SEO planning & 301 redirects
From an SEO perspective, there are a number of different factors you must be aware of when migrating your website to ShopWired from another platform. Each factor is described in detail below.
Risk to existing rankings
When migrating your website to ShopWired, there is no risk to its existing rankings. Most users migrating to ShopWired actually see an improvement in their rankings once the website has been fully crawled - but this is dependent on the advice contained within this guide being followed completely.
Although there is no long-term risk to existing rankings for your website, there is an amount of time that it takes for your new ShopWired website, once launched, to properly integrate into Google (and other search engines). This integration phase is the time it takes for:
- All pages to have been crawled by search engine bots
- The new website to have been properly ranked
During this time, you may find that your rankings fluctuate from day to day, and you may see an immediate decline in rankings (and, consequently, website traffic) during the integration phase. Whilst it's difficult to provide an exact timeframe after which existing rankings will be restored (and possibly improved), you should expect this process to take up to 4 weeks (and possibly longer).
Noting existing rankings
Noting existing rankings
Immediately prior to the launch of your ShopWired website, you should make a note of your website's existing rankings in search engines for any keywords that you believe to be important.
ShopWired recommends making a note of these on a spreadsheet so that you can monitor the performance of each keyword after you launch ShopWired and during the integration phase of your new website.
Content
Content
Content is one of the foremost search engine ranking factors for websites.
If you want to ensure that your existing search engine rankings are preserved, you must ensure that each ranking page has exactly the same content on your website as your existing website. If you want to improve your existing search engine rankings, you can optimise your website's content on your new ShopWired website.
In this context, "content" refers to:
- The text on each ranking page
- The position of text on the page
- If text previously high up on a page is moved further down the page, this can affect your search engine rankings
- Any ALT tags for images
When creating your ShopWired website you should ensure that the content on each ranking page is either the same or improved in comparison to your existing website.
Immediately before launching your ShopWired website, ShopWired strongly recommends:
- Double-checking the content of each page on your ShopWired website and carefully comparing it to your existing website
- Taking of each of your website pages (or the most important pages) to use as a guide after launch
Title tags and meta descriptions
Title tags and meta descriptions
Each of your website pages' title tags and meta descriptions play a critical role in the ranking of the page. When migrating to ShopWired, ensure:
- That you retain the existing title tag and meta description of each of your website pages
- That if you are improving/optimising title tags and meta descriptions, you understand that your existing rankings may not be preserved after migration
- That you avoid duplicating title tags and meta descriptions across website pages, as this can hurt your rankings
Read more information about configuring title tags and meta descriptions:
301 redirects URL structure
301 redirects URL structure
ShopWired strongly advises that you maintain the integrity of the URL structure of your website pages as closely as possible. This means ensuring that the URLs on your ShopWired website match the URLs on your existing website. If matching URLs is not possible, then ensuring that they are closely aligned is the next best option.
Where any URL for any website page has changed, or you have decided not to create a corresponding page, you must create a . Creating a 301 redirect ensures that, after launching your ShopWired website, when search engine bots visit the old URL they will be automatically redirected to the corresponding new URL.
If you are creating a 301 redirect for a page that no longer exists, ShopWired strongly recommends not redirecting (unless absolutely essential) to your website's home page. Instead, the 301 redirect should redirect to another page on your website that most closely matches the old page.
If you're copying content across from your existing website, and the content contains links, ensure that you update the links to the new URL of the linked page. 301 redirects should be seen as a backup rather than a primary solution.
After launch
Immediately after you've launched your website you should test the 301 redirects that you've created to ensure they are working correctly.
It's also advisable to check each URL that is indexed in Google to ensure that either:
- The URL hasn't changed (and so no 301 redirect is required)
- Where a URL has changed, that a is not encountered and that a 301 redirect has been implemented and is working correctly
Update advertising links
Update advertising links
Although creating 301 redirects for page URL changes ensures that visitors will not be redirected to a 404 error page, ShopWired strongly recommends that you actively update any URLs on any advertising platforms that you have access to (such as Google Adwords).
As with internal links on your website, 301 redirects should be seen as a backup rather than a primary solution and updating any links on external websites to the new and correct URL is best practice.
After launch
After launch
After launching your ShopWired website:
- Ensure that your website's sitemap is submitted to Google using Google Search Console
- Carefully monitor your rankings for the keywords you recorded them for, prior to launch, every 3-4 days
- Use the in Google Search Console to request indexing for key pages, such as your website's home page
- By requesting Google crawl pages immediately you should speed up the integration phase
- You can only use URL inspection tool for a certain number of URLs each day
If you experience a loss of rankings
If you experience a loss of rankings
During the integration phase
If you detect a loss of rankings during the integration phase it's important not to panic and remember that this is an expected result. Changing the content on your website, title tags and meta descriptions, and changing other SEO aspects of your website (such as 301 redirects) can prolong the problem and make it more difficult to assess where to take remedial action after the integration phase has been completed.
If you spot obvious errors then it is recommended to fix them, but attempting to optimise content (or other aspects of your website) during the integration phase can have unexpected consequences.
Instead, continue to monitor your website's rankings every 3-4 days and continue to follow the advice in this article. The integration phase can be expected to last between 3-4 weeks (and possibly longer for much larger websites).
After the integration phase
Once you are sure that Google (and other search engines) have fully crawled your new website check each of your rankings carefully and compare them with the recorded ranking for your existing website.
A small variance in rankings (for example one keyword ranking at position 3 instead of position 2, and another ranking in position 2 instead of position 3) does not indicate a problem and is also to be expected. A larger variance in rankings (particularly if the majority of your keywords have lost rankings) indicates a wider problem.
If your website has experienced a loss in rankings after launching on ShopWired:
- Carefully check the content of your ShopWired website and compare it to the content of your old website
- If you didn't take screenshots as suggested in this guide, use a tool like the Wayback Machine to view your old website
- If there are any changes in the content, ensure that the content of your ShopWired website matches your old website as closely as possible
- Check the title tags and meta descriptions of each page carefully, ensure that they match those from your old website as closely as possible
- Check all 301 redirects and look for any broken links on your website to fix
- Use your visitor tracking platform (e.g. Google Analytics) to see if visitors are landing on your website's and how they have arrived on that page and fix any broken links / missing 301 redirects
- Contact an SEO professional for advice
