Site Migration Guide: Keep Your Rankings Intact

Carrying out a website migration while preserving search rankings requires careful planning, attention to detail, and thorough testing. The goal is to ensure that engines retain the ability to crawl, interpret, and position your pages in the same way they did before the move.

First, generate a comprehensive catalog of all live content including their links, titles, descriptions, and link equity sources. This will serve as your essential roadmap for the transition.

Next, set up a 301 redirect from every old URL to its corresponding new URL. Avoid redirecting multiple old pages to a single new page unless they are directly interchangeable in meaning and value. Minimize multi-step redirection paths to preserve link equity and crawl efficiency.

Refresh your robots configuration and XML sitemap to match the redesigned URL architecture and push the revised sitemap using Bing Webmaster Tools.

Maintain or enhance your site’s performance metrics. Mobile-friendliness and UX integrity must be upheld with added refinements.

Audit your redirect map using industry-standard crawlers. This helps you identify faulty URL mappings and dead ends.

Review index status and 横浜市のSEO対策会社 coverage anomalies post-migration. Hold off on structural or functional overhauls while migrating. This multiplies potential sources of error.

Monitor your traffic and rankings closely for at least 30 to 60 days after going live. If you see spikes in bounce rate, address them right away. Often the cause is a broken 301 or conflicting rel=canonical tags.

Reach out to authoritative referrers to point to your new URLs.

Keep in mind: Full index recovery is a gradual process. So let the system settle naturally. Methodical pacing and accuracy are non-negotiable in maintaining your search visibility.