Site Migrations and Planning for Holiday Site Code Freezes [Podcast]

We are already in Q3, which means the holiday shopping season is just around the corner. Are you prepared for the season’s code freezes with site migrations?  

Being a part of the conversation before a migration happens is great… until you get an email saying, “Hey, we’ve made a change, but why is traffic dropping?”. Is migration PTSD setting in?

Senior Technical SEO Specialist, Nik Ranger of Studio Hawk talks with Search Engine Journal Founder Loren Baker on the Search Engine Journal Show about potential issues to look out for in site migrations and why it’s important to prioritize SEO fixes, especially before and after holiday season. No one has time to deal with end of year code freezes.

“If the client’s goal is to do a successful migration, you can forensically find everything from an SEO standpoint with the given tools that you’ve got.” ~ Nik Ranger

[0:00] – Get to know Nik Ranger 

[3:47] – Different forms of site migrations

[6:34] – How the best kind of campaigns happen and the rule of thumb

[7:36] – Why clients get upset when site migrations happen

[8:41] – What’s detrimental to migration

[9:39] – Example of a website migration fail

[13:32] – What people should realize about dev teams

[15:11] – The misinformation site developers say about Google in figuring things out

[16:20] – What you need first and foremost in pre migration

[17:14] – The simplest thing to have in a project

[20:38] – Important questions to ask

[23:55] – Why is it called migration PTSD and how to avoid it

[29:13] – How Nik pushes through to make sure nothing is missed

[30:48] – Key elements to test

[33:20] – List of things to monitor

[34:37] – Checking the https is very important and another crazy story

[37:19] – An observation on migrations

[43:47] – Nik’s hobbies outside SEO and how it still relates to SEO

[52:32] – How to evaluate the success of a website migration

[54.23] – What to look out for

“That’s one of the things I appreciate about SEO, it can be exceptionally technical but you can also be exceptionally creative because none of what we do is successful without being able to communicate it clearly to someone else.” ~ Nik Ranger

Resources mentioned:

SEO Collective – https://seocollective.org/
Ahrefs – https://ahrefs.com/

For more content like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/searchenginejournal

Connect with Nik Ranger:  

Nik Ranger is the Senior Technical SEO Specialist at Studio Hawk, Australia’s largest specialised SEO agency. She is also a member of SEO Collective, a group of SEO professionals who arrange monthly events, help people, and make sure everyone knows what’s going on.

Connect with her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nikrangerseo

Connect with Loren Baker:

Follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lorenbaker

Connect with him on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker