Migrating e-commerce platform (same domain). Do I need to be concerned about these changes?
-
We are moving a domain from oscommerce to prestashop.
We will setup 301 redirects for each page and have made sure that new platform is following SEO best practices.I read a lot that it is critical to keep changes to a minimum when migrating to a new domain, but is this also critical when migrating just to a new e-commerce platform (same domain)? Change of URL is unavoidable, but what about these other changes below? Would you be very concerned about doing them at the same time, or rather would you do them some time after the migration?
- title tag (about 30% of text in title tag will be different)
- meta description tag (more customized and varied meta description than before)
- h1 (expanding product name with some relevant keywords for a number of products)
- additional table with product features (additional content in product pages)
- adding additional products to store
- moving to https instead of http
Product descriptions and product images and category descriptions will remain the same.
Replicating title tag, title description and h1 from old site would actually imply quite a lot of additional work at this point and we would have to make the change anyway at a later point, so if it is not a major risk I would prefer to do it in one go.
Any thoughts?
-
Many business asked about migrating data with change of ranking. I suggest SEO URLs migration plugins to supports users to transfer data successfully and safely. Check it: http://litextension.com/seo-urls-migrations-plugins.html
-
Then do them during the migration, but make absolutely sure that you won't launch the problem with any issues on the site.
-
I just moved my site from Volusion to Big Commerce and made all of the changes you listed above.
Somethings I noticed is that it took us a little longer to regain organic traffic than if we had not made any additional changes aside from moving platforms and changing URL structure. It wasn't a huge difference, only about 2 weeks.
Once the changes had been implemented, the site was fully indexed and all of the 404 errors were fixed we surpassed our previous organic traffic by 25% and moved our keywords up significantly. I also noticed that I had far less duplicate html errors in GWT while the old site was deindexing and the new site was becoming indexed.
I would make the changes up front. If these changes are better in the long run, why not get them done when it is convenient? Just make sure to add all of the versions of your site to GWT and set the preferred version to the https.
-
Martijn, thanks.
Regarding potential: We would want to make the changes anyway at some point.
So would you do all changes now with platform migration or would you do them later (which implies significantly more work), maybe in several stages? -
I would be very concerned but on the other side I would also be interested to see what the potential of changes is.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Migration to a new domain
Hi everyone, So i have one project where I'm planning to move current content on new domain, two reasons: 1. It seems current domain has some google penalty (backlink related, not manual) 2. Client wants rebranding and already has domain with new brand name. So as content is high quality and there is no content related penalty from google, what would be the best way to migrate existing content without passing any penalty AND without Google treating it as duplicate content. If i do 301 i suspect any penalty there is might follow, if i just copy existing content it won't be original content, what is the best solution here? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joelsemy0 -
Site migration/ CMS/domain site structure change-no access to search console
Hi everyone, We are migrating an old site under a bigger umbrella (our main domain). As mentioned in the title, We'll perform CMS migration, domain change, and site structure change. Now, the major problem is that we can't get into google search console for the old site. The site still has old GA code, so google search console verification using this method is not possible, also there is no way developers will be able to add GTM or edit DNS setting (not to bother you with the reason why). Now, my dilemma is : 1. Do we need access to old search console to notify Google about the domain name change or this could be done from our main site (old site will become a part of) search console 2. We are setting up 301 redirects from old to the new domain (not perfect 1:1 redirect ). Once migration is done does anything else needs to be done with the old domain (it will become obsolete)? 3.The main site, Site-map... Should I create a new sitemap with newly added pages or update the current one. 4. if you have anything else please add:) Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin0 -
Domain name change
Here's the scenario... Client has two domain names: domain.com - targeting one country (Australia) otherdomain.com - targeting all other countries Both have identical products, but different currencies (AU$ and US$). The problem (as most of you will know) is that without using a sub-domain or country-code top-level domains, Google has no idea which domain should be served for which domain. Furthermore, because the root domain is different, Google doesn't see any connection between the two - other than the fact they have identical products! My recommendation to the client is to change to: domain.com to domain.com.au otherdomain.com to domain.com Arguably, we could leave the second one alone. But I think it's better for the brand to use the same root domain for each. Obviously this means both will need to be redirected. Since NONE of the pages within the sites will change, do we need to redirect every page, or just the root domain? Any other risks or concerns we should know about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
How to handle multiple domains?
Hello, We are working on migrating a website to a new web server. In addition to the primary website domain, there are several other variations that are owned. Is okay if we point all of our domains to the same IP address as our primary domain, and then setup 301 redirects to the primary domain? Are there any risks in doing this? There may be about 100 domains. Many of them are different country TLD for same primary .com domain, others including misspellings of primary .com, and some that are not so related to primary domain. Thank you in advance for your response!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | srbello1 -
Best E-commerce CMS from a SEO perspective
Hello fellow mozzers, I have a lot of experience with Magento and a little bit of experience with Prestashop and i am quite aware of their strengths and weaknesses regarding SEO. I was wondering which E-commerce CMS is the best for SEO. I am talking about the CMS as you download it. There are hundreds of plugins for the popular systems which improve their SEO power tremendously, but i'm interested in which CMS is the best right out-of-the-box. Let me know what you think and why you think so. Thanks in advance 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WesleySmits1 -
Should I change wordpress urls?
Should I change my wordpress permalinks to include the keyword? For examples at the minute my url is http://www.musicliveuk.com/home/wedding-singer. Is it better to be http://www.musicliveuk.com/live-bands/wedding-singer. 'home' is not relevant so surely 'live-bands' would be better? If I change the urls won't I lose 'link juice' as external links will all point to a url that no longer exists? Or will wordpress automatically redirect the old url to the new one? Finally, if I should change the url as described how do I do it on wordpress? I can only see how to edit the last bit of the url and not the middle bit.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
SERP Drop overnight for one of our domains - could it be the title changes?
Hi Scratching our heads here over SERP drop for some of our product pages, Although they are all uniquely titled with the product name, we have recently added 4 words at the end of our title, like a slogan which are repeated on every one of our product pages. However, we've also seen a drop, but not as far, on related category pages, these have unique titles. When we talk about "unique title" being important for SEO, does that mean 0 reptition between page titles? I see many companies use their site name in the title (even here see | SEOMOZ Q&A - would four words at the end of a title do this? Or am i barking up the wrong tree entirely? Ive seen so much movement over the past few weeks its hard to correlate anything we do with the result, so even after advise I think i'll wait a week
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie0 -
Recovery during domain migration
On average, how long does it takes to recover 80% of the rankings if two high authority domains are combined without chaging any content? I totally understand that each domain is different and search engines can treat them differently but if all the steps are followed to the T what are the chances?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ninjamarketer1