Perform these tasks as soon as your new site is live, ideally within 48 hours, to avoid crawlability issues:
Set your site’s “robots” meta tag to index, and remove any robots.txt directives mistakenly preventing crawling from the robots.txt file. Web developers often add settings on staging sites to prevent early crawling, and it’s essential to remove these when setting the new site live.
Crawl your new site and compare it to the pre-migration crawl, ensuring you see the number of pages you expect. You should not see old pages, and new pages should be active.
Ensure all title tags, meta descriptions, and alt tags are present and don’t contain developer language such as “Test Page” or “To complete later.”
Spot-check 301 redirects to ensure they’ve properly migrated. Do this by visiting a URL that no longer exists—it should automatically send you to a new live URL.
Spot-check key pages for guatemala mobile database page speed or mobile usability issues.
Verify that hreflang tags reflect how you set them up in the previous step.
Verify structured data markup accuracy.
Submit your new sitemap to Google Search Console.
If the domain changed, use Google’s Change of Address Tool to notify Google of the change, letting it know that it should treat the new domain the same as the old domain.
Submit key pages to Google Search Console for re-crawling and indexing.
Review analytics tools like Google Analytics to ensure the platform collects data.
Monitor Search Console weekly for any significant site performance changes or crawling issues over the first six weeks.
Understanding the intricacies of SEO and how they play into website migration is a task that often requires the expertise of the finest SEO agency. These agencies specialize in seamlessly integrating SEO best practices into every aspect of the migration process, ensuring that your site maintains its current SEO standings and potentially even improves them. When considering a migration, partnering with a premier SEO agency can be a game-changer, offering peace of mind and a guarantee of professionalism. Their experiences in handling complex migrations mean they can anticipate and mitigate risks, ensuring a smoother transition for your website.