Taking Your SEO With You When Replatforming

One of the most commonly asked questions from businesses wishing to replatform is whether it will affect their SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) but with essential planning and working with an experienced agency, you can avoid an SEO catastrophe.

It’s no secret that search engine rankings are a great way to measure your brand’s success, but building rankings organically can be a time-consuming process of producing steady and regular content, so it’s no wonder businesses are worried about losing all that work. Though it is possible to take your SEO with you when you replatform, it is by no means an easy task.

Complex algorithms are used by Google and other search engines to rank your site’s pages. Search engines regularly crawl your site, index each page and record metrics. Every time something changes between crawls, it can have an impact on your rankings, which is why saving your SEO when replatforming can be a complicated process. Here are our top tips for ensuring you don’t lose all that hard-earned work.

• Set up keyword tracking on the old site – this will ensure you have something to compare the new site to.
• Claim the URLs in Google Webmaster Tools – www. & non www.
• Install a sitewide SSL – if you don’t have one already. This has been a Google ranking factor since April 2016.
• Submit and XML sitemap for the new site
• Create 301 redirects for every old URL to the new ones – for the best results, this is something that can’t be automated and is therefore likely to be a long, time-consuming process.

We recommend you hire a digital agency to help you with the replatforming and SEO transfer process – this will ensure you get the best results. It’s also important to keep the momentum going after replatforming – SEO is ongoing – keep building on those rankings.

If you would like more information on the replatforming process, or if you need help with SEO content, get in touch!