Secrets to Success in Website Migration Processes

Technical blueprint for zero-traffic-loss migrations covering 301 mapping, staging audits, and post-launch monitoring.

Speakers: Samet Özsüleyman, Can Mutioğlu

29 Oct 2024

Video Transcript

⏱ 33 min read• 5,935 words

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— Hi everyone. Welcome to Zeo Talks. Today, Can and I are discussing migrations. Managing migrations is crucial for SEO. This applies to site merges or site moves. So, our topic today is migration. I wanted to chat with Can about it. He manages the most migration projects at Zeo. His insights will be incredibly valuable.

— Thanks.

— Can, should we dive right into our topic? What do you think?

— Let's do it.

— It’ll open up as we go. Let's keep it moving.

— Exactly. Let's do that.

— Right. My first note is about the basics. What is a migration? Why do we do it? Let's give our viewers some context. Migration covers site moves, merges, or any URL değişikliği. We'll definitely cover the technical side of this. We do this for many reasons. Maybe merging sites. Moving sites from different domains to one. Or splitting into different languages. There are many scenarios here. The URL yapısı often changes. If your old URLs perform well, you must map them correctly. If you mess up the migration, you will lose your traffic.

These are critical. I don't know who still does it, but HTTP to HTTPS moves were huge. We also handle migrations when moving from separate mobile sites to responsive designs. We help brands get through this with minimal damage. Over to you.

— You summarized that perfectly. These processes scare site owners. It affects SEO performance and overall site health. Think e-commerce integrations, B2B form tracking, analytics, and GTM codes. Everything must move to the new structure. Think of it like moving houses. It’s a site migration. There are many factors involved. Some migrations involve only design changes. Others change both the design and the URL structure. Sometimes the CMS changes too. Or the CMS changes while the design stays the same. You must always check the URL structure. There are many types of migrations. Design-led migrations are the most common.

Sites age and need new tech. They move to a new CMS or change infrastructure. In e-commerce, we see infrastructure and CMS changes all the time. From an SEO perspective, we fix the category structure if it’s broken. You have an existing balance to maintain. You need to set up the new structure correctly. Should you migrate or not? I think you have a point on that. Let’s shift to that. We can discuss it further. How should a site handle a migration? Why or when should they migrate? In my experience, that’s usually a brand decision.

Usually, the old structure isn't working anymore. They can't handle technical tasks. The design feels dated. They want a lighter design. It helps with Core Web Vitals metrics. Major CMS changes often force a new URL yapısı. Moving to a new CMS is a huge deal. The decision-making process is the most critical part. I think you’ll agree. Migration needs to be integrated with SEO from day one. Brands often come to us after the design phase. We also manage migrations for our own clients.

Brands usually think about SEO only after the design is finished. You should really manage SEO alongside the design process if possible. New widgets or components affect SEO. You need to plan heading structures in the CMS. If the CMS lacks a text editor, you must build one. These technical details are vital for future SEO.

— To clarify, let me ask you this. Say I’m at a brand and we only updated the front-end. Should we treat this as a full migration? What do you suggest to brands? Does a front-end update always require a migration? What are your thoughts on when a migration is actually necessary? How do you handle redirects?

— Any migration needs SEO involvement. Even a simple redesign counts. You might think nothing is changing. But you still need to check.

— At the very least, verify it.

— Exactly. A redesign changes site performance. Your JavaScript and CSS structures will shift. Your URL structure might stay the same. Your internal links might look identical. But the load process changes. The number of requests and JavaScript sizes will fluctuate. You need page speed optimization. The new site might be slower than the old one. People often pick themes based on demo speeds. They look fast. But that approach is flawed. We see this a lot with CMS platforms. The demo lacks your GTM tags. It doesn't have your add-ons. It misses your third party scripts. It ignores tools like Insider.

Test these with SEO in mind. Even for simple design changes. Check if your heading structures work. Are they the same as the old site? Did any content get lost during the move? Check mobile responsiveness. Are there any MFI issues? Even a simple design change is a heavy process.

