Preserving rankings after migration

[muzzmoz]

I have acquired new a client who wants to migrate to a new platform. He also wants a 100% guarantee we maintain he Google search rankings. How realistic is this? Anyone got a checklist they can recommend?

[muzzmoz]

The client sells school uniforms. I have now discovered he has created a number of 'hub' pages which simply contain lists of school names for each region, where each of the school names link to a page of fairly banal blurb about each school.

Given that he does not sell uniforms for most of these schools, it looks like classic keyword stuffing.

This being the case, surely it wouldn't be wise to preserve this type of content, even though this strategy has gotten him some pretty good rankings?

[muzzmoz]

Thanks James.

The client has already said he wants to change look and feel, possibly the navigation too. So I suspect too many changes to avoid some SEO flux.

[LoganRay]

If there's a CMS change, then yes, I agree with Brandon that it's a completely unrealistic request. I've provided SEO support on dozens of site migrations, and there's always some initial loss, even when you check all the boxes on every migration list you can find.

The only way that this is possible is if you're reskinning of a site, a la choosing a new theme in WP where URLs don't change and on-page opt stay the same. And even then, with all the UX considerations in Google's algo, you're still likely to see some flux.

[muzzmoz]

Thanks Brandon. I tend to agree with you. Just too many variables outside of my control.

Given that they are moving to Shopify, which means 'collections' and 'products' added to URLs, it's clearly impossible to maintain continuity in URLs and site/nav structure.

Nightmare!

[Brandon. 0]

A guarantee is not realistic at all. Even if you make the new site better, while retaining as much of its integrity as possible, your rankings will fluctuate and some keywords may even drop. In fact, the client is actually asking for you to guarantee rankings, which Google explicitly dismisses.

Your #1 goal when performing a migration is to maintain content integrity for every page. In a perfect world, you would maintain the integrity of the site in its entirety, but with a platform change that cannot be done.

So simply said: every page on Site A should be maintained as much as possible on Site B, while Page A-Z on Site A redirects to the proper Page A-Z on Site B. This means everything that you can preserve reasonably, you should preserve and the appropriate redirects should be in place. It goes without saying, but all elements like URLs, page titles, H1s, etc. are to be maintained.

[muzzmoz]

Thank you James. Very useful.

The current site is custom-built in PHP, moving to Shopify. So straight away, I know the URLs and site structure cannot be the same. There's also a very good chance they will move from http to https. I've seen several sites drop page authority when this happens.

Doesn't sound promising does it?!