Moving a website to a new platform, what are the 10 most important checks to make before moving?
-
I am moving my website to a new platform. The URS's will be the exact same. What are the 10 most important items I should check before I swap over to the new platform.
-
If you are sold on prestashop and are sure you have the URLs taken care of then that is pretty much all you can do in that regard.
I still think you should look deeply at the links after the site is done, and possible do all of this on a dev server to make sure everything copies over as well as you hope.
I am not super familiar with Prestashop. So I am hesitant to give much specific advice on it. Some of my concerns come more with that. I personally use Magento if the client is sold on a eCommerce based CMS. They are the largest, most SEO friendly, and the most protected when it comes to plugins etc. Plus eBay owns it now, so you have that behind it.
Regardless, I don't know if I really even have '10 things" for you.
-
Check links before and after to make sure everything matches up.
-
TEST, TEST, TEST. Try to break your website, on a dev server. Someone else will if you don't, that way you can identify it before somebody else does.
-
Check plugins. Plugins are one of the best ways to ruin a website. One update, or lack of an update can throw an entire website offline.
-
Accept that any change you make will have an effect. SEO is just like Newtons laws. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Now, in the long run, switching to a CMS could be extremely beneficial, at first it very well may hurt you. I would highly doubt that it would drastically impact your rankings, but in my opinion, you cannot make a change in this world and not have there be some sort of ripple felt somewhere else.
Good Luck
-
-
Hi,
The website is an commerce website. ShamrockGift.com is the name of the website. I am moving it from a custom platform to prestashop. We have changed the way the system writes the URS's so we will be able to copy them exactly as they appear on my current website. Also all content etc will be the same. I was going to keep it on the same server. I was hoping drop no ranking but I was worried if google will just crawl it the same.
It is a hard area to get advice on, it is difficult to find an SEO company that has actually did this for a small commerce website.
-
I think we would all need a little bit of clarification (at least I do) as to what exactly you are trying to do before I can truly give you an adequate answer, but my general advice is as follows!
What is your website? Are you selling something? Providing information? Answering questions?When you say "new platform" what exactly do you mean? Wordpress to Drupal? HTML5 to Magento? Or are you going as deep as switching from a LAMP server to a Linux Server running Bootstrap & NoSQL?
Depending on the size of your website and the amount of traffic there is a lot to consider, like if it's even worth it. And what your website does will drastically effect which platform you choose.
Switching from Wordpress to Drupal for example is pretty much guaranteed to change your URL unless you fiddle with the preferences. And switching from a Static website to a CMS is 100% going to do the same. You would have to spend a decent amount of time making sure every URL is the same. Remember URLs are not only important for the structure of your website, but every other place on the interwebs that links to you.
Anytime you switch a platform, regardless if it's on the top level or at the sever level, there is no way for it to be 100% seamless. Spend as much time as you can making sure you really want to make this change. Clean up as many loose ends as possible, and organize the structure of the site. Make SURE that this is the platform you NEED & WANT so you don't have to change again later down the road.
I agree with Jedi RobertFisher about Screaming Frog, It will scan 500 URLs for free. There is also Xenu's Link Sleuth. Other than that, you are gonna have to spend some time doing some good old fashion QC on the website making sure everything is A-OK!
Good Luck!
-
Even though you believe the urls are going to be the same, I would suggest running screaming frog before and after just to be sure. If the site is smaller this is less critical, but for a larger site, where you can lose valuable rankings, etc. I would check it.
I would make sure you are indexing after change and resubmit sitemap as soon as change takes place.Best
-
Hi Robbie,
If the URL's are remaining the same then that is the first thing, you won't have to worry about redirects etc. Make sure any blog posts that you have will remain the same as well and also any RSS feeds you have.
You'll want to know how easy it is to add/remove pages from the CMS and how easy it is to edit pages. If you've got an e-commerce website then look what happens when products become out of stock etc. I
If the URL's are staying the same then you haven't got much to worry about really, it is just functionality really. If you are moving to a new server then there are issues like speeds and uptime to think about but that's a different ball game!
