Successful Website Migration: Increased Keyword Rankings

To achieve the desired results, we implemented a comprehensive migration strategy. Our approach involved the following key steps and activities:

Kick-off and lineout

We started the project with a series of introductory calls to understand the brand’s requirements, goals and expectations. The discovery call is one of the crucial parts of the process. It allows us to align our strategy with the customer’s vision and create a collaborative roadmap for migration.

Here are the main questions we asked our client to obtain all the information necessary to build a solid strategy and avoid errors or misunderstandings.

• Why are you migrating?

• What goals do you want to achieve with this migration?

• What does a successful migration mean to you, and what specific key performance indicators (KPIs) will you use to measure that success?

• What type of migration are you considering (e.g. platform, domain)?

• What is your current platform and what is the new one for re-platforming?

• Have there been any notable changes to the website in the past that we should be aware of?

• How many countries and languages ​​are in the current configuration, and how does this compare to the number of countries and languages ​​in the new configuration planned for migration?

• Who will be our main contacts, both inside and outside your team, especially with developers?

• Can we access tools like Google Analytics and Search Console for evaluating and managing historical data?

• Are there any obstacles in crawling the site, such as blocked elements or custom headers?

• Are there any changes planned in the information architecture?

• Are there any changes to the content strategy as part of the migration?

• Are there any legal or compliance considerations that need to be addressed during the migration?

If you want more insights on how to best start your relationship with your customers, check out Moz’s 30 SEO questions to get to know your customers.

Define the scope of work and create a tailored roadmap

Drawing insights from the responses and aligning with the brand requirements, we defined the scope of work (SOW), clarifying all the tasks and resources needed to successfully complete the migration.

When outlining our activities, we prioritized customer requests and identified gaps in further SEO actions. As SEO experts, we have underlined that some activities, even beyond the initial requests, play a fundamental role during transitions such as migrations. Addressing them strategically at this stage ensures efficiency and prevents the need for future changes, saving time and resources.

For example, we recommended optimizing the often overlooked information architecture to reshape data and product organization. At the same time, we have highlighted the importance of improving product names for SEO and using them to create an optimized URL taxonomy that is more descriptive and SEO-friendly, thus maximizing the potential of the existing product suite.

The final SOW was divided into four sections, corresponding to different phases of the migration process.

1. Pre-migration planning: Gathering all the data and information we needed from the YNAP website, agreeing KPIs and metrics to improve and auditing the current website. This was used to inform all our actions and decisions in the subsequent stages of the migration. Creating a detailed list of requirements so that your new Shopify website can be best optimized.

2. Pre-migration preparation: Using all our data from planning, we prepared for the launch of the new website and the migration from the old to the new.

3. Website launch: Hyper-care support throughout website launch day, with critical SEO checks to ensure the website was fully crawlable, indexable and optimized.

4. Post-migration support: a final audit of the new website and a review of all agreed parameters.

For each section we have included all the necessary activities. You can find a more detailed breakdown in the planning phase section below.

Next, we created a customized, collaborative roadmap on Monday.com to effectively visualize, track, and monitor the progress of tasks assigned to each team.