Traffic drops right after a site migration? 11 possible causes of the issue
It is a delicate process, and in some ways even boring, since – right next to the benefits it can produce in the long term – it also presents many pitfalls, which can cause real trouble: site migration, of any kind, must be best managed to avoid hassles to Google or users after the transfer, which result in rankings and organic traffic declines. And if it is normal to see volume fluctuations in the early stages, the situation can become critical in the presence of errors such as wrong redirects, broken internal links, blocks in the robots.txt files or in the system that can make the new site sink.
Finding out any problem with a technical analysis
The first step to solving the issue is to have “a complete list of the problems that afflict your site, so you can verify and correct any problems that might arise”, as Ludwig Makhyan says on Search Engine Journal.
We can use tools like Screamingfrog or the SEOZoom spider to scan the site and find all the page specific problems, such as
- Redirects
- Broken links
- Duplicate content
- Metadata problems
- Blocked URL txt.
Another tip is to launch a main scan and back up your data before any migration or redesign of an important website, so you have data for later comparison and see what has changed. At the same time, you need to save a copy of the HTML and site layout before redesigning it, so you can review and revisit it if necessary.
The 11 most common causes of traffic drops following a migration
Based on his experience, Makhyan then lists what are the 11 most common reasons why you may experience traffic drops after a migration, technical errors related to the complexity of the process that may lead to the failure of the operation in terms of site profitability.
Still worth the advice given by Google on migration: better not to go back, but try to solve all the problems and insist with the new site, unless you find yourself without other solutions, because all the checks carried out on the new domain did not result in or any explanation for the collapse.
- Changes to canonical tags
We look for pages on the site that have lost traffic or rankings, analyzing canonical tags to see if they have been modified in a way that may have affected traffic.
Some of the common problems with these tags are:
- Indication of not relevant pages.
- Programming problems (example: missing final bar).
- Indication of old Urls that no longer exist.
- Non indexable txts and/or Contents
The second step is to check the robots.txt file or pages that have lost traffic to see if they are still indexable, because the drop could result from a problem with indexing. Google provides a robot.txt file verification tool (robots.txt file tester) that can help us identify and fix any problems we may encounter with the file.
- Loss of metadata
The migration could cause the disappearance of website metadata during the process, because in the transfer of the database you may lose columns related to title tags or meta descriptions.
Scanning with crawling tools and spiders allows us to verify that the titles and description are still accurate and intact; otherwise, you will need to re-enter these important metadata, finding the previous ones thanks to the backup created before the migration or doing a quick search on Google site using the “site: URL.com” command to read those in the engine memory.
- Loss of page speed
In case of complete migration of the website or change of servers, in the process you may risk losing a bit of page speed, and therefore it is useful to check the technical performance of pages with decreasing traffic to monitor the situation.
In cases of actual speed loss, you may need to:
- Verify that the CDN is included in the migration and works properly.
- Verify that the cache storage system is installed and works properly.
- Check out Pagespeed Insights to find easy solutions that can increase site speed.
We should not forget that even the server problems could affect the site and not allow it to load quickly enough.
- Checking internal links
Internal links are a great natural way to keep people on the site and also help search engines move from one page to another of the site. After a migration it is essential to check that the internal links in blog posts and pages are actually pointing to the new current site and do not refer to the old one.
- Content accessibility issues
Google Search Console lists all the indexed pages of the site in the Coverage Status Report, which reports pages with error, valid with notice, valid or excluded. At the end of the transfer process, therefore, it is advisable to monitor this report to find out if any accessibility issues have arisen.
- Broken redirects
Site redirects are an integral part of any migration, Makhyan points out, and “if you don’t have a redirect plan 301 during site migration, you will have many problems later,” the expert explains.
The risk is to lose traffic because “search engines are not told where your site has been migrated to”, but even visitors may be disoriented in the process.
We must go in search of any loops or redirect chains that present problems, trying to:
- Clean all the redirection loops.
- Follow the redirect chains to verify that the redirection is accurate.
- Check that the old Urls are redirected correctly to the new Urls, updating links to pages with 301 by connecting to the new page instead.
- Check that the start URL and the destination URL are accurate.
- Also check the final status and status code
Another tip is to use redirects from old pages with redirect 301 and not redirect 302, which are not permanent.
- Lost external links
External links remain a powerful signal for search engines, and it can simply be said that an excellent site with many organic links will often have a high positioning.
After a migration, it might be useful to contact the owners of sites that hosted backlinks to our old domain to ask them to update their links to the new site or to redirect links to similar pages on the new project.
Otherwise, the presence of broken links or pointing to pages of the old site not redirected to the new can cause problems with search rankings.
- Platform / hosting issues
In case of moving of platform or server you have to pay attention to some small problems that could reduce the traffic of the site:
- Firewalls blocking search engine bots.
- Platforms that use JavaScript, which is harder to run for bots.
- Low speed and poor performance.
- Restrictions of the country.
In such cases, it is useful to carefully examine all pages that have had traffic drop, first trying to make a test drive of the platform or server again “before going all in and migrating your site”which may provide the information necessary to avoid subsequent problems.
- Images
Another possible cause of reduced organic traffic are errors with image URLs, frequent when the site receives a lot of traffic from these resources. To avoid bad surprises, we need to be sure to link to the right images and the new correct domain.
When using a CDN network, it should be easy to make a quick change to transfer all images to the new site. If we use a CNAME to create image Urls, it is essential to verify that the CNAME is pointing to the new site and/or server.
- Google updates
If in the previous cases the responsibility for the problems was at our expense (or at least for those who cured the migration), sometimes even the fate can put a hand in it: it is the case of transfers that arrive at the time of an update of the Google algorithm, which can therefore completely change the SERPs.
In such situation, therefore, the loss of ranking and traffic is not closely related to the migration, but depends precisely on the updates of the search engine.
How to solve problems and recover traffic
The collection and benchmarking of data before website migration takes place is crucial, says Ludwig Makhyan, who therefore recommends as a priority element to keep track of all changes before and after this delicate process.
The correction of all the problems of the site requires time and patience, “but the SEO always requires a long-term approach”: in concrete, it is necessary to examine the site, verify the presence of these problems and make the necessary corrections. When we are satisfied with the changes, then, we still have to wait a few days or weeks to see if the traffic returns to pre-migration levels.
If, after this period, the traffic will still be drastically lower than before the migration, you may need to ask for specialized support to find any annoying problems that we cannot identify.
