SEO Migrations

The activities of an SEO migration aim at safeguarding the trust of the domain name and the relevance/visibility of indexed resources.

Before going live, there are three steps to take:

• backup the old website in order to always have the option ofof restoring its infrastructure completely;
• URL mapping: building a complete map that collects each address of the old website;
• association of old URLs with new URLs (if a change in URIs is required) and support in creating 404, 301 and 302 pages through proper setting of htaccess.

The most important activities when going live are:

• configuration and management of redirects in order to ensure that the old addresses redirect  toward the new ones. In case the new website is missing old pages, the redirection of these should be done towards the category page that contained them. In case of elimination  of the category section, the redirect is usually done toward the Home Page;
• the sitemap.xml must be submitted to Google and Bing through the proprietary Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools. This is necessary in order for the search engine to index all of the website’s pages;
• the rewriting of the robots.txt file is useful in determining which resources should not be subject to indexing, with the possibility to exclude some search engines;
• lastly, it’s important to identify 404 pages and redirect them toward new pages when possible. 404 pages can be a virtuous practice, but only if they remain within a limited percentage compared to the total number of pages. 

Natural Index is among the most experienced agencies you can find in Europe, in managing SEO migration, even of the most complex websites.