It’s all too common for websites to experience significant drops in traffic, leads and revenue after a site redesign or migration. The good news is, this can be prevented! If you’re planning on launching a new website or moving to a new CMS, it’s critical that you evaluate and address all potential risks. The SEO team at Titan SEO has implemented hundreds of site migrations and has seen it all. In this presentation, Titan SEO’s President, Danny Shepherd, and Vice President Mike Tretinjak will share website redesign and migration tips you may not have considered. You’ll also learn how to leverage your website migration to increase your organic rankings and traffic. The presentation will give you the confidence and knowledge you’ll need to execute a smooth website transition.

2. We can’t wait to dive in, but first, a little about your speakers!
Who is Titan SEO?
arketingProfs

3. Titan SEO’s® team is comprised of
industry veterans and specialists in
search engine optimization and pay per
click.
– Proprietary spidering technology
– Started in 2004
– 100’s of website migrations
– Experience across multiple
platforms
– DNN Partner starting in 2011
– Every team member certified in
advanced analytics and PPC with
Google
Meet Our Senior Team Members!

4. Recent Awards

5. Our Technology
arketingProfs
Not your typical SEO agency. Let our technology show you why.

6. TitanBOT: Our Secret Sauce!
Key Capabilities
• Algorithm parameter value
estimates
• Regular expression algorithm
creation (on the fly!)
• Anchor text parameter matching
• Meta Robots and canonical link
analysis
• Title and Meta Data analysis
• Multiple threading
• Alt tag and image data
• Data mining and collection
• Human emulation testing
• And much more...

7. Website Migration &
Disaster Planning
arketingProfs
Failing to plan is planning to fail. Here’s how to avoid a disaster.

8. Murphy’s Law:
“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”
Don’t let these things happen to you!
 Losses in organic traffic
 Decreases in on-site user engagement
 Broken links and missing pages
 Missed opportunities to leverage an SEO
boost from a new site launch

9. Don’t Lose Sleep Over Your Site Launch
Proactive planning makes a seamless transition
1. Start with an audit of your current site.
 Use website crawlers to get
a full picture of your site in its
current state
• Xenu
• Screaming Frog
• TitanBOT

10. 1. Site Audit: Crawling Your Current Site
Take Inventory!
 Crawl your current site to get a full list of pages
 Export your site list into an Excel doc
 Sort and organize your pages to make it more
digestible
Why is this important?
Taking stock of your pages will aid in site planning
and redirect mapping down the road.

11. 1. Site Audit: Using Site Command
Site command is a great tool to get an idea of which pages the search
engines are indexing and how they display those pages.
• Go to google.com and type in site:yoururl.com

12. 1. Site Audit: Assessing Organic Entrances
• Head to Google
Analytics
• Behavior
Site Content
All Pages
• Segment by
Organic Traffic
• Sort by
Entrances

14. Comparing Apples to Apples
Carry over your current SEO for a seamless transition
2. Compare the data on your current site to the data on your
new site.
Comparing the data that is on your current site to your
new site will help keep your current SEO intact and your
site users happy.
Things to assess:
• Title tags
• Meta descriptions
• Anchor text links
• Overall content

15. 2. Comparing Data: Title Tags
Compare the title tags on your current and new site and ask yourself the
following questions:
 Do the new title tags match the old tags?
• If not, did the content on the page change?
– If Content changed are the new ones appropriate?
– Will you lose important rankings?
 Are they the appropriate length?
• 512 pixel (50-60 characters)
• Keeping between 50-55 characters ideal
 Are Title Tags compelling enough to click?
 Do they convey a positive message?
 Are they Unique?

16.  Do the meta descriptions describe the page?
 Are they the appropriate length?
• 155 characters is ideal
• Keep between 150-60 characters
 Do they convey a positive message?
 Are they Unique?
 Do they contain some sort of call-to-action?
2. Comparing Data: Meta Descriptions
Compare the meta descriptions on your current and new site and ask yourself the
following questions:

17.  Look at both navigational anchor text links and content anchor text links
• Content links will not be counted if they are secondary to nav links
 Compare important keywords for matching parameter data on top entrance
pages
• Sort list by pages, add in entrance data for those pages
2. Comparing Data: Anchor Text Links
Compare the anchor text links on your current and new site and ask yourself the
following questions:

18. Prioritize Your Pages by Looking at Links
How popular are your pages really?
3. Take a look at your inbound link profile
While popularity isn’t really the key here, we want to
look at inbound links to help assess which pages are linked to
most frequently, which will help us with URL & redirect
mapping.
 Use Moz open site explorer, or Majestic SEO to
evaluate all inbound links
• Make sure all inbound links are going to appropriate
“new” page.
• 301 redirect any pages that have links that will have
new URL paths
• Evaluate anchor text data and see if it still matches the
landing page

19. Consider Your Domain Structure
What domain structure will your new site have?
4. Audit Domains and Sub Domains
Are you using more than one domain?
• Sub domains are viewed as “separate”
• More than one domain that will be migrated to
one site can cause issues
– Make sure you map pages and 301 redirect
them
• If you are breaking out one domain into multiple
domains consider the internal authority that you
will lose

20. Consider Your Hosting Provider
Where will you host your new site?
5. Hosting
 Will the new server be able to handle your traffic?
• Slower load times can cause a loss of rankings
• Frustrated customers may leave before
purchasing
 Will the new server be able to handle redirect
requests, any software you’re running, and your CMS
platform?
 Is it the correct operating system and version?

