Auditing, backing up and carrying over a site’s content and data before a redesign. Semantic analysis, duplicate content and Google Analytics.
A migration is the time to decide what the new website will contain. A semantic analysis of the old website, carried out beforehand, tells you which pages to keep, differentiate or merge, and how to link them. Here is the method in five steps.
Pages, articles, metadata, internal links: migrating editorial content decides what Google will find on the new site. The pitfalls, the priorities, and why to do it before the redirect plan.
Changing e-commerce platform means moving a catalogue, customer accounts and years of orders. What to migrate, the pitfalls specific to e-commerce, and the order that keeps risk down.
A redesign is not just a new look: everything the old site has built up must move to the new one. What to migrate, in what order, and why the migration shapes the redirect plan.
A migration changes the URLs that Google Analytics 4 and Search Console measure. Here is what to export and keep before the launch, and how this data helps you prioritise the redirect plan.
On a dynamic website, the database holds almost everything. Before a migration, here are the methods for backing it up, from the most manual to the most automated.
A database backup is not enough: before migrating, you also need to keep the files, the server configuration, the existing redirects, your measurement data and your access details. Here is the list, with a link to each procedure.
The canonical tag has been defined as an indication in the source code of your web page. In a few years, it has become the usual way of telling search engines which version of a page is the reference…
Changing servers is one of the hazards of running a website. During the process, it is common practice to check for duplicate content. This means using content checking tools…
Semrush brings together several tools that are useful before a migration: keywords ranked per page, technical audit, position tracking, backlinks. What it brings, how to use it, and what it does not replace.
A content audit reviews every page of a site to decide its fate. Here is the six-step method, from URL inventory to action plan, as carried out before a redesign or a migration.
A migration is the time to sort your content. The ranking data of each page tells you which to keep as is, which to rework and which to merge or remove, and therefore what the redirect plan will look like.
