SEO Site Migrations

Audits Hero Image
As Technology advances and your business changes what is required from it’s website, it’s a necessary evil that you will need to reimagine your website. I can help prevent those changes do not disrupt your SEO performance.
Let's chat

What is a Site Migration and what is involved?

A site migration is typically when a large part, if not all, of your website is changed and/or moved. The aim here is to minimise the liklihood of issues as this takes place and to help the search engines to update their systems.
URL auditing

URL auditing

Moving URLs can mean you introduce a lot of disruption for both users and search engines, which is further exacerbated by the fact you probably already have redirects on your website. I can take ownership of auditing current redirects, mapping and consolidating new ones and testing they work as expected once live.
Template reviews

Template reviews

A good tactic for minimising disruption caused by changing your pages is to test and review the new versions before building them and sending them live. I will work from Design to Development to ensure you’re minimising the liklihood of things going wrong.
Technology Planning

Technology Planning

Moving from legacy to modern technology can involve a lot of risk, especially as your engineering teams begin to thinking using different conventions and norms. I am happy to join from requirements gathering to proof of concepting so to make sure that mistakes or oversights are captured as early in the project as is possible.
Risk management

Risk management

Managing the risk to trading associated with migrating your website is important, and possible through being careful and considered about the rollout. For example, can we test how Google and users respond with less valuable pages? What is the rollback plan if something goes wrong?. I help my clients by bringing a framework for thinking about both how to minimise and deal with issues proactively.

How the Process Works

Step 1

Orienteering and Planning

Typically I start by getting as much information as is practical so I can help to create an agenda and to establish milestones and touchpoints within the process.
Step 2

Supportive work

As each migration is different it’s not possible to be exhaustive with what happens next, however I broadly help with doing the legwork of mapping, auditing and being the QA point of contact for SEO.
Step 3

Risk planning

Using a personal framework I’ve developed with a view to managing risk, I undergo planning and training related to where the risks are and how I propose we approach them. Examples of things being discussed are can we separate testing users from search engines? Or, can we tackle each step of the migration separately and what is our rollback procedure?
Step 4

Pushing the button!

I will be available either remotely or on premises to support on the day with monitoring during the move. I provide pre and post migration reviews to ensure all systems are working as expected and can triage any issues found to the appropriate team. Assuming all goes well, I lastly congratulate you and the team.
Have a question about the process?
Let's Chat

FAQ's

I'm not technical or a SEO, will I understand the report?
All of my reports assume minimal SEO experience and are meant to be accessible regardless of technical know-how. I also provide tickets with all site audits; which are meant to be used by engineers and remove the need for you to have to do it yourself.
How long does an average site audit take?
Whilst it’s true to say bigger and more complex sites typically take longer, an average site audit is done and back with you roughly 6 days after the agreed start date. This may be a little longer than other technical SEO specialists quote you, however the difference is due to the level and thoroughness of the work I am to provide.
What if we struggle with implementing your recommendations?
Firstly, that’s often the case so please do not worry. I am happy to work with you and your teams in whatever way is most conducive to getting the job done. If more calls or little code examples are what is necessary to make it clear, than I’m more than happy to support.
What tools do you use?
I typically use screaming frog for my site crawls with heavily customised config files. I also have a treasure chest of custom scripts I’ve developed to allow for more robust testing of pages. To share an example, I have a script which will test each directory on your website to ensure your URLs are correctly consolidated using redirects.
Are you going to just share low-value things like missing alt attributes or non-SSL internal links?
I do pass on a ‘Low Value Issues’ list which I hope is helpful however I try to focus my time on the recommendations which are going to have the biggest impact. Having worked in-house for more than half my career, I know that engineers and Product managers are expensive and have to pick between several things to work on - so the aim is always to get the best value for you.
How to Contact Me
Drop me an email
hello@tomgregan.co.uk
Book a Meeting
tomgregan.co.uk/calendar
Visit my Contact Page
tomgregan.co.uk/contact