— Absolutely.

— That’s why you need support.

— I agree. It’s crucial. You touched on when to start migration. It depends on the brand. Are they ready internally? They should hire an SEO expert or agency when they are. Is your team ready? We’ll build a roadmap and a redirect list. These are incredibly valuable. We’ll cover that shortly. Like I said, timing is everything. You need to feel ready. There is a lot happening in the background. My humble advice? Start the process. But ask yourself, are you actually ready for a migration?

Do your dev teams have the bandwidth? Is your marketing team ready? Can you handle the workload after the migration? There are so many moving parts here. It’s a lot to manage. Also, when should you do it? Can, this is a great point to bring up. I think even Google folks have mentioned this. Let’s talk about when NOT to migrate. My take? Don't do it during peak traffic. If you have a small site, maybe try the weekend. Sunday night works well. Avoid those high-traffic days. Every site has its own unique traffic trends.

That’s the best way to answer when not to do it.

— You’re right. We usually push migrations late at night. Or early on weekend mornings. We target times with the lowest traffic. We want to avoid impacting real users. E-commerce sales drop during high-traffic hours. Timing is everything. Knowing when not to migrate is critical. Brands think SEO makes migration seamless. They expect zero traffic loss. That’s a common misconception. That’s the goal, though. We aim for perfection. We control every variable. Migration covers everything from content to technical SEO. We even audit external links and no-follow tags.

It’s basically a full site audit. Don't migrate during your peak season. If summer is your high season, avoid it. It’s way too risky. E-commerce sites often hit integration issues. Live launches can go sideways. Maybe Google dislikes your new design. It might offer less value than the old one. Design-wise, it could be a step back. Or the site might run slower. API calls might lag under heavy load. We track this, but I have a rule. If a site performs well, plan the migration carefully.

You need a longer runway to protect that performance. We’ve both seen this happen. Brands set a hard deadline and rush the migration. That’s usually a mistake. That’s the right approach. Deadlines are necessary. But here is what I tell every brand. Your site is already live and working. You can push some tasks to phase two. But you must finish the critical tasks. Don't skip essentials just because of a deadline. You end up with a broken site. The current performance is fine. Maybe the CMS is changing. But if the new site has unresolved technical issues, don't go live.

You’re just trading a working site for a broken one. If you hadn't migrated, the site would still work. Why break what isn't broken? That’s the mindset you need. Deadlines matter, sure. But they always slip during a migration. Too many teams are involved. It’s not just SEO and dev. Everyone is working at once. Something always hits a snag. But you must wait until every team says they are ready. That is critical. When you do that, migration traffic loss becomes negligible. In fact, the site often surges after a proper migration. We’ve seen it happen. One of our brands hit a massive growth trend after a long migration process.

— Exactly. Big brands often change their CMS. They might migrate the German site first. Then they try to hit a deadline for the Turkey site. It often drags on. I totally agree with you. Let’s move to the action plan. We’ve decided on the migration. We covered the "why." Now, what should we watch out for before the migration? Let’s dive into that. Like I said, migrations vary. You have site mergers or site moves. There are many types. I’ve decided to migrate. What should I look out for first? Let’s talk about that.

First, always take a backup. Back up your site. Keep it safe. These are valuable. Don't lose your data. Always do this. I’ll toss the ball to you on pre-migration steps.

— Your first point is spot on. A live site backup is crucial. You might hit a technical snag during the switch. You may need to roll back. Most teams do this now. We used to have issues with this. We had backup issues before. But developers and agencies are experienced now. I haven't seen this problem in a long time. We rarely roll back to backups. It’s rare, but you might need historical data. You need to know how your old site worked. That’s why backups are key. Once you decide on a migration, what are the next steps? I touched on this. You need SEO support right after deciding to migrate.

