Keeping your SEO vendor out of the conversation during your website migration can be detrimental. Migrations aren’t uncommon, especially in the automotive industry, since there are so many platforms out there. Ultimately, each platform has something different to offer, and sometimes your needs change. But whether you are switching platforms because your needs have changed or because a different platform has something new to offer, you need to keep your automotive SEO vendor in the loop. Here are five reasons why.
#1 Avoid Wasted Efforts (AKA Your Money)
When your website is migrated from one platform to another, a lot of optimized elements are lost in the process. For example, meta titles and internal links are often reset or lost during the move. By letting your SEO vendor know that you’re planning a migration and keeping them up to date on its progress, you’re going to save money.
So long as your SEO provider has your best interest in mind, they’re going to map out tasks that don’t cause lost work. Once you alert them that you are planning to migrate, they shouldn’t waste time rewriting meta titles since those would likely be lost during the migration. Instead, they should spend time working on things that could easily be transferred to your new site, such as writing content for your navigational pages (Home, About Us, etc.). By keeping your SEO vendor in the loop, they can make informed decisions on what to work on so that your money is put in places where it won’t be wasted.
#2 Ensure You Don’t Lose Your Content
Speaking of content, during a migration, the platform you’re moving to is going to have limits on how many of your pages they will move over to the new site. Typically, the pages they move are those that are standard to every site, such as inventory pages, your service pages, and so on. They will not move over the pages that your SEO vendor has created.
These optimized pages that your vendor has created are essential to your site’s organic performance. If you don’t give them a heads up when you’re migrating your site, those pages will be lost. Any good vendor has a backup of your content, but if you surprise them with a migration, there will be a period of time in which the content isn’t on your new site and it will take time to get those pages back up and running.
By connecting with your vendor about your pending migration, you are allowing them time to backup fully optimized versions of your pages, to get access to the new site before it launches, and get the pages set up before the new site goes live. This way, there is no lapse and your important blog posts and landing pages are on your new site immediately.
#3 Allow for Quick Corrections
One of the biggest challenges with a migration is ensuring that your pages don’t break. Every website platform uses different URL structures, which means that without proper redirects, you will end up with lots of 404s. Now, in most cases, your new website provider will handle setting these up. However, in most cases, this is not done well.
Not only are there often broken pages post-migration, but the redirects that are set up by many website providers are cookie-cutter and do not look granularly at the site. We see a lot of cases in which a website provider mass redirects almost all of your old URLs to the homepage of the site. This is bad practice, though, as you’ll want your old pages to be redirected to the new versions of those same pages, such as your old Service Center page going to your new one.
If you keep your SEO vendor in the loop during the migration process, they can crawl your old site right before the new site launches, crawl the new site when it does launch, and compare crawls to ensure everything is redirected properly. If things aren’t right, they can map out new redirects for the site provider and work with them to have any issues resolved.
#4 Avoid a Lapse in Services
Plain and simple, if you don’t tell your SEO provider that you’re migrating, you’re going to have a lapse in services. A change in website vendors means a whole new login with different access. If that access isn’t granted to your SEO vendor before the migration happens, they will need to work on getting that access post-migration, which could take some time and prevent them from performing work on your site. This is, again, not to mention the time they would then have to spend republishing your content! Trust me, you don’t want this scramble.
#5 Keep Your Tools Up to Date
Finally, you’ll want to keep your SEO vendor in the loop when you’re planning a migration to ensure timely management of your tools, like Google Search Console and GA4. When your provider knows the date of your migration, they can get on top of the necessary changes, such as submitting your new XML sitemap in Google Search Console and having your GA4 tag added to the new site. Plus, there are important checks that should be done immediately after your migration, such as making sure you’re getting full website events in GA4. If you don’t keep your SEO vendor in the conversation, all of this will be delayed.
Wikimotive Is Here to Help With Your Migration!
If you’re considering migrating your dealership’s website to a new platform, you’ll want to make sure you keep your SEO vendor in the loop so that they can plan accordingly, move important pages to the new site, quickly correct issues, maintain workflow, and keep your tracking tools up to date. If you don’t have an SEO vendor or want to make sure you have one that keeps up with all of the important elements during a migration, contact us at Wikimotive! We’d be happy to help you migrate your website and get you going with a fully customized SEO strategy.