A guide to prevent your organic traffic loss

Umesh Palshikar
Jul 20, 2017 · 9 min read

Well, there are a list of several factors that must be considered upon while launching a new website. Changes made with a random note can severely degrade the reputation in the website popularity, plus can cause a downfall in the traffic rates as well. So, taking the aforementioned note into concern, there are some of the issues that if left unanswered can lead to your website invisibility, thus putting your website in a low ranking zone with an unhealthy user experience.

So, here is collated list that is entailed with critical factors and must be considered while your website migration.

http:// to https://

Migrating from http to https

For making the web much safer and authenticated, Google in 2014 offered a complete new protocol https in 2014 for making the website much more notified with a remarkable ranking statistics. The concept didn’t seem to provide much fruits as many of the website owners witnessed a severe loss in the traffic for the initial days, instead of any kind of elevation in the page ranking. Taking a note on the aforementioned scenario, webmasters weren’t willing to take over the 301 redirects as a dip in traffic was as low as 15%but by the mid Febraury Google’s John Mueller announced that there is actually no dip in the ranking on the grounds of redirection Via 301 or 302 from HTTP to HTTPS.

Switching to https:// can be efficiently executed using 301, thus passing the URL’s link equity to a complete new destination without any much effort.

DO’S:

Implement 301 for redirecting HTTP URL to HTTPS. Version for reaching onto the equivalent site.

Jot down all the internal link points related to HTTPS URLs.

Update Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools with preferred domains

  • Revamp the sitemap with HTTPS URLSs.
  • Restore all the related canonical tags and notify them to HTTPS URL versions.
  • Amend your Google Analytics profile.
  • Get your social media sites renewed with new domain URL

DON’TS:

  • 302 redirects usage
  • Avoid having a concentration on the sitemap, canonical and Google/Bing Search console.

Now, having both the options, HTTP and HTTPS opened up all the times can cause a link dilution. It isn’t a good practice to implement both the protocols simultaneously as it can cause a diversion in the traffics and thus can pave a way for the rank downfall.

MIGRATING to new site architecture

More often updates in the look and feel of the website for inclining the clientele is obviously a good practice but, if the same not processed with the proper set of precautions, it may hamper the website popularity and ranking. So, before actually proceeding for the website revamping note your user journey and your traffic figures as there may be certain existing pages which might be responsible for gathering the maximum traffic rates. Sometimes, it can be seen that the most ignored pages that you modify are linked with the maximum URL’s hence, use Google Analytics for calculating unique visitors, hours spend and conversion digits. Thus, initiate your journey with a clear data analysis or else, you might end up losing the traffic rates.

DO’S:

  • Evaluate the traffic for all the corresponding landing pages.
  • Identify and highlight the pages with the maximum conversion rates and traffic.
  • Try to make the pages included into the new site’s architecture.
  • Go live with the new site, with the proper internal link updates
  • Improvise the overall page visibility

DON’TS:
Do not underestimate any of the pages and its embedded content, as it can be the reason for attracting the maximum customers.

TRACKING

Well, in the philosophy of the marketing world, there are two ways adopted for tracking your website. The very first being that can be applied is by adding the Google Analytics tracking code to the < head> of the body and the other one being GTM (Google Tag Manager) code that can be added to the <body> of the page.

Selecting the one amongst the both is undeniably an adroit task and thus requires and extensive brainstorming but, sticking to the both at the same time can cause an double site reporting.

Lets understand the GTM

Google Tag Manager is a container tag, so the tag should be implemented directly on the site and the other analytics tag should be placed within the GTM tag. Some exceptions such as DC Storm may arise that can make the GTM tag implementation difficult.

Some of the points that must be considered while GTM implementation are listed here:

  • In case, the tag already resides on the site, the migration should be carried in stages.
  • Always add GTM tag on the site, without erasing any kind of existing tags from the site.
  • Include the existing tag into GTM, Just make sure they fire before making them published.
  • Narrate the tag comments out from the site.
  • Compare the working before and after the tag updates.
  • Vanish off all the other tags from the site, as all the tags will now be stored in the GTM container.

DO’S

  • Always add the GTM tracking code to the staging site
  • Test the added tag functionality
  • Publish tags
  • Proceed live site testing

DON’TS
Using both the Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics/Adwords Tracking code at the same time.

Indexing

Wrong redirects implementation can actually lead to the data replication and hence the same page may be indexed several of times as it can come up with the different versions.

What actually happens when you page is indexed multiple times and what are the associated consequences that arise? Well, for understanding this, it is quite crucial to understand that Google has allocated a limited crawling budget for each website and hence if the same webpage is consuming that budget then oops sorry!! Google will NOT index your other web pages that may play a crucial role in capturing an impressive traffic volume.