21. Evoq OnDemand
(from DNN)
Cloud-based Web CMS
 Fully managed by DNN, including software updates
 Service Level Agreement (SLA)
 Resources auto-scale to meet surges in traffic
“With on-premises CMS, we’re responsible for
managing servers, operating systems, database server
software, etc. All of this was offloaded when we
moved to the cloud.”
-- Art Helbig, Manager, Systems Development for
Howard County (Maryland)

22. Vet your New CMS
Does your CMS have the right capabilities?
 Can you create unique Title and Meta data for
each page?
 Are pages unique with a unique URL?
 Can the new site be easily crawled by a search
engine?
 How are redirects conducted with the new CMS?
 Some CMS’s are not search engine friendly
• Do your due-diligence and research online
DNN is SEO-friendly!

23. SEO Capabilities in DNN’s Evoq CMS
10 SEO Considerations for a Web CMS
1. Customizing page titles and metadata
2. Drop-down navigation is built in CSS
3. URL structure
4. Support for the rel=canonical tag
5. XML sitemap creation
6. No frames or i-frames
7. 301 redirects, not 302
8. Pagination
9. Custom Alt tags
10. Breadcrumb navigation
Read more in “10 Ways DNN Can Improve
Your Website SEO”
http://www.dnnsoftware.com/blog/10-
ways-dnn-can-improve-your-website-seo

24. A Note About JavaScript and Ajax
If you’re coding in Angular or Ajax make sure
Google and other search engines can crawl
your site.
• Test with a crawler that can crawl
Angular and Ajax sites like GoogleBOT
would
• These crawlers use
?_escaped_fragment_= to find the
search engine content

25. Prioritize High-Priority Pages
Ensure your most important pages are accounted for
Always move important pages to the new site
if:
• They have high entrances
• They are important to the funnel
• They have high authority and link to other
important pages
• You believe users might miss them
• They represent valuable content

26. Content is Still King!
Have a plan of action for your new site content
 If your plan is to dramatically reduce your content, be
prepared for a big drop in rankings and traffic.
 Move as much content to the new site as you can
 Don’t replace important content with images
 Consolidating content can also cause issues
 Use the new website as an opportunity to create and
refresh relevant, quality content that users will find helpful

27. Keyword Density
Are your important keywords accounted for in your new content?
 Evaluate where important keywords are
used on your site in content
• If your money keyword is represented
100 times on your old site and 10
times on your new site that is a red
flag
 The new site should have similar or better
keyword density for important phrases
 Anchor text links should help with
matching pages, title data, and content

28. 301 Redirects
The ‘Holy Grail’ of site migrations
 Every page that was on the old site and not
on the new site needs to be redirected
• Changes in URL’s also need to be
redirected
 Redirects that are permanent should be 301’s
• Don’t use 302’s
• Avoid meta redirects!
• Check redirects using an HTTPS header
check
301 redirects help pass any existing
authority from current pages to the new
pages. Not using them is like starting all
over from scratch!

29. Which Pages Need to Be Redirected?
 Get a list of all of your old pages from your initial site audit, or from analytics
• Check each page to make sure it has a replacement on the new site
– If there isn’t an exact replacement redirect it!
– Titan SEO’s TitanBOT technology can crawl old sites and compare to
new sites
 Double check your external links to fill in the gaps for any additional redirect
needs
• You can also contact the site with the link and ask them to change the URL
to the new page (if appropriate).
If you are changing your domain name or your file extensions are changing
(ex. moving from an .html site to a .php site), ALL of your URLs will need to be
301 redirected.

30. URL Structure
Will the new URL structure be SEO-friendly?
 URL’s should be short and to the point
 If keywords are represented in a URL and
you rank for that keyword the URL will be
bold in the results
 URL’s should make sense from a user
perspective
 Avoid too many special characters (?%&
etc.)
We mentioned before that URLs should be
static and unique. Make sure that’s the case!

