Any kind of site migration, rebuild, or new launch comes with excitement – and some concerns. Like moving house, there are often many players involved, and if you don’t plan well, you could end up leaving valuables behind.
Our Enterprise Marketing and Web Development teams collected some of the most common website migration pitfalls we’ve seen over the years, as well as recommended solutions.
You can also check out our SEO Website Migration Checklist below to start off on the right foot. And, if you just want to ask us directly, come to our upcoming Reddit AMA! We’re holding it Thursday, March 26, at 1:30pm ET/11:30am MT at u/upwardengine.
General Website Migration & Launch Mistakes
Adopting a competitive mentality between teams
Everyone involved with launching a new or rebuilt site shares a common goal, but sometimes people lose sight of it. Disagreements between internal teams or contractors can lead to errors or unnecessary roadblocks.
Solution: To get the best end result, check egos at the door. Letting each specialist cover their area of expertise and deferring to them with questions can save a ton of time and stress. Staying in your lane, communicating, and asking questions resolves many issues before they arise.
Pushing SEO strategy to the end of the process
If you’re tempted to wave off SEO and other digital marketing considerations until at or after site launch, think again! Not integrating SEO into your site migration journey means you’ll face even more clean-up later.
Solution: Any website migration or rebuild can jostle search engine rankings for a site, but keeping your SEO expert in the loop can help prevent doing irreparable damage to your site’s current standings. They may also spot errors and opportunities for optimization no one else does.
See our blog post on SEO-friendly site design for more details.
Planning & Project Management Issues
Not clarifying ownership of tasks
At the beginning of the site migration process, it’s easy to dive in without assigning accountable parties for each step. This choice often ends with finding gaps or making assumptions about how teams will complete the work.
Like Kristin Coleman, our Enterprise Marketing Team’s Project Manager, says: “Defining and assigning owners for each step of the process helps avoid skipping steps in a race to the finish, especially when assuming another team will pick up the pieces.”
Solution: Before efforts begin in earnest, ensure that you have someone assigned to tackle each portion of the project. It’s also important to define workflows so individuals and teams understand when their work requires approval, when their work triggers another team’s process, and so on.
Not having regular check-ins among involved teams
Our teams have seen it all during site builds and launches, and even the best laid plans often need adjusting. You can start losing information and making assumptions if you don’t give participants an obvious place to reach out to the rest of the team with questions, concerns, or roadblocks.
Solution: It’s best to start with a kickoff discussion to make sure everyone understands the type of migration happening and any anticipated issues. Regular check-ins via email, chat, or meetings allow teams to spot where a shift in direction or timing may be needed. Check-ins also foster ongoing accountability and transparent communication.
Ideal check-in pacing depends on site complexity, the number of parties involved, the scale and types of changes being made, and overall project timelines.
Setting overly ambitious deadlines
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your website probably shouldn’t be either. Site rebuilds and migrations are delicate processes with many moving parts – any of which can cause major issues if rushed.
Solution: Discuss feasible timeframes with all teams involved to get their take on what’s possible before building out a timeline. Take some time to outline what an ideal site launch would look like. Then, determine what elements could potentially wait for a post-launch rollout. This discussion builds in some potential wiggle room and can help keep deadlines grounded in reality.
Stalling the project out
SEOs often call out issues they spot during the website migration process. But those problems can look like impassable roadblocks on the way to launch.
As our Enterprise Marketing Director Celeste Hill puts it: “It’s never our intention to slow down a project, but we may if there’s a critical issue. You have to trust the team building the site, as well as the team ensuring your visibility stays intact.”
Solution: Work toward an actionable solution and communicate with team members best suited to fix an issue. Choosing your battles is probably the biggest lesson we’ve learned from years working on site launches. If something can be tuned up after launch without harming site performance, we’ll make a note and keep things moving.
Site Design & Information Architecture Issues
Changing up site navigation or information architecture without consulting all parties
Navigation and overall site structure heavily influence both user experience and SEO. While some changes might make sense from an aesthetic perspective, making updates without looking at performance data can spell trouble. That’s because navigation links are one way search engines understand the most important pages on a website. Removing a page that performs well in organic search from the nav can diminish its performance.
Solution: Consult with your SEO about proposed changes, especially to the navigation. They can provide data on current visibility and traffic to inform the decision. If you’re looking to “de-clutter” your navigation, they can also make recommendations for doing so while minimizing risk.