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How do I redirect my old PHP website to my new Java website?
Please could you help? My old website is written in php. I've created a new design of the website in Java. I'll be using the same domain name though. example.com and I'd like to pass my link juice to my new redesigned website. When I turn the domain name to point to my new website how do I make sure pages that are ranked in google that don't exist on my new website transfer 301 from my old website to a similar page on my new website. Old Website Example example.com/bootcampuk.php New Website Example example.com/bootcamps.jsp Many Thanks, Rob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | puamethod0 -
Moving to new platform
I am moving a site with great SEO and tons of pages to a new platform. Page names will all be different because they will not have the .html ending and names will change. It is on a system that does not support .htaccess. So, I don't have a way to do 301 redirects. How can I keep my competitive status? Thank you!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bhsiao0 -
Could i add my website in Google News
Hi , I am looking to add article news section of my website http://goo.gl/De5MKo in google news. We'll remove all content from this news section http://www.99acres.com/articles/real-estate-news and upload unique news, might be possible we use graph/chart and images from some other news site and other sources but the content will be unique and fresh. Any specific guidelines for URL structure for this news section? We are thinking about to create URL like xyz.com/news/ <title>. Is it okay and will not harm our site? Google News can consider my section as a news?</p></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
Website not ranking
Firstly, apologies for the long winded question. I'm 'newish' to SEO We have a website built on Magento , www.excelclothing.com We have been online for 5 years and had reasonable success. Having used a few SEO companies in the past we found ourselves under a 'partial manual penalty' early last year. By July we were out of penalty. We have been gradually working our way through getting rid of 'spammy' links. Currently the website ranks for a handful of non competitive keywords looking at the domain on SEM RUSH. This has dropped drastically over the last 2 years. Our organic traffic over the last 2-3 years has seen no 'falling off a cliff' and has maintained a similar pattern. I've been told so many lies by SEO companies trying to get into my wallet I'm not sure who to believe. We have started to add content onto all our Category pages to make more unique although most of our Meta Descriptions are a 'boiler plate' template. I'm wondering.... Am I still suffering from Penquin ? Am I trapped by Panda and if so how can I know that? Do I need more links removed? How can I start to rank for more keywords I have a competitor online with the same DA, PA and virtually same number of links but they rank for 3500 keywords in the top 20. Would welcome any feedback. Many Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wgilliland1 -
Questions about websites coupon codes
Hi guys, i have 2 questions about my website of coupon codes: should i do redirect people of google to mywebsite, e.g. Someone is looking coupons for Sony or LG and arrive to brand Sony in my website but i show him offers for Sony in Amazon when he click in some offer, ¿that is correct? Footer images links. I saw many sites that put their logos in footer of online stores to get authority, ¿should i do that? Thank you so much.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pompero990 -
Are backlinks the most important factor in SEO?
I have had an agency state that "Backlinks are the most important factor in SEO". That is how they are justifying their strategy of approaching bloggers. I believe there are a lot more factors than that including Target Market definition, Keyword identification an build content based on these factors. What's everyone's thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndySalmons0 -
Credit Links on Client Websites
I know there have been several people who have asked this but a lot of them were back in 2012 before many of the google changes. My question is the same though. With all the changes with Google's algorithm. Is it okay to put your link on the bottom of your clients website. Like Web Design by, etc. Part of the reason is to drive traffic but also if someone is actually interested who designed the website, they will click it. But now reading about how bad links can hurt you tremendously, it makes me second guess if this is ok. My gut feeling says, no.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blackrino0 -
How important is the optional <priority>tag in an XML sitemap of your website? Can this help search engines understand the hierarchy of a website?</priority>
Can the <priority>tag be used to tell search engines the hierarchy of a site or should it be used to let search engines know which priority to we want pages to be indexed in?</priority>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mycity4kids0