This could be ongoing SEO or just migration support. Get whatever fits your current needs. The first step is defining the design or building a custom one. Design it with SEO in mind. Use modern libraries for JavaScript. Use new CSS structures. Handle text compression while writing the code. If you wait until testing. The dev team will struggle to go back and fix it. They have too many other tasks. Also, optimize your DOM size. I think you’d agree with me here. It’s the most overlooked part of development. DOM size and depth get very little attention.

Teams rush to finish the project. They think fast loading and a clean front-end are enough. But optimizing DOM size later is nearly impossible on a live site. You’d have to rewrite the entire codebase. That’s basically another migration. Every step from design to front-end implementation needs care. Next, you need a test site. You need a test domain. Run a local test. Set up a test site wherever you prefer. Before going live, we need to migrate all our content. You can automate this via API or do it manually.

Content migration is key. It’s just as important as the front-end SEO. Don’t lose any content. Map your structures correctly. This is an SEO-heavy task. During migration, we map the old site’s crawl and tree. We decide what to keep and what to drop. I see migration as a fresh start. Samet, do you agree? I see it as a deep clean.

— Absolutely. Migration lets you fix old issues. Take internal links. If you didn't 301 them properly, you might have messy redirect chains. You must watch your URL yapısına during the move. Fixing internal links before migration saves you a massive headache later. I assume you'll cover URL yapısı here too. It's crucial to address it early.

— By cleaning up, I mean something specific. Take old content or categories with past traffic. If it's outdated and gets no traffic, it's useless. It’s just dead weight. It hurts crawl budget and server load. We waste resources keeping those pages alive. Cleaning this up is vital for migration. URL structure matters here too. This is usually a brand decision paired with SEO. Maybe we change the category tree or the URL yapısı. Maybe the old URL yapısı was terrible. We want a clear hierarchy. Categories should sit under the root domain. Final URLs belong under categories. A clear site structure is a must.

Google needs to follow your page structure. It needs to find your category trees. Users are used to this now. They navigate back to parent categories constantly. E-commerce sites have trained users to expect this. If that structure is missing, we push to build it. As SEOs, we define the site structure. The brand might not see an issue with the URL yapısı. We see the problems they miss. This is how the category structure should look. This is how the URL should look. But here is the catch. We must remember we are redirecting these pages. This isn't just a custom redirect. The page URL is changing.

If this page gets 1 million clicks a month, it will get redirected. The URL flow for this page will shift. We will try to pass all its authority to the new page. It might not be a 100% transfer. You might see some traffic loss here. Two main concerns worry us during migrations. First, changing the URL yapısı. Second, fully optimizing site speed. Samet, I think you agree with me here. When these two go smoothly, the whole migration usually goes well. I'm not talking about test sites. I'm talking about SEO right now. These are the versions that go smoothly. I think we need to be much more careful with URL redirects and URL değişiklikleri.

— Absolutely. I can add something else regarding the URL yapısı. We SEOs always adapt to the URL yapısı. For example, I mentioned Germany. If your parent company websites in Germany have already migrated to a specific URL path. We adapt to it as SEOs. It also happens that clients ask us to suggest a new URL yapısı. We can adapt to the URL yapısı in both of these ways. My general advice to everyone would be this. Take parameters, for example. I’m talking about non-indexed and non-crawl parameters. Let’s say we use new parameters in the new structure. Maybe to scale our ads.

This is just an example. We’ll block them for SEO anyway. Especially pages with no search volume. People often say. "But site X doesn't do it this way." There are too many variables. First, I’m giving you the most optimal SEO solution. Second, those brands might be mid-migration. They might have managed it poorly. Or it’s just sitting in their backlog. You need to compare things correctly. You have to trust the SEO process. We want your site to succeed even more than you do. These edge cases happen all the time.

We’ve dealt with tons of filtered URL'ler and parameters before. You know how it is. We just need to stay sharp on those. I wanted to mention that while it’s on my mind.

