A ThinkSearch prioritised web development & site migration SEO checklist

This article was first published over on the Econsultancy blog. It was inspired by a piece of work I did for an ex-colleague and by another far more authoritative piece by another ex-colleague over on Moz.com. Here it is republished in full. Prioritised Web Dev/Redesign & Site Migration SEO Checklist My friend and ex-colleague Modestos Siotos (@Modestos_) has written THE most authoritative piece on site migration over on the Moz blog and there’s no way I even want to go anywhere near improving on that, but I do often get asked both for that authoritative guide and for a prioritised list of actions/areas of focus, so this article will do just that. Modi’s Moz article is for an SEO & dev lead to implement together, but this guide is more designed for client services to help more concisely communicate the most prescient issues and explain the value in each (and relatively costly) step, and assumes that you have done all the project planning, timing, and already laid out the processes.   Benchmarking The key steps of benchmarking are often forgotten in this process and are a particularly key consideration for client services. There’s no doubt a lot of pressure and high expectations for the new website to flat out beat the old one, as well as the fact that any attention going into the redesign and migration process shines a light on all this. However with the best will in the world and all tick boxes checked there will inevitably be a dip in visibility, visits, and the value they generate, so be prepared to have some answers when the time comes. Benchmarking allows us to show up any legacy issues the previous incarnation of the site may have had, issues that may potential hamper the new site. We’re talking about factors you can’t measure at a later stage here. Although the plan will be to iron out any of these issues and to embed SEO throughout the new build it may well be that more focus/time/cost could have been spent on SEO previously so bare this in mind. An example might be the use of a clever method of serving content such as frames or dynamic divs in a way that impedes access to this content, so anything you can grab prior to the switch-over do so. But before we get started – and absolutely most importantly –...