Can Website Migration Harm my SEO [Checklist]

Website Migration becomes a requirement when a website becomes out of date. Not only will an outdated website not perform well, but the flow-on effect is that it will also not represent your brand well.

Traditionally websites are something that are designed/built, launched and more often than not, not maintained. If this is the case, then a site will become out of date over time. This can mean a redesign is needed to keep up with web standards and design trends. This can often be accomplished with a simple facelift or re-skin. However, in some cases, you may be up against a complete website migration.

What is website migration?

Website migration is when a website gets largely revamped or completely redesigned and rebuilt. Whilst a fresh look is great, this can impact visibility on search engines. Generally, these areas are design, user experience, platform, site location, and structure.

The end result of a website migration may include a cleaner interface, a new or improved user experience, an easier editing experience, and more. However, the choice to migrate your website should not be taken lightly. If executed poorly, you could end up with status code errors, negatively impacted SEO performance, and even irritated website visitors.

Why might you migrate a website?

Here are the circumstances in which you might need a site migration over a simple redesign:

  • The need to move your site’s location from one server or hosting provider to another.
  • Wanting to change the CMS platform your site operates on.
  • You are changing your domain name or URLs.
  • The website needs major changes to your site’s architecture (not just aesthetics)

If you’re considering a website migration, keep in mind that you must leave yourself time to prepare and execute. Migration specialists usually take about three weeks, so plan accordingly. Now, let’s get into the details of migrating a website.

Website Migration Checklist

  • Crawl the existing site.
  • Record your benchmarks.
  • Map your URLs.
  • Make sure you’re retaining titles, meta descriptions, and HTML markup.
  • Try out the new build on a test server (aka sandbox).
  • Choose the right date for the migration.
  • Prepare to update your site’s DNS settings.
  • Launch.
  • Crawl the new site.
  • Identify and resolve missing and duplicate content.
  • Check for redirect chains.
  • Ensure Google Analytics and Google Search Console are implemented.
  • Mark the date in Analytics.
  • Submit sitemaps.
  • Monitor performance.
  • Run site audits.
  • Update your platforms.
  • Have publishers update backlinks.

 

Pre-Website Migration

1. Crawl the existing site.

A website crawler retrieves the URLs and markup on your site, “seeing” this information similarly to how Google would.

Performing a crawl gives you a starting point for your URL mapping (more on that later) as well as a list to refer to in case something gets lost in translation. You can crawl your website yourself with a third-party tool such as Screaming Frog.

2. Record your benchmarks.

In some cases, analytics data can get erased during a website migration, and these historical benchmarks can be valuable, so it’s best to retain it.

You should also take the time to review your analytics and ensure you know how visitors currently navigate the site and which pages are your most valuable. This context can help inform your redesign and site architecture decisions.

3. Map your URLs.

If you’re making major changes to the URLs on your site, you’ll need redirections in place to guide Google and your website users from your old URLs to your new URLs.

From a usability standpoint, if a page no longer exists, you don’t want your users to get a 404 status code error. Instead, they should be guided to the page that has taken the old page’s place.
Improper redirects can mean a big hit against your SEO. They tell search engines and visitors of your website that a page has changed, whether it’s been removed, or no longer exists. They also tell search engines what new pages have replaced old ones.
From an SEO perspective, you don’t want to lose all of the history, backlinks, and (in essence) “authority” that the old page built up. A redirect tells Google where to attribute those signals instead.
To get redirects implemented, you must first strategize by mapping your URLs. This involves building a spreadsheet with two columns: one for the old URL and one for the corresponding new URL.

Don’t be concerned if there aren’t “perfect” replacements for every piece of content. Just do the best you can to direct your users based on their original intent.

If you have tons of pages, manual mapping probably isn’t in the cards for you, so to save time, look for patterns in your URLs that can be redirected in groups or sections.

Existing redirects should be migrated as well. Try to keep as many existing redirects as possible to lessen the workload, and make sure your URLs are mapped before you test redirects, to make sure you have backups if you lose them.

4. Make sure you’re retaining titles, meta descriptions, and HTML markup.

Recall that website migrations help with website organization. As such, pages should be uniform and contain the same information as they did before. To illustrate, if the HubSpot Marketing Blog underwent a site migration, the content and descriptions for each blog post would be the same, just look different.