— Yeah, that reminds me of something. Since you brought up URL structure and parameters. Think about a migration where the entire URL yapısı changes. You’ll have redirects everywhere. Site owners often miss one critical thing here. We build test sites with the new structure. We face internal link issues during migration. If we move content with old internal links, they all trigger 301s. This happens once we go live. You must map this flow for the new site during migration. Remember that brand we worked with? We warned them, but the team forgot. We had to go back and change every single URL.

They couldn't automate the changes. That’s why it was necessary. If the URL yapısı changes, I treat it differently. I tell brands this. It’s your new site, but it’s a totally different site. Don't compare it to the old one. Don't think like the old site. Everything is new. The product page URL is different now. Treat it like a brand new entity. That’s how it should be done. If we just bring over old stuff, why migrate? I don't mean the content. I mean the structure. Having 300 URLs hitting 301s on a new site is bad. It shouldn't happen. The site must be flawless before going live. That’s my take.

— Exactly. Totally agree. Plus, you mentioned URL age. We’ve served that product on the same URL for five years. Now it’s a brand new URL. Google and other bots need time to trust it. Building that history takes time. As you mentioned, backlink signals and requests reset. Everything starts from scratch. Our job is to minimize risk. We need to handle this fast.

— Let me jump in, Samet. URL değişikliği isn't always site-wide. You can change them category by category. Maybe your product URL yapısına is fine. But your blog URL yapısı might be tied to the root. You can change the structure there. Add some paths. URL değişikliği doesn't mean changing the whole site. Sometimes specific paths have typos. Maybe you used Turkish characters by mistake. But those pages have built authority. You can still change them. I wanted to clarify that point.

— Exactly. I totally agree. So, the brand decides on a migration. We discussed the pre-migration steps. We had the meetings. The reports are ready. We prepped the rule sets. We simulated and checked the redirect lists. Like you said, nofollow tags and content are set. We're ready. We decide with the brand at 9:30 AM. We say. "We're going live at 10:00 AM." Let's talk about what to watch for during the actual migration. When we launch a migration, we use GTM. Tracking codes and third party scripts must fire immediately. Those scripts need to be fully operational right away.

We cannot afford any data loss. I think we should dive deeper into these topics.

— Yeah. That migration moment keeps me up at night. It’s incredibly stressful. I’ve done it countless times, but it’s always nerve-wracking. Even though we’re the ones who should be the least stressed. Google bot starts crawling the moment we go live. We’re the ones who can actually make changes. It’s not just an instant reflection. I’ve noticed something in my recent migrations. Teams often work too independently. Our last migration wasn't like that. Everyone was synced up. That’s crucial. I don't mean physically. I mean everyone staying in touch online for instant checks.

Migration time depends on site size. Some go live in ten minutes. Servers move, CMS updates, and that’s it. Others take an hour. If your site is massive, the CMS migration takes much longer. I think a phased migration is much healthier. Don't migrate the whole site at once. Migrate specific structures in stages. There are key points we must check during this transition. First, check your redirects. Since we work on a test site, check HTTP to HTTPS. Check trailing slashes. Check www vs non-www. If the test site is a subdomain, we can't verify these.

You must check these during the migration. I'm not listing these in order of priority. Just keep them on your checklist. You should handle this on the test site anyway. Second, check robots.txt. Did the original robots.txt carry over? Is the test site version working correctly? Also, is your search console code active? Is your analytics code firing? Is it tracking data? Any issues there? Search console data used to lag. It took three days to show up. Now we see the last 24 hours. We get faster feedback now.

Use URL inspect to ping the page. Does Google see the page correctly? Is the structure right? Any issues? This ties back to my previous point. It's crucial. We skipped one. SSR is a huge issue on test sites. Server-side rendering matters. Is your content actually in the HTML? Modern stacks push this to JavaScript. True. It’s faster. JavaScript frameworks are faster. But Google insists on HTML. We discussed this recently. AI bots have poor JavaScript support. They crawl from HTML. AI bots need your HTML content. Google bot needs it too. JavaScript-rendered content is at a disadvantage. Your site might be a single page application.

It might be full JavaScript. But serving content via HTML boosts performance. I had to add that note. I didn't want to skip it.

