Sometimes, doing what’s best for your business involves a significant change, such as testing out a new service or trying to integrate a new technology. One potential change that can impact your marketing efforts is website migration.
The domain, provider or hosting system that you choose for your business’s website can play a role in everything from user experience to credibility. There may come a time when you need to switch over to a different location to boost its overall performance. You may have a fear of uncertainty, but website migration can help increase your online visibility without traffic loss if done properly.
Read on to learn about how to do website migration without losing organic traffic and the benefits it can bring to your online visibility.
How to avoid traffic loss with website migration
The right website migration plan can help reduce traffic loss by handling redirected URLs, keeping the content consistent and maintaining search engine visibility. But those benefits only come if the process is completed correctly.
When there’s a change in your URL or domain, it raises a red flag in the search engine algorithms. This can impact your search engine optimization and cause you to drop your ranking for relevant keywords, even if it’s just temporary. The good news is that proper optimization and redirection tactics can decrease that risk, allowing you to continue receiving the organic traffic you need for conversions and customer acquisition.
Here are a few of the basic steps that should be followed during the website migration process:
- Run a risk analysis to check for any issues with your current pages that you don’t want carried over. A risk analysis can also highlight what could go wrong, such as disrupted user flow.
- Set up performance tracking to compare the new location to the current one.
- Test the new location on a separate server to look at its functionality.
- Create a 301 redirect for every page that you’re moving over.
- Optimize the new site’s location after launch (e.g., allowing for caching).
How website migration can boost online visibility
You want your business’s site to get in front of as many eyes as possible. When you make the right changes to your site, you can appeal to the algorithm to increase your brand visibility and awareness, meaning that your site can stick in people’s minds, even if they aren’t at the consideration stage of the conversion funnel just yet.
Migrating your website to a new location can leave a good first impression on a user, as you’ll experience several positive improvements, including:
- Faster load time
A common contributing factor to deciding on website migration is that the performance of the current location isn’t up to par, such as the page loading time. If a page doesn’t load in three seconds or less, the user is likely to click off. When you boost your load time with the migrated site, users will tend to deem your brand as efficient and user friendly.
- Improved aesthetics
Website migration provides you with the opportunity to revamp the look of your site and how you want people to perceive your brand. Creating a site that not only functions well but looks good too can give people a better idea about the type of brand you are. You can also be inspired by the current aesthetic trends that your target audience is drawn to.
- Higher SERP ranks
If you’re making a significant change to your website, it’s likely that it’s not gaining you the traction that you’re hoping for. With website migration, you can see an improvement in your search engine rankings, allowing for your site to be seen at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) for greater visibility.
At BURG+CO., we can help you through website migration with the expertise of our SEO and website management teams to help you get the visibility you’re looking for while reducing the risk of a drop in organic traffic.
Get help with website migration with BURG+CO.
Increasing traffic to your website plays a role in increasing conversions and leading to new clients. However, it’s difficult to attract visitors to your site when you don’t know what to do. Fortunately, this is what we specialize in at BURG+CO.
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 digital marketing or to schedule a complimentary consultation.
