{"id":160912,"date":"2016-11-30T13:00:08","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T13:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/premium.wpmudev.org\/blog\/?p=160912"},"modified":"2017-06-09T18:42:35","modified_gmt":"2017-06-09T18:42:35","slug":"wordpress-migrations-seo-pre-migration-prep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wordpress-migrations-seo-pre-migration-prep\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress Migrations and SEO: Pre-Migration Prep"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are\u00a0many reasons you might need to migrate a\u00a0WordPress site \u2013 a\u00a0change of domain name or perhaps moving a blog from a subdomain to a subdirectory. Whatever the reason, it is important to factor in SEO when considering a WordPress migration. But why, exactly, do you need to keep SEO in mind?<\/p>\n

There are many signals that can affect organic rankings<\/a> in search engines such as Google. These range from the text used on a web page, the inbound links from other sites, to the load times and optimization of a page for mobile devices.<\/p>\n

So in this article \u2013 the first in a two-part series \u2013 I’ll walk you through the ways in which WordPress migrations<\/a> can impact your SEO, and the pre-migration steps you should carry out to minimize a hit to your organic search rankings.<\/p>\n

How Does Migrating WordPress Affect SEO?<\/h2>\n

#1: Changing URLs<\/h3>\n

Search engines view different URLs as different pages, even if the content is identical. If the appropriate steps aren\u2019t taken for URLs that change, then their organic rankings and the value of inbound links could be lost.<\/p>\n

#2: Changing Content<\/h3>\n

When determining the relevance of a web page to a user\u2019s search query, content signals are some of the most important. If you are using the migration as an opportunity to refresh your WordPress website\u2019s content, any changes could have a positive or negative effect on your organic rankings.<\/p>\n

#3: Changing Code<\/h3>\n

Part of the WordPress migration might involve changing the theme used on your website. This will change how the site is coded and could affect how well optimised it is for search engines. There may also be unforeseen issues introduced if the developer didn\u2019t have SEO as a priority whilst building the theme, such as crawling issues or mobile device optimisation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

#4: Changing Performance<\/h3>\n

Page speed has been a ranking signal\u00a0for many years now, and Google has recently been placing even greater emphasis on web page performance with regards to mobile devices. You can see this with developments such as AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)<\/a>. Your WordPress migration could have involved changing how the site is built, as well as its hosting. Both of these changes could have affected your website\u2019s load times.<\/p>\n

The WordPress Migration Process for SEO<\/h2>\n

So, you can see that a WordPress website migration could have an impact on organic rankings and traffic. But how can you ensure the best possible migration for\u00a0SEO?<\/p>\n

You can divide the process of the migration into two phases: pre-migration and post-migration. This is a two-part series,\u00a0with this particular post covering the SEO tasks\u00a0you should carry out before the WordPress migration. The second post is going to cover what you need to do once the migration has been carried out, including testing, to ensure that everything has gone according to plan.<\/p>\n

Getting Started: Pre-Migration for\u00a0WordPress<\/h2>\n

Testing Your Server<\/h3>\n

If you are setting up the new site on a staging environment<\/a> for testing, then you need to make sure that search engines cannot crawl the test site. The easiest way to do this, is to block search engines using the robots.txt file.<\/p>\n

This file should be placed in the root of your staging environment. For example, if your test site is on a subdomain, the robots.txt file would be located at http:\/\/test.example.com\/robots.txt<\/em>. You need to have the following directive in your robots.txt file to block search engines from crawling the test site:<\/p>\n

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Setting up Google Search Console and Analytics<\/h3>\n

You should make sure that you have Google Search Console<\/a> setup, as well as an analytics platform. A popular and free analytics solution is Google Analytics<\/a>. If you don\u2019t have analytics setup for your site, do this now. It can provide a lot of insight into your visitors’ behavior, acquisition, and conversions. You\u2019ll need these tools for pre-migration tasks and post-migration checks.<\/p>\n

Identifying Any Current SEO Issues<\/h3>\n

At this point, you also want to identify any SEO issues your current website might have. This step is particularly important if either the theme is being changed and\/or the content is being refreshed. By flagging issues early, you can ensure that the new site build and content avoids these mistakes.<\/p>\n

If you have the budget, then you can bring in an SEO specialist or an agency to help you identify issues. If not, then there are a number of SEO tools, such as Woorank<\/a> (free trial) and Onpage.org<\/a> (free for 100 URLs), that can help you to identify common SEO problems.<\/p>\n

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SEO Plugins Worth Checking Out<\/h3>\n

Is your current site using any plugins for SEO? If not, now is a good time to either start using one or to at least plan one to use on the new site after the WordPress\u00a0migration. WordPress SEO plugins can help with a number of tasks, such as controlling which pages are indexed, XML sitemap generation, and editing metadata.<\/p>\n

There are a number of SEO plugins available<\/a>. Here at WPMU DEV, our SmartCrawl<\/a> plugin is a great option for helping to drive traffic to your site. SmartCrawl features the ability to send sitemap updates to search engines, custom descriptions and titles, auto link keywords to any URL, built-in Moz integration and more.<\/p>\n

Record Your Current SEO Performance<\/h3>\n

You\u2019ll want to be able to see what did and didn\u2019t work post-migration. To do this, you\u2019ll need to know how your website performs before migrating your website. You can use both Google Search Console and your analytics platform to get a good idea of your organic search performance.<\/p>\n

From Google Search Console, you will want to record the following metrics:<\/p>\n