— Good call. You touched on it earlier. Run a live test with Google bot. Check the rendered view. We simulate this in other tests. But check the live site too. How’s the screenshot? Check for failed resources. Sometimes Google bot gets overloaded and skips them. Like robots.txt issues. Do we have indexing or crawl issues in the live test? We check these, but are the structured data correct? Are there errors or warnings? You need to check these. The most overlooked thing is this. I'll tie it back to structured data. When testing with Rich Results tools, it flags errors.

But it doesn't catch everything. Take e-commerce. There is a name field in the product schema. If someone puts "name" in the name field, the tool won't flag it. It sees data there, so it thinks it's fine. That's why we SEOs need to do manual checks. Also, we started the migration. We went live today. You should add a note on both sides. I did my migration today. I went live at this time. If the situation is specific, or you report to Europe, add the time zone. Search console uses California time.

But Google Analytics uses the property's local time. Watch out for reporting discrepancies. Also, consider this. We are migrating to the new site now. Keep the old sitemaps and add the new ones too. Google will see the redirects. It will discover the new URL'ler faster. Mixing them in search console is a smart move.

— Agreed on sitemaps. If you need fast indexing, keep your old sitemaps active. Ensure they return a 200 status code. Google bot is used to visiting those specific URLs. It will keep coming back to crawl. It follows the normal flow. Google bot increases crawl rate during migrations. It wants to cache resources and map your new URL yapısı. First priority is your redirect list. If you have rows of redirects, check them. Assuming your URL yapısı changed, verify everything. Do your redirects actually work?

Check your status codes. Are you using 301, 307, or 308? We usually stick to 301. Test them live. Once you confirm 301s, wait for the new pages to index. Authority and page age transfer rely entirely on redirects. Moving content is important. But without redirects, Google bot treats everything as a brand new page. Broken redirects will kill your rankings. Also, check your canonical tags. They often point to the test site by mistake. Don't let that happen. The structure doesn't fix itself at launch. These tags stay inside the HTML. No rules are written for them automatically. The old test site canonicals remain. You must check these cases. We'll see them all when we crawl the new site.

When we crawl the site, we check for issues. Are there problems with canonicals? Titles? Descriptions? These are quick win tasks. You should check them manually. But these are the things to check quickly. That summarizes the process.

— Exactly, Can. We're nearing the end. We're live now based on our case. Some time has passed. Let's talk about post-migration best practices. We planned and developed all these steps during the migration. We finished the migration successfully. Let's talk about what comes next. I'll try to share my screen. It helps keep the conversation focused. Here is my first point. If you're changing domains, use the Change of Address tool in Google Search Console. This applies to your new URL and international URLs too. If you moved, using the Change of Address tool is vital.

You must verify the property for the new URL first. That’s a mandatory step. You don't need this tool for a simple URL değişikliği. But use it if you’ve moved to a new domain. That just occurred to me. Let me try to show you something else. One second. Let me share Screaming Frog. Can, is it showing up?

— Yes, it is.

— Great. Here is what you can do. We’re diving into technical stuff, but this should help visualize things. Run a crawl of your site before the migration. Back it up in Screaming Frog. Keep a previous crawl as a baseline. Then, run another one after going live. Screaming Frog handles this perfectly. Use compare mode to run both crawls and spot the differences. You can even use the compare tab to filter results. Tell it to show high similarity changes or hide specific details. Testing this is super helpful. Also, once you exit this mode, this section will become active.

Use list or spider mode. Enable always follow redirects. You will get a crawl result that tracks all 301s. Ensure these settings are on in Screaming Frog. It prevents missing technical issues. Especially during post-migration tasks.

— These are valuable insights. Screaming Frog is our go-to for migrations. It crawls fast and pulls all data. Marketing needs this data too. We keep our own backups this way. We store titles, descriptions, canonicals, and content. We keep every SEO-critical field. If possible, increase your server bandwidth during the migration. Google bot knows you migrated. It starts sending more requests. You can see this clearly in Search Console Crawl Stats. It starts crawling every resource again. It re-evaluates every URL structure. It needs to cache and index pages quickly. It must update index status if URL'ler change. Increase your bandwidth to handle the server load.

