Lost traffic after website migration can be a serious problem. Organic search traffic determines a site’s relevance to search engines. Traffic loss might affect how the new website performs in terms of rankings.
A lot of technical SEO work needs to be done in the whole migration process, even after post-migration from the old site. If you’ve been experiencing the same problem and you need to bring back organic traffic to your new site, we are here to help you.
What We Found:
Our Findings
The client’s domain started to have decreased organic traffic due to website migration.
Key Observations
- Some valuable pages lost their ranking on page 1 of SERPs for relevant keywords.
- The staging server needs adjustments to address UX issues to have good site health and provide a positive user experience.
What We Did:
Our Approach
We performed a website migration check to ensure that all traffic-driving URLs on the staging server will be on the live site and solve issues associated with user experience.
The Steps We Took
To enhance the overall performance of the domain, the following recommendations were applied:
- Before the website migration, the old domain was crawled and underwent a deep dive audit.
- Traffic-driving URLs and those that lost their ranking were suggested for content optimizations.
- When the website was on its staging server, we ensured key pages were on the staging server and that all metadata, redirections, and indexable status had been migrated in the same way.
- UX issues are addressed, like broken footer links, missing landing pages of CTA buttons, not clickable and low-quality images, visible HTML codes, overlapping text, missing videos, and uncompetitive site speed.
- After the day of website migration, the newly relaunched website was immediately crawled. Broken links, missing images, missing metadata, not working CTA buttons, and H1s were suggested for optimization.
- We made sure that any pages that don’t exist anymore have an appropriate 301 redirect.
What Results We Achieved:
The rectangle covers the period when the site migration began. In the earlier weeks when the website was on its staging server, organic traffic was increasing, but it began to decrease 3 months before the new domain went live. The downward trend went along with the September 2023 Helpful Content Update.
However, traffic started to recover in November 2023 following the month when the new domain had migrated in October 2023 and after some of the added ERICA tasks were implemented. The newly migrated website continues to attract more traffic in the succeeding period.
How to Recover Traffic After Web Migration
A traffic drop usually happens when you migrate your website from the old one to the new one. Your core site pages and URL structure are usually affected by this move.
If you think your website has been affected, we’re recommending these tips to smoothly finish the migration process:
1. Find the root cause
External factors, such as algorithm updates, old URLs still hanging around, or technical problems in migrating data, might be the cause of your problem. If these aren’t the cause, maybe the migration itself is the problem.
2. Identify affected pages
Find and save pages, especially blog posts, that have dropped in traffic through Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Blog posts are usually the most affected by a site redesign since they’re the kind of content that carries authority in your niche.
3. Take care of links
Internal links and external links are also affected by the whole website migration. Update all of these links and make sure they still get to the correct page destination in the new domain.
4. Optimize your Content
Take a look at the pages you saved and see what could be done. Search for relevant keywords and edit the content with the search intent to make the pages rank again.
Conclusion
Website migration is an essential part of SEO when it comes to improving user experience and keeping things seamless. You have to do the site migration neatly and correctly to avoid additional work in fixing problems that may potentially arise.
Schedule a call with us if you need help with bringing back organic traffic to your brand-new website. We will help you figure out what to do with lost traffic pages!
