You’re finally ready to bite the bullet and do it. You’re ready to migrate your existing website to a new website template or a new server. That’s a big step for any business to take, regardless of its website’s size, and you or your digital marketing team have likely spent countless hours tweaking your current site’s search engine optimization (SEO) specifications and content. You definitely don’t want to lose all that work.
The best way to ensure you don’t lose the traffic that your previous site was generating is simple. You and your digital marketing team must carefully check your new site’s SEO specs carefully after a website migration.
What are SEO specifications?
SEO specifications are on the more technical side of websites and content. So, unsurprisingly, this facet of SEO is called technical SEO. Technical SEO is a set of optimizations to a website or server, and its goals are threefold:
- Indexing your site more effectively.
- Helping search engines crawl your site more easily.
- Improving the organic search ranking for your website and its content.
These goals are met, in part, by making sure SEO professionals work with web developers to set the correct SEO specifications. These are technical settings on the backend of a website. If they aren’t properly set up when building a new site or after a site migration, your new site will not perform well in organic search results.
3 SEO specs to double-check after a website migration
There are plenty of website builders and migration tools out there. Most of them are designed to transfer your current site’s SEO specifications to your new site. Yet it’s easy for things to go awry in the digital world, so it always pays to double-check that your SEO specs are still correct following a website migration.
A few of the more important SEO specs you, your web dev team and your digital marketing team should check on are:
- SSL certificates — Secure sockets layer (SSL) is a commonly used web security feature. It helps create an encrypted channel between the server your site is hosted on and a web browser. This type of security is what changes an http to an https in a website’s address, and https sites are given preference in search rankings by Google.
- XML sitemaps — Think about the Google map that you followed the last time you needed help driving to a new destination. That’s a good analogy for what an XML sitemap is for. Except this map is for search engine crawlers. It helps them navigate through the pages of your website more efficiently and effectively. The better your sitemap, the faster crawlers can index your site, and the higher up it’s likely to appear in search results.
- Google Search Console registration — Google Search Console is a free tool that you can, and should, submit your XML sitemap to. There are several benefits to doing so. For one thing, registering your site with Search Console allows Google’s crawlers to index your migrated site. For another, this tool gives you reports and other information about your site’s general search engine performance. Want your site indexed on Bing, too? Then you’ll also want to register your sitemap on Bing’s Webmaster Tools.
Want to ensure your SEO specs are solid after a website migration? BURG+CO. can help
Increasing traffic to your website plays a role in increasing conversions and bringing in new clients. However, it may be more difficult to increase traffic after migrating your website to a new server or site template. Fortunately, BURG+CO. has years of experience at helping businesses set and reset critical technical SEO specifications.
Our team has years of experience in helping businesses improve their digital presence to attract new leads and retain existing ones. If you’re looking to perform better in search engine results and attract more visitors to your site, we’re ready to talk to you to see how we can help. Contact our team today for more information about all our digital marketing services or to schedule a complimentary consultation.