Low bandwidth spikes your server response times. This directly hits your crawl requests. Slower response times mean fewer crawl requests. I’ve mentioned server optimization for crawlers before. Faster response times help everything, not just migrations. It’s a win across the board.

— Exactly. Let’s circle back to robots.txt. Sometimes new parameters pop up that we missed in testing. Filtered URL'ler create so many combinations. Don't just assume you blocked them during testing. You need to check those parameters later. As webmasters, we are responsible for the site in Google's eyes. We must optimize all of them. We see this all the time. We simulate Google bot, but we aren't Google bot. We can't analyze or crawl pages exactly like them. Check your Search Console index coverage reports. Look at your logs for a day or two. You might find new parameters or a different URL yapısı.

Are they showing up in your logs? A few requests are fine. If it crosses a certain threshold, you have a problem. Checking even two days of logs is huge for optimizing your crawl budget. You'll see these pages once Google indexes them. Google Search Console even flags them with yellow warnings. You might see errors like "Indexed. Though blocked by robots.txt." Catching these early is vital for site health. It's crucial for the final migration phase.

— I totally agree. Your robots.txt must be configured correctly. You might accidentally open a parameter that was blocked for years. It will get indexed. Removing it from the index is a huge pain.

— You think you'll just open it, but then the requests flood in. You might need to de-index 100,000 URL'ler. The volume of requests will be massive.

— Unfortunately, that increases server load. It also spikes your workload. Managing the client and the dev team becomes a nightmare. It's a tough part of the migration process. We check site speed right after migration. You rarely get the same speed as the test site. Every pro knows this. Speed will drop. Your server is under heavy load during the switch. Testing immediately won't give you accurate results. Expect lower scores initially. Your server is working overtime. Response times will be longer. Don't forget that. GTM tags might have worked on the test site, but now they're live.

Your site speed scores might drop due to the sudden load. Don't expect Core Web Vitals reports to improve immediately. Google bot needs to crawl the entire site first. It also needs to collect enough user data. Users must visit your site first. Then Core Web Vitals scores are calculated. It takes time to get that data. Development never really ends on our sites. You need to spread these improvements out over time.

— Exactly, Can. I have nothing else to add. We covered it all. Let's move to our final topic. Performance tracking after migration is crucial for SEO. We finished the migration, but what actually happened? KPIs vary here. As you mentioned, you might work with an SEO agency for a while. Brands often ask for help during a 2 or 3-month migration window. They want support to ensure everything goes smoothly. What should we track after the migration? What are the key steps? Like I said before, keep notes. You really need to monitor average positions.

You mentioned not to expect instant Core Web Vitals fixes. But check your Time to First Byte. Even minor backend changes affect server load. Any code update impacts server performance. Keep a close eye on that metric. Don't check traffic on day two. It’s not accurate. Maybe schools opened and you sell backpacks. You might get a huge traffic spike. The timeline depends entirely on your brand. Track SEO metrics like organic keywords, top 3 keywords, and organic traffic. Also, review your technical changes. We just performed a redirect.

Check your server status codes. What’s your 301 rate? How many pages return 304? Did your 200 status page count change? Use pie charts to visualize this technical data.

— I agree. That’s why we say don't migrate during peak season. It makes measuring performance incredibly difficult. Say you sell ski gear. If you migrate mid-winter, you’ll see traffic shifts. It’s impossible to tell if it’s the migration or the season. Analyzing that impact becomes a nightmare for SEO. Your structure might be perfect. Sales and payments work fine. But your traffic dropped. For example, your ski gear page traffic is down. Did the drop come from the migration? Is the rank loss due to the migration? Or is it just a trend? Did the SERP change? It’s hard to tell. We need to compare specific periods. Let’s say we migrate on January 30th.

