Get practical advice from SEO experts: Director of SEO Eskimo, Joanna Lewis; Kim Dewe, Head of SEO @ Blue Array; Kristina Azarenko, eCommerce & Technical SEO Consultant and founder of MarketingSyrup. In this short ~20 minute talk they present advice on how to plan and execute a website redevelopment or website migration project successfully. This covers SEO tools, tips and pitfalls to avoid. These talks are offered free to the SEO community working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. Watch a recording of the stream to go with these slides here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INCJi89feBI Visit https://www.authoritas.com for more SEO advice and SEO tools and data to help you drive more organic traffic to your ecommerce stores.

2. SEO Friendly Migrations
● Kristina Azarenko
● Kim Dewe
● Joanna Lewis
AUTHORITAS
● SEO Jo Blogs - Growth Marketer
● Carrie Shepherd - Marketing Executive

3. Kristina Azarenko
eCommerce & Technical SEO Consultant
● eCommerce & technical SEO Consultant
● 10+ years in SEO and Digital Marketing
● Worked on an agency side and in-house
● Founder of MarketingSyrup
● Creator of the SEO Challenge Course
● Kristina loves getting hands dirty with website
migrations
● And she absolutely loves eCommerce ♥️
@azarchick

4. Hi, my name is Kim
● Head of SEO @ Blue Array.
● 3+ years’ SEO experience across
high-growth startups & global
brands and 6+ in digital marketing.
● Technical-SEO

5. Director of SEO Eskimo, Joanna Lewis
● Agency side & in house for 10 years before starting
SEO Eskimo 3 years ago
● Technical SEO, it’s communication and execution
are what I love the most
● Ecommerce SEO migrations are the closest I get to
going on an Apollo mission (and back)
So let’s talk about a migration I’m currently working on
https://seoeskimo.com/
@SEO_Eskimo
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannalewisseo/

6. Top Tips from Kristina
How to approach a website migration when acquiring a new
company
The worst thing you can do is to redirect all the pages with no initial
research done = never do it
Instead:
Scenario 1: Leave the old website and redirect only some of the pages
or
Scenario 2: Redirect the website entirely improving it along the way

7. Scenario 1: Leave the old website and redirect only some of the pages
● Analyze the website and see which pages bring the most
traffic
● Then break them down into 2 categories:
○ Those that are not relevant anymore -> redirect them to the
relevant pages on your website
○ Those which are relevant even though they might be competing
with you in the search results -> leave them on the old website and
add a link to your corresponding page
Result: you use the old website’s rankings to benefit from
them. You dominate the search results by ranking with 2 pages
on different domains.

8. Scenario 2: Redirect the website entirely improving it along the way
● Map out the pages from the old website to the new one
● Analyze the content on the old website and use it to
improve your website before making any redirects.
Result: you re-use the content that performs and save
resources on creating it from scratch.

9. User Experience Considerations
The main idea is not to unpleasantly surprise people by just
redirecting them to the new experience.
● Add an indication to the old website that it has been
acquired so that people will recognize the new brand (if you
leave the old website)
● Add an indication to the new website that it now includes
the acquired brand (for both scenarios)
● Add any supporting content that will help users recognize
the transition from the old brand to the new one (for both
scenarios)

10. Tip 1: Project management skills are non-negotiable
● Plan for Murphy’s Law with a migration specific Gantt chart.
Segment into pre, staging and post.
Consider all aspects.
Define “done”,
● Minimise/isolate risk by utilising a waterfall model for cross-
functional linearity.
● 80/20 rule: 80% doing, 20% communication is important for
stakeholder engagement.
Top Tips from Kim

11. Tip 2: Don’t forgo monitoring
● Automate it: Use Data Studio, AWR, Uptime Robot and Content King.
● Don’t underestimate or disguise the risk.
Inform a compensation strategy if appropriate.
Bonus tip:
● Study the tech stack before the migration begins.
CMS, CDN, Host, Frameworks, …,
Top Tips from Kim

12. Executing an International Migration
for SEO, in Your Dressing Gown
22 Domains 18 Languages
3 Realms
4 Dressing
Gowns
Migrate or
Stop Trading
Magento 1
Expires in June
2020
Sales Force
Commerce Cloud
Already in
Contract To Take
Over
SEO Eskimo takes no responsibility for your fashion choices during lock down. Always seek professional advice.

13. Tight Deadlines & New Processes
Working for a well
known brand with
many retails stores
around the world
They suffered a poor
migration onto
Magento in 2015
Magento poorly
optimised due to
diffuse local
approaches &
technical constraints
SEO work was due to start
in November, but was
delayed until February
International multi-lingual
migrations with tight
deadlines during pandemics
are quite challenging

14. Tight Timeline - Phased Cutovers
Other realms will cutover at similar times
The start date was pushed back. The end date is fixed because of the complexity of the project and multiple
enhancements for MVP
SFCC Cutover Begins Magento 1 Support End
Date
As each site is prepared for cutover, the ones that have just cut over will be monitored and any issues addressed…

15. The Challenges Are Great
Globally
distributed
teams
Lack of
uniformity of
URL structure
on legacy site
Multiple
implementations
across realms
Many languages
Global
pandemic

16. Prioritisation for MVP is Key
Prioritise ranking retention above all
Automate everything you can
Ensure you get a chance to test everything
Fight for your channel
But respect UX and other channels
Capture all the data
Remember, we had
very limited
development &
planning time

17. 3 Realms, 3 Implementations
Realm
1
Realm
3
Realm
2
3 Development agencies building 3 different Sales Force Commerce Cloud Implementations
No uniformity of URL structure between these implementations
So what
about
hreflang?

18. It may be possible to create a centralised database of SKUs, category and page IDs, allowing
hreflang to talk to each other via a common key.
The Potential Hreflang Solution
Realm
1
Realm
3
Realm
2
N.B. This is being investigated
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="https://www.example.co.uk/en_GB/page-about-cats" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-fr" href="https://www.example.fr/fr_FR/page-about-cats" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-ch" href="https://www.example.ch/fr_CH/page-about-cats" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="it-ch" href="https://www.example.ch/it_CH/page-about-cats" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de-ch" href="https://www.example.ch/de_CH/page-about-cats" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="https://www.example.com/en_US/same-page-about-cats" />

19. The Future of Work
Office Required
Preferable to Have An
Office
No Need for
an Office
Ensure your SEO presentations utilise a pyramid

20. Get The Right Reporting Solution
Dashboarding and
actionable insight
Third Party
Platform of
Your
Choice
Data
Studio
Search
Console
API
Marcus Williams
RVP Sales @ Authoritas (SEO/Content/SaaS)

21. Thank you - over to Q and A
● Great tips from 3 experts
● Kristina Azarenko - @azarchick
● Kim Dewe - linkedin.com/in/kimdewe/
● Joanna Lewis - linkedin.com/in/joannalewisseo/

22. “Top International and Multilingual Challenges & How to
Fix/Avoid Them"
● Aleyda Solis
● Gianluca Fiorelli
● Nitin Manchanda
Wednesday 29th April 2020 @ 4 p.m. SEO Advice, tea and cake with...