Managing technical SEO for a domain change and site migration

This client wanted to change their domain name while having a website redesign. Aware of the potential downside of the project, I was brought on-board to manage the technical SEO during the migration and to try to mitigate the traffic drop afterwards.

As with all other website migrations, I made pre-migration checks and made sure everything was technically sound and as it should be. I also helped the web developers manage the redirects.

Due to the domain name changing, I needed to ensure all of the new pages were redirected and crawled again as quickly as possible. I kept records of all the old pages, and all the new pages, and frequently checked them against each other to ensure Google was redirecting them accurately.

I also used Ahrefs to keep track of backlinks and made sure they were being successfully redirected to the new domain name, to prevent a loss of domain authority during the project.

Due to the thorough technical checks made before the website migrated, we actually improved the website by the time the project went ahead. The domain change was successful, and just 6 months after the project was completed, continued SEO work resulted in over 10% more keywords in top 10 positions, than the old website's best month.