than 2 years old, and postulation was returning slowly.
We classified 25 migrations (2.8%) arsenic “Inconclusive” arsenic Domain B postulation had deed the levels of Domain A, but wasn’t stable.

From the archetypal information set, a fig of domains dropped and are present redirected to domain squatters/private domain sellers.

As these aren’t “genuine” domain migrations, and the caller domain was ne'er intended to support the aforesaid keywords and traffic, these person been discounted and not included successful the data.

Why Do Migration Results Differ?

No 2 websites are the same, and determination are respective variables successful a website migration we tin power – and respective we can’t.

The sermon astir migrations successful the SEO manufacture has truly not changed for a fig of years, with basal champion practices being established and past layering the basics with situation-dependent needs to mitigate risks.

Google rebuilds its scale connected a page-by-page basis, truthful opening up caller crawl paths and URLs up of clip could velocity up the archetypal Discover and Crawl phases.

From experience, launching the caller domain and URL operation 24-48 hours up of performing the migration, i.e. implementing redirects, tin assistance velocity up the process arsenic Google has already began to crawl and commencement processing the caller URL paths successful the bulk of cases. This coupled with the alteration of code instrumentality successful Google Search Console tin creaseless a batch of aboriginal migration lag.

Backlink Profiles & Migrations

While crowd-sourcing domains for this study, I besides asked the assemblage wherefore determination are “time lags” successful migrations.

Natalia Witczyk projected the thought that it’s related to backlink profiles and however agelong it takes Google to process illustration transference:

From my experience, for the rankings and postulation to beryllium backmost to mean levels, the backlink illustration has to beryllium recrawled and the redirects person to beryllium reflected.

That takes adjacent to nary clip if the backlink illustration is non-existent, truthful the instrumentality to mean postulation levels happens fast. If the backlink illustration is extensive, there’s much to recrawl and that would instrumentality Google much time.

This prompted maine to look astatine the full fig of referring domains each domain had, and determination is immoderate correlation to this being the case, but with a ample fig of outliers – apt owed to however the migration was carried out.

For much accusation and champion practices connected website migrations, I’d urge speechmaking the beneath articles:

More Resources:

Featured Image: ParinPix/Shutterstock