We migrate at 1 AM on January 30th. After that, we compare it to the same season last year. We look at the previous period. We check average traffic. Note that average position isn't for the whole site. You must analyze it keyword by keyword. Category by category. An overall rise doesn't mean everything is up. An overall drop doesn't mean everything is down. If your URL yapısı changed, your average position will likely drop. You are indexing new pages. That is totally normal. My last client didn't have a blog. We integrated a new blog structure. New content arrived. We can't expect instant top rankings. So, the average position trends downward.

Tracking and measuring this is vital. Is the blog really causing this position drop? You need regular checks. Not just the next day, of course. Samet, we talked about this in a meeting. You explained how long it takes for Google to settle after a migration. Was it a year? If I remember correctly.

— They said keep the URL'ler for a year. The idea is to update them in your database. It depends on site size, of course. If you have 2 million URL'ler, it might take longer. But that was the general advice.

— Exactly. You'll see it yourself. I check crawl stats after a migration. Google still hits the old URL'ler. It periodically checks to confirm the 301 redirects are still there.

— It even hits 301s. It’s rare, but it happens. Google doesn't want to miss anything. It thinks there might be valuable content there. It doesn't crawl them constantly. Don't worry if you see it. It might even check something from three years ago. You’ve seen this in SEO tools, right? Set Ahrefs to five years. You’ll see old URL'ler. If Ahrefs has them, Google definitely has them in its data.

— Google thinks just like us. We double-check our top pages to ensure a smooth transition. Google does the same thing. It remembers that page was a high-traffic authority page. It wants to check if anything changed. That’s a totally normal process. It’s actually a good sign during a migration. It shows those pages were authoritative. It proves your brand has real authority. That’s the summary.

— Exactly. One last question comes to mind. We hear this a lot. Will my traffic go up after the migration? Here is the honest answer. If you prioritize user experience during the migration, it can go up. This includes handling 301s correctly and fixing other technical issues. It depends on Google and the experience you provide. I can't give you a definitive answer. I can't promise your site will skyrocket. We covered different migration types at the start for a reason. You might have a URL değişikliği or just a frontend change. Every case is unique. You must evaluate them individually based on the number of URLs. Google bot might take 6-7 months to process 2 million URLs. A 200-page site might only take 1-2 months.

So, will traffic rise? If you build a technically sound site and prioritize user experience, why not? But we are responsible for any mistakes. If Google sees a pattern of errors, it will hurt your site. This rarely happens when you work with an expert. They run extensive tests. I wanted to mention that as a final point.

— Exactly as you said. We have seen many cases. That is why we can say this clearly. When the user experience is seamless and everything works perfectly, we see results. When we say a site is ready for SEO, it usually grows. In 99% of cases, we see a rise unless something goes wrong. Let me clarify this growth. It’s not an overnight spike on January 31st. Google bot needs to crawl, index, and see the value. It’s a gradual process. You’ll see performance climb steadily over time.

We usually fear this. A bad migration can tank stable traffic. But I prefer a migration over an update. If traffic drops, at least you know it’s from the migration.

— At least you know the cause.

— The issues are clear. You can roll back to a backup or fix things fast. It’s less risky. An algorithm update can hit you overnight without warning. That’s a total surprise. So, I don’t think migrations are that risky.

— I totally agree. We’ve covered the topic, Can. I’m out of ideas too. We’ve explained these processes well. There are many migration types. I hope you reach your target structure and boost your organic traffic. Be careful with this. It can cause major headaches. That’s my final take. Can, do you have any last thoughts? Let’s wrap this up.

— We covered a lot. We might have missed some things. That’s normal. It’s a huge topic. It even touches on CDN optimization. We wanted to give you the big picture. The key is working with an SEO expert. Your team must be ready. Both backend and frontend devs need to be on board.

— Let’s wrap it up. If you liked the video, hit like and subscribe. See you at the next Zeo Talks. Take care. Bye.

— Goodbye.

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