Have you recently migrated from one eCommerce platform to another? But, the new platform SEO may be quite different from the previous one. There are several issues in between that may be left dangling in the air. You need to address them as soon as possible! It saves you from the depreciation of search engine rankings and domain reputation. We are covering a complete SEO guide for eCommerce store migration in this article.
Why do businesses need to migrate the platforms?
Generally, businesses migrate their eCommerce store due to these reasons:
- The platform has few payment gateways options.
- The present Store can’t accommodate the vast number of customers.
- There is a problem with the theme that is not customizable as per the latest trends.
- It doesn’t satisfy the recent SEO changes like providing responsive sites, mobile-friendly platforms, and others.
- The absence of proper customer support.
SEO Tips before shifting the platform
Store Migration is not easy as it seems to be. The reason behind this is one platform has one SEO issue while the other has different. This packing, shifting, and adjusting to a new place is no doubt a big headache. For this, you can properly look at the SEO issues of the new platform beforehand. Additionally, the SEO team must prepare themselves to fix any of these issues so that it doesn’t take long.
Furthermore, data is like the foundation of the whole content management system. Without securing your previous data, it is not possible to generate content from scratch. Moreover, ecommerce store information has the following parts:
- Client important information like previous purchases, their behavior, cart left out items, AI predictive data, and the like.
- Data related to store products like brand, best area-wise product choice, description, customer reviews, etc.
- Website essential parts like categories, about us, the home page, landing pages, website design elements like images, videos, and all others.
This data needs to be converted into a CSV file to be accessible any time later.
Do you know that every platform takes a different time to launch your Store in full mode? It may take 2-3 days to display your domain name and other desired features. So, before switching off your previous platform, wait till the new Store is entirely ready. In this way, you won’t lose potential customers.
SEO Checklist for Store migration
The checklist is quite essential for making a proper SEO migration strategy. Without a plan, it’s challenging to determine where to start and where to end. It is like putting in the effort but without direction. So, here are some necessary actions for complex eCommerce store migration:
URL Redirects
While doing store migration, if URLs are also changing, then it becomes the SEO foremost issue. First of all, make a list of all URLs present on your website. Ask your developing team to check out which URLs hold importance in the future and which ones do not. It will help in categorizing your URLs according to mentioning the type of redirects required.
In platforms like Shopify, you can’t keep your previous URLs. Shopify follows its standard URLs as www.example.com/category/subcatory. It assigns automatic URLs by putting category and then subcategory of the product along with domain name.
Now, the point is how to send clients to the current URL. The simple solution! Use redirect 301, 302 code on previous domain web pages. In this way, potential clients can find their desired items easily. Also, specify indexing of these pages in the HTML code. Moreover, with these redirects traffic from backlinks will also land on required web pages.
Another case could be, some URLs are no longer valid. Then, use the 404 error code. But, this error code can’t be present forever. So, submit these URLs to Google for de-indexing. And they won’t be present after a month. You can access SEO experts for making appropriate URL redirects and optimizing your store.
Shifting Site Architecture
Site Architecture takes several days to develop as per customer and search engine requirements. So, preserving the data of site architecture is crucial. Download
- Breadcrumbs
- Site hierarchy
- Categories in the menu
This complete list will help in establishing your website with ease.
Content Optimization
Check if you have used main keywords in your web pages. And you have covered the keywords according to the competitor’s gap analysis.
Further, it is better to use 2-3 keywords on a single page. Otherwise, you can use their synonyms as well to cover all the significant points in the topic.
Next, see if there are proper title tags, heading tags, meta descriptions, and image alt text to improve your rankings.
Look for any duplicate content pages and assign them canonical tags in the coding of the website. Optimizing content is of the utmost importance for search engines and users to relate to your products and services.
Auditing and fixing store post-launch SEO issues
Recognizing and fixing SEO issues is a must for the Store to run as per Google guidelines and giving the best user experience. Use spider tools like Ahref, Moz, Google console, or others to check SEO issues.
- Can google bot and other search engines bots crawl your website? If not, then do the required changes in the robot.txt file.
- Fix any wrong redirects and redirects due to coding errors. Check out and remove any deadlinks and add missing pages—mention “nofollow” or “no index” tags to unnecessary links in the Store.
- Monitor your overall site rankings and performance.
- See if HTTPS security is there on all web pages.
Other important post-launch points:
- You need to Verify all the status codes like 301, 200, 404 whether they are at their proper places. Double cross-check them. So, it doesn’t harass your clients.
- Run the site-speed test. And if it doesn’t load correctly within four seconds. Then compress your images and remove extra ones.
- Submit for XML sitemap at Google search console for your web pages to get indexed.
- Check for any servers or DNS errors that are not supporting some of the new web pages.
Conclusion
Migrating eCommerce store is quite a tedious process but worth it. In brief, the SEO checklist on the new platform include:
First, check out whether website links are at the correct places or not and fixing their redirects.
Second, have you updated your website’s social media links to get solid social signals?
Further, Are you providing the best user experience?
Next, does your website support a mobile website?
Last but not least, have you rechecked your website for technical SEO?
These are few steps that can help you reinforce your new website rankings to higher levels.