Changing URLs without discussion
Related to the last point, URL structure often reflects site architecture. Sometimes, old URLs aren’t the prettiest or could be shortened up – but if the page is ranking well and sees a lot of traffic, suddenly changing the URL could mean a loss in SEO performance.
Solution: There are some good reasons for changing URLs. You may want to move pages into different sections of a site, or you might fix an issue with the URL, like a misspelling. You might also be consolidating pages and want to update accordingly.
Whatever the case, make sure to check page performance and weigh the costs vs. potential benefits before switching things up. Ensure all teams know about the change, and make sure a plan for redirection is in place.
Leaning into Javascript solutions without consulting SEOs
Some JS solutions can render parts of your site uncrawlable for bots, including AI bots used to populate LLM answers. That means information and links may be behind a gate those bots can’t pass through. Plus, loading down your site with unnecessary Javascript can tank your site speed.
As our Enterprise SEO Strategist Mona Abdallah says sarcastically: “My favorite part of a site migration is when I learn about major JavaScript changes the same way Googlebot does – when the new site is already live and we’re both staring into the void.”
Solution: To make your site as crawlable as possible, it’s important to check how and when Javascript will render. Technically minded SEOs can often help with this by reviewing the staging site and explaining what elements would be inaccessible to Google, what would be off limits for AI-related bots, and if any specific elements are bogging down load speeds.
Technical Issues
Not crawling and auditing the entire site before, during, and after the move
One of the reasons we advise looping in SEOs early during site migration is the importance of benchmarking. If you don’t crawl your site or check its rankings and traffic, you’re bound to lose out on critical insights about the site’s layout, advantages, and issues. All are essential to mapping out the new site. That data is also vital as a baseline comparison.
Solution: Plan for a full site crawl and review of the current site, the staging site (sometimes multiple times), and the newly published live site. Each check gives everyone a chance to make sure nothing’s lost in translation or overlooked as teams move through the migration process.
Not migrating core components, like page title tags, images, internal links, etc.
Essential SEO elements like page titles, internal links, images and their alt text, and more can be forgotten or accidentally stripped out when changing site platforms or builders. It’s bad enough that a move can damage your SEO if issues are not caught and fixed immediately. But it can add insult to injury to realize you’ve spent time and money optimizing those SEO elements, only for that work to vanish during a migration.
Our Director of Technology, Mark Singleton says: “At this point, we have handled hundreds of site migrations. We have seen campaigns where the simple but crucial meta components were not carried over, and it can have devastating results for a website. This is always front and center in our strategy.”
Solution: Check in with your developers to see if and how these elements can be preserved. You should also find out which components need to be manually updated to keep reaping those SEO benefits.
Not following best practices for redirects
Depending on the size of the site and how many URLs are changing up, mapping out redirects can be a headache. But deciding to redirect every page on the old site to the new homepage isn’t the way to go. Some pages on your site have probably earned backlinks and search visibility, so you don’t want to throw those away. Our team has seen our fair share of new clients coming to us for help with the aftermath of poorly implemented redirects.
Solution: Think of your redirects like a mailing address update submitted to the post office. You want to let folks know that they can still find you (or the information on your page) at your new address (or the new URL).
Understand where each page’s content and each URL should go before you map out 1:1 redirects. Pay special attention to any pages being entirely removed or consolidated, any new folder paths affecting many pages, and any existing redirect chains on the site that you can now resolve.
And make sure you’re following best practices for the redirects. In most scenarios – especially a site migration – a 301 redirect is the right choice.
Post-launch Issues
Launching at the wrong time
Timing a site relaunch is tough to control single-handedly, but launching during peak site use days/hours or when few team members are available for support is risky.
Solution: Advocate for launching at a slower time of day/week/month – and preferably when more team members are ready to help. Often, early in the day and week is best.
Assuming the job is done at launch
Just because the new website is live doesn’t mean all SEO site migration hurdles have all been cleared. In fact, neglecting post-launch checks can mean tripping at the metaphorical finish line.
Solution: Our team checks after migrating a website to ensure all critical SEO elements are properly deployed and that the site is set up for quick, effective indexation. That includes a technical SEO audit and submitting the new sitemaps to Google Search Console, and so on.
Our SEO Site Migration Checklist & Effective Next Steps
Planning out a site migration takes a lot of effort, and every migration is different. But the payoff is worth it. Be sure to check out our SEO Site Migration Checklist to make sure you’re on the right track.
And if you need a helping hand, reach out to Upward Engine today. Our experienced Web Development team can revamp and modernize your site, while our SEOs can help to preserve your site’s organic traffic through any website migration process.