Hence, prioritize your preferred domain to avoid any kind of duplication. preferred domain is https://www.yourdomain.com or https://yourdomain.com/ or http://www.yourdomain.com/ or http://yourdomain.com/ or https://subdomain.yourdomain.com/ or http://subdomain.yourdomian.com/or https://www.yourdomain.com/folder

DO’S

  • Process a site search
  • Analyze the number of pages returned plus check the same pages that are returned again and again and are there any different pages too. Clearly, The Most authoritative pages will be queued first.
  • Examine the digits similarity between the numbers of your organic landing page and Google Analytics match during a site search.
  • Process the data comparison against your sitemap
  • Use https://httpstatus.io/ for HTTP status header checker.
  • In case, duplication's found, report to the development team.

DON’T’S

  • Imagining the pages with getting them sorted out themselves.
  • Ignore analyzing the number of pages indexed every month.

The Process Before Website Migration

  • Crawl the complete site and get a full list of URLs on the current site.
  • Finalize the related list of URLs for the new site.
  • Map all the URLs that are to be redirected via 310 implementations, plus track all the current sites to the new site URLs.
  • Make all the URLs search friendly and avoid using any kind of special characters, spaces, keywords and include clarified page description.
  • Refer to the previous current website’s ranking for tracking the progress throughout the migration procedures.
  • Record all the organic traffic levels, such as visits, bounce rates and conversions for every individual page.
  • Using MajesticSEO, Google Search or any other locate the most authoritative link in the site’s backlink profile so as to make the link switching and shifting to the new URLs possible.
  • Get the new domain registered in the Google search console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Implementing the Migration

  • Conserve your development team with the full list of redirects that are to be accomplished
  • Remember to block the staging site into robots.txt files so as to avoid its indexation process. The process, if delayed can cause the redundancy issues, hence, Google might end up ranking with your staging page rather than the page with the live content.
  • Make sure to verify that the pages with the new content return a 200 status code. In addition to the above, cross check all the link updates plus determine their landing to the correct page as well.
  • As soon as 301 have been implemented, analyze the working of redirects as expected and take necessary actions for 302 redirects, if witnessed.
  • Determine the canonical tag updates.
  • Investigate the new sitemap that is being generated, and check that is inclusive of all the site URL’s that are meant to augment the frequency levels.
  • Enumerate Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager’ code to the new website and test.
  • Figure out your images with the ALT tags so as to help them for capturing a better rank in the search engines.
  • Sketch out the PPC ads structure associated with the new URL’s.
  • Look for the redirect chains, if occurring, as Google DO NOT crawls the URL’s that are having more than 5 redirects.
  • Assure custom 404 into the pages.
  • Add Schema code help the search engines return more informative results for your users.
  • Add the promotion tags too such as twitter/ face book for optimizing the web page functionality, this must be considered as the priority in case you are running a big brand.
  • Inculcate image optimization for displaying the image size/ image compression/ Etags.

When the new site is live

  • So, by now if you are with your new URL, then you need to inform the Google that the site has been shifted through the “change of address” in the old domains accounts of Google Search Console.
  • In the Webmaster Tools account of the new domain, read the option “Fetch as Google” and click on “submit to index” after accessing the main category pages of the new website.
  • Using search console submit the site map to the Google of the new domains and update robots.txt file
  • Fix the URL’s changes on the social sharing buttons as well, to make sure that same counts are carried over the new website as well.
  • Contact the site owners’ of the most valuable links you identified before site migration and ask them to update the destination of the link. This way you ensure that the maximum possible amount of PageRank or link equity is passed through the link.
  • Get your PPC ads updated with the new URL’s for the new landing pages.
  • Test robots.txt file.
  • Monitor the issues related to the site crawl, duplicate content and server response issues.
  • Check your content quality in the terms of blank pages/ low volume content/ duplicate content indexing.
  • Verify the onsite form workings
  • Execute a Google and a Bing Mobile Friendly test.
  • Establish a connection between the key assets to the mobile bots including .css/.js files

After website Migration

  • Glance the sites and explore for broken links/ pages.
  • Go through the site at least twice and look for the errors in the Google search con. Repeat the activity twice a month, so as to make the migration fruitful.
  • For both the new and the old domains, check the indexation using the search console.
  • Chart a comparison between the previous and current ranking reports for monitoring the organic visibility.
  • Examine the traffic volumes, on site engagement and behavior on various devices for ensuring the maximum traffic. Remember to make necessary provisions for user navigation..
  • Include the external links that formed a major part of the old domain.

To, wrap up these were some of the major scenarios that must be considered, in case you are planning for a web site migration without compromising on the grounds of traffic, visibility and conversions.

So here wishing you all a very Happy Migration

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