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Types of migration

CMS migration

A CMS migration is the move of a website to a different content management system, for example from WordPress to a headless CMS. Content, templates and often URLs are rebuilt in the new system. In SEO, the question is whether rankings and indexing survive the change.

The new system brings its own templates, URL patterns, meta fields, redirect logic and defaults. Items to compare before and after:

  • URLs and paths
  • titles, meta descriptions, headings and structured data
  • canonical tags, hreflang and XML sitemaps
  • internal links and navigation
  • robots rules and noindex settings

A CMS migration is not the same as a redesign. Per one agency’s description, a migration changes the platform behind the site, while a redesign changes how it looks and is organized. Many projects combine both.

What does Google recommend?

Google has no guide specific to CMS migrations; the recommendations below come from its general site-move guides. If URLs change, Google recommends a mapping from old to new URLs, server-side permanent redirects (301 or 308), and avoiding redirect chains. Googlebot follows up to 10 hops, but Google advises keeping unavoidable chains ideally to no more than 3 hops and fewer than 5. Redirects should stay as long as possible, generally at least one year. Old URLs can be collected from sitemaps, server logs, analytics and the CMS. Google also warns that crawling may temporarily increase after a move, so the server needs headroom.

Common mistakes

Staging settings such as noindex or a Disallow rule go live by accident. Old redirects are left in place and form chains with new ones.

Example

A blog moves from /2024/05/title/ to /blog/title/. Every old URL has an entry in the mapping list and answers with a 301.

Checklist

The items follow Google’s guide for site moves with URL changes.

  • Old URLs are collected from sitemaps, server logs, analytics and the CMS.
  • Every old URL has a closely matching target in the URL mapping, not the home page.
  • Permanent server-side redirects (301 or 308) answer without unnecessary chains, ideally no more than 3 hops.
  • Every new URL has a self-referencing canonical tag, and hreflang points to the new URLs.
  • The robots.txt for launch is prepared, and noindex and blocks from the staging site are removed.
  • The new sitemap is submitted in Search Console.
  • The server can handle the extra crawling from Google.
  • The redirects stay in place for at least one year.
  • Practical experience: titles, meta descriptions, headings and structured data are compared before and after.
  • Google advises changing only one thing at a time, so a CMS migration and a redesign can run one after the other.

Sources

  1. Site moves with URL changes – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
  2. Site moves without URL changes – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com

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