Managing a SEO Website Migration within a Big Organisation
I presented at Searchmetrics Summit discussing my experience of implementing a successful website migration for leading financial services provider: Barclays whilst in my role as Search & Acquisitions Manager.
Turning the website migration into an opportunity, the SEO team managed to achieve significant growth for this major organisation. Barclays saw the following results:
- Commercial traffic increase of 20.7% (despite a -1.53% decrease in demand)
- Conversion increase of 11.3% (despite a -1.53% decrease in demand)
- Help section traffic increase of 47.3%
- HTTP to HTTPS increase of 11.5% (despite only a 1% increase in demand)
In my talk, I try to provide valuable insights from executing complex website migrations within a large organisation, covering:
- The need for a good business case
- Stakeholder management processes
- Risk mitigation
Topics:
- What are the types of site migrations?
- What type of site migration did Barclays did?
- What were the migration project opportunities for Barclays?
- How can I build a compelling migration business case?
- Starting the migration process
- Successful stakeholder management for website migrations
- Keeping website migration documentation under one central system
- Risk management tips for website migrations
- What were the results of the website migration?
- Book a Free Consultation
- FAQs
What are the types of site migrations?
Because website migration is the broad term used to describe any process where a website makes substantial changes that will impact visibility in the search engine, there are many different types that exist. The main types of site migrations include:
-Redesign
-New architecture
-Subdomain / subfolder change
-Protocol change: migrating from HTTP to HTTPS
What type of site migration did Barclays did?
When I worked for Barclays, the migration I oversaw involved a complicated undertaking, by which we aimed to carry out all the migrations listed at the same time. It would require a change of CMS platforms, architecture, design, domain and protocols that would call for streamlined, harmonious working among dozens of teams. Whilst each migration listed is a migration in its own right, the task of combining such endeavours came with a huge amount of risk from a commercial perspective.
As an example of this risk, Appliance Online (AO.com) rebranded in Q3 of 2013. Due to improper use of redirects, they lost all of their SEO equity while migrating to a new domain, which took them over 2 years to recover.
What were the migration project opportunities for Barclays?
Whilst there were undoubtedly risks, I was aware that there were multiple opportunities that could be generated from migrating. The opportunities included:
Taxonomy & Structure:
-Keyword targeting in URLs
-Coherent topic grouping
-Navigation links
-Breadcrumbs
Technical Optimisation:
Content Optimisation
-Fix keyword cannibalisation
-Assess content duplication
-Content rewrites for target keywords
How can I build a compelling migration business case?
In a large organisation like Barclays, that has over 140,000 employees, hundreds of departments and several processes that require sign-off, the need for a compelling business case was imperative.
A business case essentially details the risks and opportunities of a proposal in terms of revenue. It is pitched to internal stakeholders, the ‘decision makers’ which make up the groups that need convincing to ‘buy in’ to the idea of the migration.
Stakeholders need to be convinced that they will be able to achieve their targets through what you are proposing. The primary metrics they are concerned about include:
-Traffic
-Conversions
-Revenue
When writing a business case, it is really important to use language that appeals to their interests. For any presentation, it’s important to write about the size of the opportunity in terms of money. As an example: SEO optimization for website migration, a £X million opportunity.
Starting the migration process
One of the most vital considerations when we started the Barclays migration process was communicating the SEO requirements from the CMS and the wireframes. When starting the process everything that needs to be achieved should be documented and implemented from the CMS and when working with the design team, wireframes needed to be used that reflected the main SEO principles, such as:
-Coherent internal links
-Keywords in the titles
-SEO optimised content
-H1 is the most important page attribute
In the case of Barclays, a big initial decision was choosing whether to do one big release, or multiple small releases. They chose the latter, starting with the pages that had the least commercial value. It meant that the migration lasted 9 months, but a smooth transition was ensured.
Successful stakeholder management for website migrations
As a major project consideration, it’s important to emphasise the participation from the SEO team to take the lead on the project. If not, someone else will, and they may not have an SEO background or be best placed to take over.
