If you have migrated websites, what lessons did you learn from it, esp SEO ones?

I have a 17-year-old Dreamweaver html non-https, non-responsive, site moving over to Thrive Themes on WordPress and responsive and https. Will keep the same domain name but https and new URLs and new navigation structure.

I’m just about to switch over my live site from my testing server in a day or 2.

I’ve spent countless hours, manually copied 160+ html posts into a text editor and pasted them, and later the links into WP, tested the links & the SSL, ran some site speed and mobile testers on one of pages and will go over a bunch of checklists.

I have the 301 redirects tested and ready to go and am downloading google analytics and search console data.

But there is always something you miss, right?

What lessons did you learn from the move, esp SEO ones? I know ideally, from an SEO I shouldn't change both the navigation, and the URL's and titles but I chose to do so for a variety of reasons.

 

301s are the big thing. I like to keep the same titles, for immediate comparison reasons, though I may change them after I see that the rankings are stable. I haven't lost ranking migrating to a new site, but you often can see improvement. Its a good time to optimize images.

 

Thanks Oso, I've tested them all out but you never know. I know there will be some problems, just trying to reduce them.

I had someone else told me to keep the titles and the meta descriptions the same until google indexes it, then change it. So I'm manually adding 160 of each, such joy

Any idea on how long to wait before moving the Yoast SEO titles and meta descriptions back to the new ones after it's indexed?

Yes I don't have too many images but have crunched the ones I'm using down

 

Google knows, very quick. If there were to be drop in rankings, you might start noticing movement in a few days. But it can take weeks before the redirects are fully integrated. The meta description tag has no impact on rankings.

With images, you can optimize them by right clicking on the image before uploading. Under properties you have access to the title, subject, etc.

But by two weeks, the site should be fairly stable. Though I would still wait longer before making more changes. Sometimes the redirects can be a hiccup and cause problems. Be sure to submit the sitemap immediately.

 

Thanks Oso, yes I'm still finding redirects I've missed using the redirection plugin and adding them bit by bit to the .htaccess file. I put in the yoast xml sitemap but got more indexed in GSC when I also put in the other 3 yoast had.