Planning
Firstly, we had to understand how the websites being moved over were performing. We used a variety of tools to assess the current performance; Google Search Console, Google Analytics, ahrefs, Semrush and Screaming Frog.
To understand the risk involved in a migration project, you have to assess the current website’s site structure, which pages are driving traffic and conversions and through which search queries. We benchmarked keyword ranking positions, impressions, clicks, organic traffic sessions, conversions and pages with valuable backlinks.
As these websites were being redirected to the main site, we had to make recommendations on what content was valuable and advise on how and where to recreate this content on the main site. We had weekly meetings with the internal team to ensure that we understood the business’ needs and their capacity to recreate the content we all deemed valuable for improving organic visibility.
Once we understood which content was staying, we were then able to assist in the creation of a redirection mapping file. These redirects were essential in transferring the authority permanently from one page to another. Get in touch with the SEO team if you want to understand more about what type of redirects you need in your migration project.
Whilst working through this, we also conducted light keyword research and competitor analysis of the local markets to make the right decisions on which keywords were valuable to the business. This information is also highly valuable in creating a new strategy post implementation of the redirects.