You can always update or rewrite titles, meta descriptions, and HTML markup, but you should still ensure that each page includes the proper information.

5. Try out the new build on a test server (aka sandbox).

Seeing mockups or testing in a local environment will not give you a full picture of the new site’s functionality and implementation. For a seamless transition, take it online for a test drive before the official migration.

6. Choose the right date for the website migration.

Hiccups will happen no matter what, but you can minimize them by avoiding peak hours.

Day of Website Migration

7. Prepare to update your site’s DNS settings.

If you’re moving your site to a new server, part of the process will include “pointing” to the site’s new location. Coordinate with your web/IT team and/or your hosting providers (new and old) to accomplish this.

8. Launch.

Set up your forwarding redirects, unpublish, and implement.

If DNS changes were involved, the site may be down momentarily.

If you’re not switching servers or platforms, the migration should be nearly instantaneous.

9. Crawl the new site.

Once the new site is live, you can do a crawl to see if it has been migrated how you expected it to. One thing you want to look for is proper indexability and crawlability.

10. Identify and resolve missing and duplicate content.

Using the crawl report, see if you find any anomalies, including duplicate content or 404 errors and broken links. In addition, you should click around the new site and look for issues.

Now that your site has been migrated, you have a lot of new redirects on your hands. If redirects already existed, links may have been created.

Here’s what this means:

If you were already redirecting A to B, your migration may have added a redirect from B to C.

This creates a chain of redirects: A to B to C.

Redirect chains can slow your site down and impact performance. You can avoid this by breaking the chains, redirecting A to C and B to C.

12. Ensure Google Analytics and Google Search Console are implemented.

To avoid any gaps in data and reporting, these should be up and running the same day.

13. Mark the date in Analytics.

Google Analytics allows you to make “Annotations” of important dates or events. This can help you contextualize the data and measure performance pre-and post-migration (unless you opted for a new Analytics setup).

14. Submit sitemaps.

Once everything is up and running, ensure your XML site map has no errors. Then, you can submit the sitemap in Google Search Console to invite Google to crawl the new implementation.

Post-Website Migration

15. Monitor performance.

While temporary dips in traffic are common after a migration, you should still be keeping a pulse on your analytics to ensure nothing big was missed that could be affecting performance.

16. Run site audits.

Sometimes, third-party tools can find issues you didn’t know about. SEMrush’s site auditor is excellent in situations like this.

17. Update your platforms.

If you have ads running or other platforms that may be using old URLs, be sure to add fresh links.

If your redirects have been implemented correctly, you’ll still get traffic and authority from your backlinks. However, it’s still best practice to use the freshest URLs possible. With that in mind, reach out to the publishers of your highest value links to notify them of the swap.

Website migration can be a lengthy process, but it’s not impossible. With preparation, you can have a migration that’s successful and friendly with your existing SEO efforts.

How to avoid lengthy Website Migration or redesigns in the future

As mentioned above website migration is primarily needed when you go through a redesign process and make major updates. This is generally only required because the website is out of date. And it is out of date because it has not been maintained. A website is like a staff member! it can be trained and upskilled over time. It can and should move and grow with the business.

Maintaining and continuously improving a website over time will cost some time effort and/or money, however, if done with the right goals in place, it will return more to the business than it costs. Much like a staff member. This is a methodology called Growth-Driven Web Design. If you have a continuous growth mindset this could be for you. And it means you will understand your website is a business (growth) tool.

Image-link-about-growth-driven-web-design-back9-creative

Shopify: Blessing or Curse?

Is Shopify worth it?

If you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, chances are that you have heard of Shopify. If you’re starting out in e-commerce, It’s an incredibly popular platform for building e-commerce websites and is touted as “the easiest way to sell online.”

But is Shopify really worth the hype?

There’s no doubt Shopify does a great job at marketing itself. They’re everywhere, they’re everywhere… And it could be easy to be seduced by its allure… But can it truly make the process of creating, running, and maintaining an e-commerce website easier? Let’s take a look at what Shopify has to offer and decide if it’s worth your time.

 

Which-Ecommerce-Platform-Is-Best

What Does Shopify Offer?

