How to successfully migrate your website?

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As soon as there is a change of URL, the migration must be prepared and carried out with rigor and caution. Before you start, make sure that the game is really worth the candle. Sometimes, it is better to have poorly written URLs and good SEO than optimized URLs and loss of SEO positions. We could almost say that the best approach to web migration is to avoid resorting to it…And not only for reasons related to natural SEO. A migration also has an impact on social shares. You will also have to migrate all the shares of your pages on social networks.

Another tip: change as few things as possible at once. All the changes you make as part of your website migration will have an impact on your SEO rankings, which is why it is advisable to perform the migration following a multi-step process. We will see what this process consists of in a moment. Some people will find the idea of ​​a "big bang" migration sexy, which changes everything from A to Z, which puts everything back on the table in one go: completely overhauled design, new content, new SEO strategy. But when your SEO positions collapse, how will you identify the reasons for this fall?

There is no secret: a successful migration is a well-planned migration executed with millimeter precision. And when it comes to website migration, one thing is certain: prevention is better than cure.

Why many website migrations fail?
There are basically four reasons why a website migration project can fail:

A lack of awareness of the risks involved in migration.
A lack of planning.
A checklist that is too light, or even non-existent.
A lack of skills and know-how on the part of project stakeholders.
In the next few paragraphs, we will see how to avoid all these norway whatsapp data pitfalls and successfully complete your website migration project.

Here are some other reasons why migrations fail in general:

The fact that there are no properly defined objectives up front. If you don't clearly know what the migration is for, you will never be able to assess its success or not.
Forgetting to migrate certain URLs – old pages you forgot existed.
You have old problems with crawling and indexing your web pages, you did not resolve them before doing the migration and you find yourself trapped because these problems have become very complex to resolve.
The website migration was not first validated in a test environment before being deployed.
The site migration was not validated immediately after deployment to fix bugs quickly, before they negatively impact your brand.
You have not validated and followed with particular attention the migration of the most important pages in terms of traffic and/or conversions.
We will now detail the different steps to follow to successfully migrate your website.

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How to successfully migrate your website in 8 steps
We will detail each of the steps to follow to carry out a migration according to the rules of the art and ensure your project has the best chance of success.

Step #1 – Project Planning
A migration project must be planned, the scope clarified, the objectives clearly formulated, the major milestones set. Do not skimp on the means, devote the necessary resources. You must build a precise checklist, educate the members of the project team and make them aware of the risks associated with migrating a website. You must involve an SEO expert from the beginning of the project. Let's review each of these points: