Today I appeared again with a new article. In today’s article I will tell about Top 11 Reasons for Losing Traffic After Website Migration. Website migration is a great step towards long term success but forgetting the small bed can double your loss. Not being able to redirect properly, making a mistake installing robots.txt or breaking an internal link can reduce your traffic overnight. So after the website migration, it is important to know whether the organic traffic to the website is coming as before.
Checking the website after migration
If you want to check your website after migration to see if there is a problem, you can use the ScreamingFrog tool.
ScreamingFrog will review your website thoroughly and report the correct results. For Example The tool will return results according to the checklist below.
- Redirects
- Broken links
- Duplicate content
- Metadata issues
- txt blocked URLs
Scan your website with the ScreamingFrog tool and find out if there are any problems.
Here are the Top 11 Reasons for Losing Traffic After Website Migration
Let’s find out the reasons why your website traffic may decrease after migration.
1. Changes to the Canonical Tag
Canonical tags of different pages or articles of your website may change after website migration. Such changes can have a huge impact on your website traffic. Suppose you have an article ranked in Google. So, Now if the link to that article changes, users will not be able to find it.
- As a result of changing the canonical tag,
- The user can go to Not Found or any other page
- After clicking on the search engine results, different pages may open
2. Robots.txt is not indexed
Make sure the new website has the robots.txt file index correctly. If there is no index, then you will understand that the traffic has decreased because of this.
Check your website’s Robots.txt file with Google’s Robots.txt Tester tool. Similarity If for some reason the index is not there, then re-install it on the website.
3. Problems with Meta Data
Your Meta Data may be damaged during website transfer. Meta Data basically means Title Tag, Meta Description.
You can check with ScreamingFrog to see if the metadata is correct. But If Meta Data damaged, set it up anew. As a result You can see the previous Meta Data by typing “site: URL.com” in Google.
Since resetting keywords, tags, etc. is quite time consuming, you can also use previous backup files.
4. Decreased page speed
Website migration or server changes may slow down your website. So you have to check after the migration whether the speed of the website is right or not.
To ensure proper Page Speed,
- Verify that the CDN is set up correctly and working properly.
- Configure the caching system of the entire website properly and verify that it is working.
- Check the speed of your website with Page Speed Insights and find out what needs to change.
Check the speed of your server latest. Therefore if necessary, take the support of web hosting.
5. Internal link
One of the best ways to handle this is to set up internal links. Search engines can easily index a website if the internal links organized in an orderly manner.
However after the website migration, make sure that the internal links of the website are well organized.
6. Complications related to indexing in search engines
Website migration to the new server can cause indexing problems in many cases and can cause traffic loss.
Login to Google Search Console Click on Coverage from Index Error, valid with warning, valid or excluded options. Fix any problem.
7. Wrong Redirects
After migrating the website, it is important to check if Redirect is working properly. Although You can use the 301 redirects tool to redirect properly.
Redirection is a very important issue because you need to let Google know where your website has migrated.
Check if there is a redirect issue through the ScreamingFrog tool. Redirect issue resolution,
- Clean the redirect loop
- Check that the redirect chain is OK
- See if the old URLs are properly redirected to the new URL. 301 direct, you can update the URL
8. External Link
We all know how important external links are in search engine rankings. That’s why If your website has good link building then it will bring you a lot of organic traffic.
After the migration you can ask other site owners to update their links according to your new website. But If their link is broken or goes to your previous URL, the traffic may be reduced.
9. Hosting issue
You may go for website migration to upgrade to better quality server or better CMS but sometimes traffic may be reduced due to webhosting or platform complexity. In many cases on the platform,
Firewall systems can block search engine bots. blocking search engine bots
Some platforms use JS which can prevent search engine bots from crawling.
The speed of the servers may be slow
Different servers or platforms may have Country Restriction
So do a good job of researching before choosing a new server or platform.
10. Images
If most of the traffic to your website is image dependent then if a lot of traffic comes from the image, then you need to know if the image is being redirected properly. Image URLs and traffic can be reduced if images are not set up properly. So rest assured,
- Whether the image URLs are linked to the correct image
- Whether the image URL linked to the new domain
If you use CDN then hopefully you can get the images on the new website very soon. Sometimes you can use CNAME to create image URLs, make sure your CNAME is pointing to a new site.
11. Google Update
Even if everything on your website is fine, various updates from Google can reduce your traffic. Google often makes various changes to their algorithms. So, If you ever suspect migration as a cause of traffic loss, Google’s update may be responsible.
If a new update from Google is not in favor of your website, as a result it can naturally have an effect on search engine rankings.
The previous step of migration
If you take care of some things before migration, you can avoid a lot of losses. Make sure you have a full backup of your previous website before migrating. So, Keep a record of when things are changing. You can also use Google Analytics Annotations to track all SEO related changes.
If something like a traffic jam happens, deal with it patiently. Although Find out the problem first and solve it slowly. Wait a few days or a few weeks after taking the necessary steps.
If the problem is not solved, then verify the Top 11 Reasons for Losing Traffic After Website Migration mentioned above one by one.
Stay well until the next tune.