Keeping SEO Rankings During Platform Migration to Shopify

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In the course of running your ecommerce business, there may come a time when your current platform feels like it's holding you back. There are many reasons for this sentiment to arise. Perhaps your formerly trusty website builder just can't handle the booming sales, or you may even feel as though your current ecommerce platform is limiting your brand's full potential.

When this happens, a platform migration may be in order so that you can move your brand and online business to a cutting-edge new ecommerce platform that promises limitless scalability, functionality, and user experience to take your brand to the next level of business.

However, amidst the excitement of platform migration, an important question comes to mind. What about SEO and all the efforts you made to optimize your website? After all, you’ve put so much effort into building your SEO standing and the effects of platform migration are a valid concern. You certainly do not want to lose your hard-earned SEO ranking.

In this guide by Ecommerce Pro, we are delving into platform migration and preserving SEO ranking. This article will serve to equip you with the knowledge and strategies you need to be familiar with as you navigate platform migration with a smooth transition that will keep your search visibility on top.

Let’s get started by answering what platform migration is, and the reasons why migrating becomes necessary, before delving into strategies to preserve your SEO ranking while migrating across platforms.

Are you considering a platform migration to Shopify? Reach out to our team of ecommerce experts for a FREE consulting call - Contact us.

What is a website migration?

Think of a website migration as carefully transferring your online store to a new platform. Moving your entire online store from one platform to another will also involve moving your products, customer data, and SEO efforts, from one platform to another. All crucial data needs to be carefully transferred to the new platform, so that when the transfer is complete, you can carry on with business as usual, having experienced a smooth transfer of data.

What is a website SEO migration?

Website SEO migration is the process of moving your ecommerce website, including its SEO elements, from one platform to another. Think of it as a complete transfer of data which will include the SEO elements you've worked hard on like product descriptions and website structure.

A successful SEO migration will ensure minimal disruption to your search engine ranking, allowing you to pick up where you left off, and maintain your brand’s visibility online.

Why is ecommerce platform migration necessary?

Ecommerce site migration can be a complex process to undergo for any online business, but it becomes necessary for brands when:

• Your Current Platform Can't Keep Up: As your business grows in success, there may come a time when your business goes as far as to outgrow your current platform. Your platform may struggle to handle the increase in online traffic or the complex business operations. In this case, migration to a more robust platform can improve performance and scalability.
• You Need New Features: Perhaps your current platform lacks features you need, like advanced marketing tools or multilingual capabilities. Migration to a new platform with a vast collection of ecommerce functionalities will allow you to gain a new set of features that will take your business to the next level.
• Security Concerns: Securing customer data and business data is paramount in the world of ecommerce, and customers only want to shop with trust-worthy online stores. If your current platform has security vulnerabilities, migrating to a more secure platform protects your customer data and builds trust.

How to Safeguard SEO During Platform Migration:

1. Conduct a Comprehensive SEO Audit

Large ecommerce websites can often have hundreds, if not thousands, of pages that have been built over time. But when migrating to a new platform, efficiency is key. The first thing to do would be to conduct a comprehensive SEO audit of your website, identifying and documenting key elements, like the following:

• High-performing keywords and their landing pages
• Backlinks and their sources
• Internal linking structure
• Metadata (titles, descriptions, headers)
• Page load times and overall site performance metrics
• Mobile usability and responsiveness

Tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and specialized SEO audit tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs prove to be invaluable tools in the process. Another important note is to keep an eye out for 404 pages, which are a dead weight on your website that shouldn’t make it across to your new platform.

2. Map Redirects One-to-One

Switching ecommerce platforms can often involve changing the URL structure of your site. Platforms like Shopify, for one, have specific URL formats stricture for product and category pages. To make sure that your visitors and search engines can access your content, you need to set up redirects.

Redirects guide users to the corresponding new URLs and inform search engines about the new locations of your content, which helps you to maintain your SEO rankings! Properly managing redirects ensures that your migration does not result in any dreaded traffic loss and impact on your rank.

Spend time on your redirect mapping to ensure customers and search engines can find you. Use your list of current URLs to match each old URL to a new URL, focusing on one-to-one redirections, and mapping each URL directly to its new counterpart on Shopify to maintain the integrity of your content and rank.

3. Update and Optimize On-Page SEO Elements

An ever-important element of SEO, don’t forget to transfer all on-page SEO elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, headers (H1, H2, etc.), alt text for images, and keyword-rich content from your old ecommerce platform to the new one. This step is crucial to maintain your site’s relevance and authority in the eyes of search engines, and that’s because consistency in on-page SEO helps search engines know that your site content remains valuable and relevant.