Shopify offers a wide range of features that make it easy to create an e-commerce website. It provides templates for web design, allowing you to customize your store with ease. It also offers a built-in payment system so customers can purchase items directly from your site. Additionally, it provides analytics tools so you can track customer behavior, as well as SEO options to help optimize your site for better visibility in search engine results.

The Pros and Cons of Using Shopify

No doubt about it—Shopify makes creating an e-commerce website much simpler than trying to build one from scratch.

However, before you decide if Shopify is worth it? There are some drawbacks that should be considered when deciding whether to use this platform or not.

For instance, add-ons and scaling may cost you extra in the long run with Shopify. Additionally, depending on your level of technical skill and knowledge of SEO, populating the template may be more complex than expected. Furthermore, many sites created with this platform tend to look very similar—so if you want something unique for your business, this might not be the best option for you.

In conclusion, while there are many benefits that come with using Shopify for setting up an e-commerce website. But there are some potential pitfalls that should be taken into consideration before diving in headfirst. Is Shopify better than Woo C0mmerce for example? Ultimately, it comes down to what you’re trying to achieve. I you have little budget and want to do things yourself without spending too much time on learning new skills then Shopify could be a great starting point; however, if you need something more customised or specific then other options may be more suitable for getting the job done right! Research what t the best e-commerce platform for you. Don’t just follow the crowd or jump into bed with them because they do a great job marketing themselves.

So weigh up all your options carefully before making your decision!

 

Get the Complete Guide to Ecommerce Ebook below


Using Landing Pages For Recruitment

A landing page for recruitment or any other campaign is a standalone website page dedicated to a specific marketing campaign. Its key purpose is to convert site visitors into leads. Landing pages typically offer visitors something that they may be interested in. This could be an Ebook of company culture, or information about the role. in exchange for contact information. Getting this information then gives businesses the tools they need to further nurture leads and urge them down the purchasing funnel.

In the field of recruitment marketing, the theory remains the same. Whilst you’re not trying to get someone to physically purchase from you, you are still selling them something -Your company. One of the primary goals is to convert prospective candidates into leads (applicants) within the talent network. From a conversion point of view, one strategy that works exceptionally well for recruitment teams includes customised landing pages.

Landing page diagram

Landing Pages for a recruitment website

The role of a recruitment landing page is to establish a connection between your company and the potential candidate. Your landing page will become an integral part of the job-seeking journey for candidates. A thought-out, well-crafted, and well-designed landing page can help hard-to-fill roles get applicants by hyper-focusing and catering to certain groups of candidates and locations.

Landing pages essentially exist independent of your main website. They can focus on specific functions, campaigns, or other hiring efforts. When you create the perfect landing pages for your initiatives, they will become indispensable assets in your recruitment marketing strategy.

Benefits of Creating Custom landing pages for recruitment

Some of the benefits of customized landing pages include:

  • Since landing pages have a single focus and target a particular audience, they can deliver more leads and higher conversion rates.
  • With a customized landing page, you can create targeted content for particular audiences. This gives you the ability to specialise in the imagery, messaging, and offers included. This helps in ensuring that the landing page speaks directly to the audience you’re targeting.
  • Provide your team with insightful and actionable data. You can design and refine landing pages for multiple referral sources and campaigns. When you review the analytics data, you can observe the channels that drive maximum traffic as well as conversions.

Best Practices for Creating Landing Pages for Recruitment

While there are several ways to launch a successful recruitment landing page, there are core concepts on page design, information that should be included, and the placement of visual elements (including photographs and videos) to enhance user experience. Here are some of the important concepts we identified that have to do with the content in an overall sense:

Maintain Consistency with Brand Identity

One of the best ways of convincing candidates to apply to work for your company is by telling them about your brand. The career page in your recruitment website should have consistent and clear messaging. It should communicate the uniqueness of the corporate culture of your company.

Inconsistency throughout your landing pages and website can confuse and ultimately turn away interested candidates. While the landing page messaging should be concise, it should convey your corporate culture at least to some extent. Additionally, it should be designed with building your brand in mind.

Leverage Media to Boost Personal Connection

Testimonials from workers, videos highlighting your work environment, and photographs of employees are methods that allow candidates to visualize themselves working for your company. This is particularly important when recruiting members of diverse groups. When people see other people who look like them represented as flourishing workers within your organisation, it is much easier to see themselves working there. And ultimately of course, for them to make an emotional connection.