Therefore, ensure the SEO team is directly involved in decision making and encourage attendance at ‘stand ups’ or meetings to provide updates and get important SEO points heard.
When it comes to workflows, it is also important to identify exactly who is in charge of what. This is particularly true for major organisations like Barclays, where there can be hundreds of people involved in a migration at any given time.
In addition to this, there is a lot of value to quickly identifying the people who are able to provide the following following uses:
1. The person who has the power to make an immediate fix when things go wrong
2. The person who is able to escalate to the higher powers within an organisation
Keeping website migration documentation under one central system
A key part of the process is keeping all documentation under one central system which I like to refer to as the ‘one source of truth’. Barclays used the software program Confluence as the repository for all the elements that were vital for the migration, such as:
-Date releases
-Version control (to prevent overriding of documents)
Everyone involved in the migration should have access to this system for ease of information
Risk management tips for website migrations
Training sessions:
When working in a large organisation, it is a good idea to get together all the stakeholders and teams involved to have a training session about SEO. This does not have to be lengthy, but it should define the main technical SEO concepts – briefly explaining what they are, why they are important and what happens if they go wrong. Including:
-Keywords
-Metadata
-Redirects
-Site maps
-Canonicals
-Crawling and indexing
Planning ahead:
It is particularly important for bigger organisations and Barclays to use Legal & Compliance. It is their job to check for risks and sign off on elements that without the right wording or terminology could cause the organisation to receive lawsuits. Plan ahead to get the relevant parts of the migration approved because Legal & Compliance could have slower turnaround times than your given deadlines.
Fixes for failures:
Automated testing can be used when you need to employ extensive testing. Failures can happen at both the staging and live phases in the migration and it is important to define a correction window that leaves enough time for amendments if things go wrong. When working on the Barclays migration they had a correction window of 48 hours, but on reflection I recommend this should be longer than that period.
After the migration, a mop-up project should be implemented to take care of elements of the migration that were not initially successful or given the appropriate attention first time round.
Timing is crucial:
When it comes to website migrations, timings play an important part. Barclays chose to launch at night when their traffic was lower, and as a result they needed to project plan their resources accordingly in terms of staff availability.
Each release date should be carefully monitored by adding notes to your web analytics platform to do a benchmark for progress tracking. If there are any delays or date changes, ensure to log these in the central system.
What were the results of the website migration?
In the case of Barclays, 9 months of hard work paid off. The SEO team were able to organise meetings with stakeholders to reveal the results of the migration. Again, I recommend presenting the successes in a language that appeals to the relevant departments, showcasing the most important points in the first few slides of your presentation.
- Commercial traffic increase of 20.7% (despite a -1.53% decrease in demand)
- Conversion increase of 11.3% (despite a -1.53% decrease in demand)
- Help section traffic increase of 47.3%
- HTTP to HTTPS increase of 11.5% (despite only a 1% increase in demand)
- Achieved top positions for target keywords ‘bank accounts’ and ‘overdrafts’
A further success following the migration was that SEO became embedded in Barclays and more teams were willing to work with the SEO team on digital marketing projects within the organisation.
FAQs:
What is a website migration?
Website migrations describe the process whereby a website undergoes significant change, migrating from one environment to another. From an SEO perspective, these processes can have a considerable effect on search engine visibility, and typically involve changes that relate to site domain, platform and structure and redesign. There are different types of website migrations, that each come with their own risks, challenges and opportunities.
What are the benefits of website migrations in SEO?
Migrating your website can bring several benefits, giving your web presence room for growth it can increase user experience and boost organic traffic and conversions.
Website migrations provide the opportunity for both content and technical optimisation, removing issues with indexation, keyword cannibalisation and content duplication.
– Improve user experience and enable searchers to access what they need quickly and easily use cloud computing to scale and author content more quickly.
– Improve your site’s mobile performance
– Allows you to consolidate multiple websites into one
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