DVCS

Migration — SEO Checklist

Overview

The purpose of this checklist is to preserve search engine rankings through a site migration. Changes in site content and structure can have a significant negative effect on site rankings. This can be minimised by ensuring the smallest possible downtime, and the fewest possible changes to the site’s copy and metadata.

Checklist

SERVER

• Notify Calibre9 so they can keep an image of old site
• Keep old hosting in place until new site is running
• Ensure new hosting server is within Australia (or businesses area of service)
• Reduce DNS TTL (time to live) to 5 mins at least 24 hours before migration
• Make sure www domain is being 301 redirected to the non-www domain (or vice-versa)
• Ensure non-secure (HTTP) domain is being redirected to the secure (HTTPS) domain

SITE

• Have a robots.txt with a link to the sitemap
• Have a functioning XML sitemap
• Remove author pages from the sitemap (WordPress)
• Have a functioning 404 page with a clear link back to the homepage
• Use only permanent (301 or 308) redirects site-wide
• Avoid redirect chains that are 3 jumps or longer

CONTENT

• Ensure navigation is usable with JavaScript disabled
• Keep site copy unchanged
• Ensure a single

  per page that contains the title/topic of the page

• Avoid having duplicate pages/content (unless necessary for breadcrumbs etc.)
• Provide an above the fold CTA on the homepage
• Provide social proof on the homepage
• Attribute blogs/articles to a specific author with experience and/or expertise in the subject matter

IMAGES

• Use WebP or AVIF format for images
• Keep image file size to 300KB or less
• Provide alt text for images that are important to understanding the page
• Lazy load below-the-fold images

METADATA

• Keep metadata (page titles and meta descriptions) unchanged
• Make sure canonical tags are self-referencing (or intentionally referencing duplicate pages)
• Keep all Google Analytics and verification tags intact
• Keep any structured data intact
• Keep any OpenGraph and Twitter tags intact
• Keep any hreflang tags intact

1300 689 641

info@calibrenine.com.au

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