31. Mobile Friendly Sites
In 2016, mobile is more prevalent than ever. Does your new site make the cut?
 Mobile Friendly Sites have an advantage
with SEO
 There are multiple ways to make your site
mobile friendly
 Make sure mobile redirects are setup
correctly if you have a separate mobile site
• Never redirect a desktop page to a
different mobile page
– Search engines have been known
to drop all mobile rankings when
mobile redirects are not setup
properly
Test your site with Google’s Mobile Friendly
Test: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

32. Robots.txt
 Evaluate your old site to see if Robots.txt is present
• Go to yoururl.com/robots.txt
 If Robots.txt is present compare to the new site and make sure it’s still
appropriate

33. No Index, No Follow Tags
Keep your site hidden from the public (and search engines) until launch time
 Use no index, no follow tags on all
development sites
• A duplicate site can be indexed if not
used
• Robots.txt is ideal for blocking indexing
• Meta tags can also be used, but are easy
to forget about
 Make sure to remove those tags when you go
live
• Forgetting to remove the tags will cause
your site to disappear from search
results.

34. Page Load Speed
A slow site can hurt more than just your users
Besides being frustrating for users, a site with slow
load times may also affect your ability to rank high
in the search engines. Here’s how to assess site
speed so you don’t get dinged.
 Test your new sites load speed
 Test internal pages while under load
• Use a crawler to emulate high load
 Evaluate your old site’s load time in
Google analytics

35. Testing 1,2.
How to test conversions and engagement on your new site.
 Make sure forms, checkout, etc. all functions
 You can also use PPC to test engagement,
funnels, and overall site performance with a new
site before it goes live
• Set Robots.txt to block the site
• Put the site on a sub domain
• Direct PPC ads to the new site to test it

36. Structured Data
Help make your site more appealing in the search results
Adding the structured data can help
with rankings and engagement
• Ratings
• Videos
• Product Data
• Event Data
• Etc…

37. Canonical Tags
What are canonical tags and when are the necessary?
 Does your site have duplicate pages
that are necessary for user
experience?
• Make sure canonical tags are
present for search engines
• Canonical tags tell search
engines which page they should
rank
• They prevent your site from
getting penalized for duplicate
content

38. XML Site Maps
How site maps can help the search engines find and index your new pages
If your new pages are not getting
indexed an XML site map can help
• Make sure all pages are
represented
• Load into Google’s Search
Console, and Bing’s
• Update the XML site map with
any new pages that are not in
the index

39. Paginated Content
What to do when you have paginated content on your new site
 If you have pages that use next, or 1,
2, 3, etc. to help users see paginated
content you can indicate this to
Google
 This helps Google understand to rank
the first page in the series
 Use the Rel=“next” and rel=“prev”
tags
 https://support.google.com/webmast
ers/answer/1663744?hl=en

40. Alt Tags for Images
What are alt tags and when are they useful?
 Alt Tags help to describe images
 Make sure they aren’t keyword stuffed
 Alt tags can help with section 508
compliance

41. Heading Tags
H1, H2, H3… What does it all mean?
 Look at the old site and new site
 Are H tags present?
 Do they accurately represent important
keywords
 Are the reinforcing the content on the
page
 Do they match title and anchor data
(pointing to that page)

42. Broken Links
Ensure all links are functioning properly before launch
 Use a crawler like Xenu to look for
broken links
 Ideally all broken links should be
fixed in the source code
 Any broken links that can’t be
fixed should be 301 redirected to
the appropriate page

43. Site Structure
How will your new site be structured?
Is your linking structure or site structure going to change?
• If it changes too much you can lose internal link authority and see a drop in
rankings
We use TitanBOT Nucleus to evaluate the linking structure of a site.
• You can draw out your own map (if your site is small enough) and look to
see if linking structure is dramatically different
A different linking structure isn’t always bad. Sometimes you can improve upon your
old site.

44. 1,2,3 Liftoff!
Ready for launch? Here are things to consider
 Find the right day and time to
migrate
 DNS can take 24-48 hours to fully
propagate
 Problems can happen so make
sure your web dev team is ready
(don’t migrate at midnight on a
Friday)
• But… try to migrate when
customer traffic is low

45. Post-Launch Checklist
Ensure everything is running smoothly after your site launch
Indexed Pages (is the new site getting indexed?)
Google Search Console
• Check every single aspect if possible. Make sure you have a working email
to receive any alerts
Analytics
• Look at Organic traffic
• Notate the exact time and date the new site went live
• Evaluate Goals, and revenue tracking
• Setup automated reports
• Setup alerts for traffic drops or other KPI drops

46. Most Important Tips
Sharpen your skills

47. 5 Key Takeaways From Today
 Check your Redirects (301 redirects are critical)
 Make sure you have title data on all pages
 Have unique meta descriptions on all pages
 Don’t remove important content
 Confirm your new site can be crawled
For the full list of tips email mike@titan-seo.com

48. Thank you!
We’d love to hear from you!
Danny Shepherd
Danny@TitanSEO.com
Mike Tretinjak
Mike@TitanSEO.com
Follow us @TitanSEO

49. For more information on DNN’s Evoq CMS:
http://www.dnnsoftware.com/products/evoq-content