Even for the most experienced engineers, designers and marketers, a website migration can be a major undertaking. It costs time and resources, and is a major stressor to teams without proper guidance.
While many guides exist with varying degrees of quality and detail, many seem to avoid the topic of tracking and templates.
Although considered nuance to some, having a good template and knowing what metrics to track is paramount to a streamlined website migration, or project/process in general.
To bring this more full circle, I put together a list of some of the most commonly overlooked pre and post benchmarking metrics. In addition, I’ve also provided a free template. Note – Skip to the bottom of the article for a glimpse at our free tracking template. Benchmarking Template for SEO Guided Website Migration
Authority Metrics
The first among many metrics is Moz’s famous domain and page authority. Likely due to resource constraints and lack of understanding, Authority scores can be one of the most often overlooked metrics when tracking against a migration. Moz authority in particular serves as a great complement and contrast against other KPIs.
For example, it can be tough to filter through total loss without individual SEO page scores . This is where PA might come in handy. If a page or set of pages has lost authority following transition, it could be, at least in part, attributed to the total loss.
Note – jump to ‘Backlinks’ to learn how these two metrics connect.
Access to bulk information from Moz is typically limited to paid users, but is otherwise accessible via the Moz API and/or via their link list tracking tool as part of their pro premium package.
Rankings & Visibility
The second and maybe more surprising is rankings and visibility.
The thought of tracking thousands of keywords leaves SEOs relying on tools, many of which don’t streamline their historical data. This in turn makes it harder to revisit older snapshots of SERPs/ranking URLs against specific keywords.
As such it’s nice to have a personal log of keywords mapped to key pages. (or at the very least, keyword counts for key categories).
This can be achieved easily via tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, STAT and/or AWR. Note – GSC is typically not recommended as it only provides samples.
Pages
Since they have direct access and intimate working knowledge of backend website systems (e.g. CMS & FTP), It’s sometimes assumed that web dev / engineering also keeps an updated catalog and close eye on pages. As a result, things get lost and/or logged improperly.
But having a before and after snapshot of all website URLs is a quick and easy way to gauge post-launch success at a glance.
Two of the most efficient methods for gathering this info involve using crawlers and Google Analytics. Note – Due to system limitations and samples, it’s not generally recommended to use Google, Bing and/or a combination of Google Search Console.
Performance
By far the most frequently forgotten about metric is performance. Performance metrics can range drastically, but typically come back to LCP (largest contentful paint), FID (first input delay) and CLS (cumulative layout shift). At least, this is what Google is looking at.
While it may not directly tie into and/or affect other key metrics, a dip (or gain) in any of these performance scores following a migration can be indicative of bad redirects, compatibility (resources/extensions/plugins) and/or communication issues with a new server.
Backlinks
Last but certainly not least is backlinks. Backlinks can be identified via GSC and third party tools like Ahref. A drop in backlinks following a migration can very likely be caused by missing redirects. Any drop here would almost always align with drop in page and/or domain authority.
That said, backlink data should be noted for the domain as well as key pages.
Note – it’s possible backlinks are lost during an extensively long and drawn out migration. Use the ‘lost’ feature of ahrefs in addition to standard analysis and logging to help understand the difference.
Summary & Template
Although sometimes cumbersome, tracking can be a pretty straightforward process. Ultimately, it’s key to understanding a successful migration.
With the right template / framework in place, guides from SEJ, Moz and the like become much more valuable and powerful.
Click here to understand what a basic report might look like and how you can get started on benchmarking today. p