Furthermore, visual media can help in highlighting any awards of recognition for your company. This is because they help in conveying critical information in an easy-to-remember and attractive manner. Infographics can be really useful in this regard.

Help Candidates Form a Connection with Your Organisation

Consider that the first thing prospective candidates see on a landing or career page shouldn’t necessarily be a list of open positions. Launching into a story about your company and its culture can draw the attention of visitors and make them excited to see more. The introduction shouldn’t be too long, however — two short paragraphs are usually sufficient.

One thing that’s of particular importance in recruiting these days is fostering diversity and inclusion. You will probably already know that communicating the aspect of your organisation’s culture is important. Any recruitment pages that you create should not only reflect this, and as such should be crafted to attract the demographic you’re targeting. For example you may include such things as bilingual landing pages, as well as verbiage that fosters a sense of inclusion for diverse candidates.

Craft Job Postings That Sell Your Company

Once you’ve gained the applicant’s interest on the landing page, the job descriptions on your website should boost the overall energy and interest that you have built. Effective descriptions should offer visitors an overview of the given role. If you’ve done your job right, it will also have them excited to apply. Ensure that the postings are informative, concise and engaging.

Landing Pages can be a valuable piece of your recruitment marketing strategy.

Considering the landing page stats, we can that businesses that create landing pages that build trust with page visitors, provide valuable information, and use different content types see higher conversion rates.

Whether you already use them and aren’t obtaining the results you desire or you’re new to landing pages for recruitment, or in general, using them will likely help you draw in potential candidates and attract talent to you your team. In fact, our very own Chloë, who applied and moved all the way from Auckland to little old Invercargill, came from a recruitment landing page on our website!

Who’s the Best Logo Design Company in Invercargill?

If you’re looking for a logo design company in Invercargill, it can be a daunting task. After all, there are so many options available and you want to make sure you pick the right one. To help narrow down your choices, we’ve compiled a handy guide to the number of businesses that rank online for being the best logo design companies in Invercargill

How much does a good logo cost text overlaid over logo background

Quantum Print

Quantum Print works with its clients to produce a creative, innovative design that gives their brand a unique touch, their design team is specialised in creating all assets your business needs!

They say: “The key factor when constructing an effective artwork that stands out is to be consistent and aligned to your business objectives and values. We will ensure your design reflects both and brings increased value to your brand as a whole.”

Although, Quantum is primarily a print company and not specifically a design agency, They have been around for a number of years,. Recently sold to new owners, they are a company worth chatting to for your logo design needs.

Craig’s Design and Print

Widely known as one of New Zealand’s oldest and most respected print companies, Craig’s proudly say “we’re more than just a printer!” Whilst they started as a print company back in the late 1800’s, They have continued to focus on the needs of our customers, ensuring we have kept up with technology along the way. And, have the seen and been through some change! Craig’s Design and Print’s enthusiasm for embracing the latest technology means we can offer you a total graphic design and print solution for your business.

Craig’s Design and print are generally in the lower to mid-price bracket for logo design. They are worth discussing your needs for your logo design.

Emotive Design

Emotive Design believes “Your brand expresses who you are as a business: the value you offer and the values you hold.”

They can develop a corporate identity that projects a consistent, professional image to your customers. They can roll it out to every element, from logos and typefaces to stationery and signage. And they can also develop brand guidelines so that you and your suppliers can carry on the good work.

Emotive doesn’t have a permanent office. They say “we are creative. We don’t have the restraints of 4 walls and a 9-to-5 mentality. We are free – we work all hours.” Their team works remotely, all based from their home offices. You might see them in local coffee shops conducting our ‘internal meetings’. And they get together when a project demands rapid input from the whole team.

Emotive Design does good work. They will be generally in the mid-high end of the pricing spectrum. To find out exactly what they can do and what that would cost, then get in touch for a meeting.

Naked Creative

Although Naked Creative doesn’t rank for the term ‘who is the best logo design company in Invercargill’, they should still be in the mix here. Naked Creative, (formerly Market South) are a full-service marketing agency based in Invercargill, Southland. Their design will begin with a strategic approach. Then move into the creative phase.

Naked creative will traditionally be at the higher end of the pricing scale but will deliver value for that price, with their creative and professional approach.

