“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Benjamin Franklin
This age-old advice from Benjamin Franklin is applicable in many situations but is a clear truth when you are upgrading or migrating your website to Drupal 8. The fact is: if you do not plan for SEO in your website transition, you will see a drop in Google rankings and traffic.
Volacci has over ten years of Drupal experience and has created meticulous, process-driven methods for SEO during website migrations or upgrades. We've detailed all of our steps to a successful transition in our new whitepaper: Key Steps to a Successful Drupal 8 SEO Website Migration or Upgrade. Download for free here.
We’ve seen it happen over and over again: prospective clients come to us, after completing a website migration without an SEO plan, desperate to get their rankings and search engine traffic back. They are getting those dreaded 404 errors because URLs have changed and they are missing valuable content from their old site. By failing to plan for SEO during the transition, they have prepared to fail in Google search results!
The best Drupal migration or upgrade starts with a plan. Starting with an SEO transition plan helps you avoid these problems. In fact, if done right, your traffic and rankings will improve.
What Does a Drupal 8 Migration Plan for SEO Look Like?
“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.” Abraham Lincoln
Just as Abraham Lincoln suggests, the first thing to do is evaluate where you are, where you want to be and then determine how to get there. A Drupal SEO transition plan should include the steps below. Following these steps will take you from where you are with your old website to where you want to be with your new one.
- Establish a ranking and traffic baseline on the old site.
- Agree upon goals for the newly migrated website.
- Evaluate your customer and how you target them.
- Analyze the competition. Steal their best ideas.
- Review content: keep, improve, or redirect.
- Implement technical SEO for the new website.
- Evaluate your landing and transaction pages for conversions.
- Communicate with Google and other sites about the change.
- Measure and monitor your new website before, during and after the migration.
Learn more about each of these steps in Volacci’s new whitepaper: Key Steps to a Successful Drupal 8 SEO Website Migration or Upgrade. You’ll see key metrics to evaluate, questions to answer, and other things to consider in a complete Drupal SEO transition plan.
Transition to a New Drupal 8 Website with Confidence
"Once you have commitment, you need the discipline and hard work to get you there." Haile Gebrselassie
The greatest SEO transition plan is useless if you don’t follow through. Once the plan is in place, the hard work begins. Upgrading or migrating your website to Drupal 8 can be time-consuming and costly, but the results may be essential to improving your digital presence and business growth.
You don’t have to do it alone. Volacci offers specialized Drupal SEO services so that you can make the transition with confidence. Contact us to sign up for a free migration evaluation or give us a call at (512) 989-2945 x201.