CMS migration can be a complicated process from SEO point of view. It is crucial for any website owner to accurately and flawlessly migrate the data since any error can cause the loss of traffic and revenue. The most significant problem of the switch to a new CMS is that the structure of the internal links can be changed. This chiefly happens due to the fact that each content management system has its own way of link building.
So, let’s have a closer look of the connection between the CMS switch and SEO and find out how to overcome the most common challenges related to website data migration.
301 Redirect and Its Value
Once you’ve decided to migrate your existing website to the new one, there is the need to take some steps. Using 301 redirect is one of them. Basically, 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another and it passes 90-99% of ranking power to the redirected page. During and after a website migration, you should ensure that your visitors get sent to the right page, and in the world of technology this process is called a 301 redirect.
Maintain Your Ranking with Google
Getting your website pages indexed with Google is a time-consuming process. It takes even more time to benefit from your SEO efforts. When Google bot comes to crawl your website and finds all pages missing, there is a strong possibility that you are going to lose your ranking. Thus, it is of great importance to keep your PageRank you’ve put so much efforts to get. 301 redirect is a key to maintaining search rankings. With its help Googlebot knows where your page is situated and assigns your current PageRank to the new URL.
Retain Your Visitors
Informing Googlebot about your URL changes is highly significant for your ranking maintenance. But notifying your visitors about your newly changed web address is really important in retaining your audience. The users may click their bookmarked links or type in the address bar the familiar URL but all what they get would be 404 error – page not found. In this way you will not only deliver a bad user experience but also you will notice that the organic traffic from search engines will start to fall. It is possible to prevent such situation by implementing 301 redirect. In this case, your visitors will be automatically sent to the new page location and you won’t lose your audience.
Prevent Loss of Backlinks
Without doubt, there are plenty of websites which have a link to yours. These backlinks can be a valuable source of traffic which you may waste unless you specify your new URL. With 301 redirect usage, the external links will be retained and you’ll result in preserving your ranking and traffic.
Preserve SEO during Website Migration
So, you have decided to move your website data from one CMS to another. You want this migration to be flawless, accurate and fast. But what is more important, you want to preserve your SEO juice, you’ve worked so hard to get. Here raises a question how to perform migration without traffic and ranking loss.
Do it Yourself
Setting up 301 redirect on the server can be done by yourself in case you have specific technical skills and redirection syntax knowledge. Otherwise, chances are that it won’t work as expected. Moreover, lacking insights about 301 redirect setup can result in considerable drop in rankings.
Automated Website Migration
With aisite a fully automated migration service it is possible to set 301 redirect for your website. During Joomla, Drupal and WordPress migrations, the following extensions, modules and plugins are used: Drupal Redirect Module, ReDJ, Redirection, Simple 301 Redirects. Just check a 301 redirect option in your Migration Wizard and all your content along with SEO juice will be safely, accurately and effortlessly moved from your current CMS platform to your new WordPress, Joomla or Drupal website.
In case you prefer to preview the results first, then you should definitely run a Free Demo Migration. By doing this, you will be able to observe not only the future look of your new website but also how 301 redirect option works.