I-Cue

I-Cue provides design solutions that are tailored to your specific requirements; they collaborate with you to better understand your target market in order to produce meaningful and reliable graphic design. Their strategy is to achieve your goals by creating strong, well-communicated brand experiences.

In terms of branding and logo design, they say “It’s essential that your logo accurately represents your business, leaving a lasting impression and engaging your target audience. The logo is just the beginning of creating a strong brand identity.”

Back9 Creative Studio

Usually, when profiling the best companies – we don’t include ourselves. After all, you’re already on our website, right? However, as we’re ranking pretty close to 1st organically for the search term Who is the best logo design company – we figured we should include ourselves too.

We believe a logo is the key piece of your brand Identity. It is the face of your brand and how people will recognize your business across all of your collateral. From Print to Web, Signage, and Promotion items, consistency is key here. So that’s why we believe getting help from a professional designer is the best option for setting you up for success.

As such as logo is an investment. So understanding how much does a good logo cost – or should cost is important too. We don’t think you should skimp on the centrepiece of your company brand.

How to choose the best logo design partner for you?

So there you have it – some of the top-ranking logo design companies in Invercargill! Whether you’re looking for something basic or something more elaborate and creative, any one of these companies can provide you with a custom logo design that fits your exact needs. Next is figuring out if they can do it within your budget. Remember your logo is the face of your brand. Whilst a business can ‘grow into’ a logo, it is important to get this investment right – from the start.

You are going to outlay a decent amount of money for a logo (or should) so ensuring that it will work on all of the mediums you will need going forward is important. Make appointments with these businesses, and chat to them. See which ones align with your values and who you think will be the best logo design company to work with you. All it takes is a little research and patience. And soon enough you’ll have found the best logo design company for your business or product! Good luck!

Digital Boost NZ – What is it?

To Digital Boost or Not to Digital Boost? That is the Question!

The New Zealand government has recently rolled out a new Digital Boost Skills Training & Support program for small businesses. Designed to provide assistance with boosting their digital presence, it sounds like a great initiative – but is it really worth your time? As the owner of a digital marketing agency, with a handful of staff, I wouldn’t go out looking to train in human resources or employment law myself. I’m too busy doing what I do! I would outsource this very important skillset to an expert.

So let’s weigh up the pros and cons of the Digital Boost initiative and decide if it’s worth your time.

What is Digital Boost?

Digital Boost is an online learning platform designed to help businesses build their digital presence. It offers free access to website audit and builder tools as well as more advanced topics such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), email marketing, and content creation. The government also provides one-on-one guidance and support through its Business Connect service, which helps small business owners create an action plan tailored to their individual needs.

The Pros

The biggest pro of this program is that it’s free! For many small businesses who don’t have the budget or resources for an expert consultant, this program is a great way to get started on building their digital presence without breaking the bank. Furthermore, by providing one-on-one guidance from an experienced professional in addition to the online tools available on the platform, participants can be sure they are getting quality advice tailored specifically to their business’s unique needs.

The Cons

Perhaps the biggest con associated with Digital Boost is that it takes time – something that many business owners don’t have enough of as it is! Even though the program provides access to high-quality materials and experts who can help guide you through setting up your digital presence, learning how to use these tools effectively requires practice and dedication – two things that not every busy business owner will be able or willing to commit to. Additionally, if you are looking for help in areas such as HR or employment law (which are outside of the scope of this program), then you may need additional external assistance from an expert in those fields.

This begs the question – Is Digital Boost really worth your time?

The answer depends on what type of assistance you need and how much time you are willing or able to commit in order to learn how do everything yourself. If you have some background knowledge already and just need some refreshers on certain topics along with personalized guidance from experts in your field, then yes – Digital Boost could be worth your time investment!

In conclusion, while Digital Boost might sound like a great initiative for small businesses hoping to build their digital presence without spending too much money, there are still some things you should consider before taking advantage of this free resource – namely how much extra time and effort you can dedicate towards learning all these new skills yourself. So if you need some personalized help with boosting your digital presence but can’t afford an expert consultant – then yes – maybe give Digital Boost a try! What do you have to risk, other than your valuable time…

Otherwise, if you value time too much, and want to Outsource Your Marketing for Maximum Efficiency, or even how to choose the right marketing agency for your business, feel free to reach out for external help if needed. Good luck!