Neglecting to transfer on-page SEO elements can have negative consequences in the form of a significant drop in your site’s rankings, as search engines might struggle to index your new site correctly. With this in mind, take the time to carefully migrate these relevant SEO elements to preserve your hard-earned SEO performance.

4. Review and Update Internal Links

Another important consideration when migrating to a new ecommerce platform is to ensure that all internal links are updated to point to the correct pages on your new platform. This is because broken internal links can seriously harm user experience and having dead-end links negatively impacts SEO.

This step is crucial for preserving the seamless flow throughout your site so that users can navigate smoothly without 404 errors. It also helps to retain the SEO value of your content, which is essential for maintaining your search rankings post-migration.

There are tools online to help you identify and fix any broken links during the migration. Ahrefs has a free broken link checker for you to check out.

5. Keep On-Page Changes to a Minimum

When migrating to a new ecommerce platform, it may be necessary to keep your site as similar as possible to its previous version. This will help preserve your current SEO ranking during the platform migration. Dramatic changes to your site structure and content can lead to a loss of traffic and revenue as a consequence, so it may be wise not to do anything dramatic leading up to the migration of your site and afterward.

Some key aspects to consider are mirroring the site’s original structure. This means that the structure of your new site should closely resemble the old one, with all categories and important non-primary pages mirrored closely.

Consistency is key in platform migration so that you don’t experience a significant drop in site traffic and SEO rank. Simply ensure that you maintain as much consistency as possible in your site’s structure and content and this should help protect your SEO efforts and support a smoother transition during platform migration.

6. Submit a New Sitemap to Search Engines

When it comes to SEO, sitemaps are a factor that comes into play. Sitemaps will help search engines discover and understand your newly re-platformed website’s content, so it’s important to generate a new XML sitemap for your new site and submit it to Google Search Console, as well as other search engines.

Shopify Sitemaps: Submitting to Google Search Console

Submitting a new sitemap is what is going to help search engines discover and index your new pages quickly, ensuring that your online business remains visible in search results. Don’t forget to make sure that your sitemap includes all relevant pages, such as product pages, category pages, and any other important content. It's also essential to keep your sitemap up-to-date with any changes made post-migration. Regularly updating your sitemap helps search engines recognize new additions to your site and remove outdated pages, maintaining the accuracy of your indexed content.

7. Test and Monitor the New Site

As with many things in online business, testing and monitoring are integral, especially before launching your newly re-platformed site. Before going live, conduct a thorough test to see if all elements on your website are functioning correctly. Make sure to once again check for broken links, missing pages, and slow loading times. 

When it comes to post-launch monitoring, closely watch over your site’s performance, crawl errors, and traffic patterns with the help of Google Analytics and other tools that may be available to you, such as Shopify Analytics if you are on the platform.

With a watchful approach such as this, you’ll be able to quickly catch on to any issues, resolving them quickly when they come up.

It goes almost without saying that analytics should be reviewed regularly so you can monitor how well your site is doing after migration, and how your visitors are interacting with your site.

8. Continue to Fine-Tune SEO Performance

SEO isn’t a one-and-done deal. Instead, it is an ongoing component of your online business’s growth strategy. After you’ve completed a successful migration from one platform to a new ecommerce platform, maintaining and building upon your SEO momentum remains as crucial as ever. Moreover, SEO trends are also continuously changing, so keep an eye on those algorithm updates. Even if your site is already performing well, there’s always room for improvement, better keywords, and new content.

With that said, engaging in continuous improvement efforts and SEO audits will allow you to make sure that your site remains at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), driving sustained organic traffic and growth as you run your newly re-platformed ecommerce business.

Conclusion

Migrating to a new ecommerce platform is quite a significant step. While it can pose a challenge, migrating to a new ecommerce platform can greatly enhance your online business’s scalability, functionality, and user experience. This is especially true if you have already outgrown your current platform or plan. In this case, you’ll certainly need more room to grow!

However, preserving your hard-earned SEO rankings during this transition is important to the process of ecommerce site migration. While it may seem intimidating, carefully planning and implementing strategies such as conducting a comprehensive SEO audit, mapping redirects, updating on-page SEO elements, and continuously monitoring performance, can ensure a smooth migration that maintains your search visibility and supports ongoing growth. With an informed and strategic approach, your new platform can provide a solid foundation for your online business’s growth and ongoing success!

To access more valuable resources regarding ecommerce and the latest Shopify news and advice, check out the Ecommerce Pro Blog.

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At Ecommerce Pro, we specialize in ecommerce migration to Shopify. With our team of Shopify migration experts, we guarantee a seamless transition to Shopify and Shopify Plus, ensuring a smooth and efficient migration for your business. You’ll be up and running in record time. Get in touch with us today!