Managing the transition from old website to new

If you’ve decided to redesign and rebuild your website, chances are that one of the reasons you’ve done so is to increase the traffic to your website and ultimately increase the amount of revenue generate from it.

Whilst that is a sound theory, unless the transition between old website to new is managed correctly the chances are that you will actually end up with less traffic than when you started! We’ve put together these 4 simple steps that must be taken when transitioning from one website to another:

1) Set up 301 redirects –The URL structure of the new website will be different to the old website and rather than just moving pages and forgetting about the old URLs, ensure that all pages within the old site 301 redirect to the most relevant page within the new website. This helps on a number of levels. It will redirect users who may have bookmarked a page on your old site to the correct page on the new site and avoid displaying an error code. It will also pass on any ‘link power’ from external links to the new URL which in turn helps to preserve ranking positions.

If you don’t have the resource to set up redirects for all your URLs, identify the most important pages by the amount of traffic they receive and the number of external links they attract. This data can be found in Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools respectively.

2) Update your XML sitemap – Along with 301 redirects, this will help search engines update their indexes quicker, reducing the chances of a search engine user being directed to an obsolete landing page.

3) Make sure any ‘noindex’ tags are removed – If a site is available to be previewed over the internet then it’s possible that the developers might have inserted ‘noindex’ tags on every page to ensure search engines ignore it. On most occasions they will remember to remove them once the new website is actually live but it’s worth double checking.

4) Insert the Google Analytics tracking code – It’s surprising the amount of times this is forgotten. Always ensure the new website has the correct tracking code and that everything is working as was. This may mean that you have to alter previously established Goals to allow for any changes to URLs.

If you are planning to rebuild your website then Distinctly Digital can help ensure that all of the above is managed correctly so that your new website has every chance of succeeding.