We can’t wait to dive in, but first, a little about your speakers!

Who is Titan SEO?arketingProfs

Titan SEO’s® team is comprised of industry veterans and specialists in search engine optimization and pay per click.

– Proprietary spidering technology

– Started in 2004

– 100’s of website migrations

– Experience across multiple platforms

– DNN Partner starting in 2011

– Every team member certified in advanced analytics and PPC with Google

Meet Our Senior Team Members!

Recent Awards

Our TechnologyarketingProfs

Not your typical SEO agency. Let our technology show you why.

TitanBOT: Our Secret Sauce!

Key Capabilities

• Algorithm parameter value estimates

• Regular expression algorithm creation (on the fly!)

• Anchor text parameter matching

• Meta Robots and canonical link analysis

• Title and Meta Data analysis

• Multiple threading

• Alt tag and image data

• Data mining and collection

• Human emulation testing

• And much more...

Website Migration & Disaster Planning

arketingProfs

Failing to plan is planning to fail. Here’s how to avoid a disaster.

Murphy’s Law:“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”

Don’t let these things happen to you!

Losses in organic traffic

Decreases in on-site user engagement

Broken links and missing pages

Missed opportunities to leverage an SEO

boost from a new site launch

Don’t Lose Sleep Over Your Site LaunchProactive planning makes a seamless transition

1. Start with an audit of your current site.

Use website crawlers to get

a full picture of your site in its

current state

• Xenu

• Screaming Frog

• TitanBOT

1. Site Audit: Crawling Your Current Site

Take Inventory! Crawl your current site to get a full list of pages

Export your site list into an Excel doc

Sort and organize your pages to make it more

digestible

Why is this important?

Taking stock of your pages will aid in site planning

and redirect mapping down the road.

1. Site Audit: Using Site Command

Site command is a great tool to get an idea of which pages the search engines are indexing and how they display those pages.

• Go to google.com and type in site:yoururl.com

1. Site Audit: Assessing Organic Entrances

• Head to Google Analytics

• Behavior

Site Content

All Pages

• Segment by Organic Traffic

• Sort by Entrances

Comparing Apples to ApplesCarry over your current SEO for a seamless transition

2. Compare the data on your current site to the data on your new site.

Comparing the data that is on your current site to your

new site will help keep your current SEO intact and your

site users happy.

Things to assess:

• Title tags

• Meta descriptions

• Anchor text links

• Overall content

2. Comparing Data: Title Tags

Compare the title tags on your current and new site and ask yourself the following questions:

Do the new title tags match the old tags?

• If not, did the content on the page change?

– If Content changed are the new ones appropriate?

– Will you lose important rankings?

Are they the appropriate length?

• 512 pixel (50-60 characters)

• Keeping between 50-55 characters ideal

Are Title Tags compelling enough to click?

Do they convey a positive message?

Are they Unique?

Do the meta descriptions describe the page?

Are they the appropriate length?

• 155 characters is ideal

• Keep between 150-60 characters

Do they convey a positive message?

Are they Unique?

Do they contain some sort of call-to-action?

2. Comparing Data: Meta Descriptions

Compare the meta descriptions on your current and new site and ask yourself the following questions:

Look at both navigational anchor text links and content anchor text links

• Content links will not be counted if they are secondary to nav links

Compare important keywords for matching parameter data on top entrance pages

• Sort list by pages, add in entrance data for those pages

2. Comparing Data: Anchor Text Links

Compare the anchor text links on your current and new site and ask yourself the following questions:

Prioritize Your Pages by Looking at LinksHow popular are your pages really?

3. Take a look at your inbound link profile

While popularity isn’t really the key here, we want to

look at inbound links to help assess which pages are linked to

most frequently, which will help us with URL & redirect mapping.

Use Moz open site explorer, or Majestic SEO to evaluate all inbound links

• Make sure all inbound links are going to appropriate “new” page.

• 301 redirect any pages that have links that will have new URL paths

• Evaluate anchor text data and see if it still matches the landing page

Consider Your Domain StructureWhat domain structure will your new site have?

4. Audit Domains and Sub Domains

Are you using more than one domain?

• Sub domains are viewed as “separate”

• More than one domain that will be migrated to one site can cause issues

– Make sure you map pages and 301 redirect them

• If you are breaking out one domain into multiple domains consider the internal authority that you will lose

Consider Your Hosting ProviderWhere will you host your new site?

5. Hosting

Will the new server be able to handle your traffic?

• Slower load times can cause a loss of rankings

• Frustrated customers may leave before purchasing

Will the new server be able to handle redirect requests, any software you’re running, and your CMS platform?

Is it the correct operating system and version?

Evoq OnDemand(from DNN)

Cloud-based Web CMS

Fully managed by DNN, including software updates

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Resources auto-scale to meet surges in traffic

“With on-premises CMS, we’re responsible for managing servers, operating systems, database server software, etc. All of this was offloaded when we moved to the cloud.”

-- Art Helbig, Manager, Systems Development for Howard County (Maryland)

Vet your New CMSDoes your CMS have the right capabilities?

Can you create unique Title and Meta data for each page?

Are pages unique with a unique URL?

Can the new site be easily crawled by a search engine?

How are redirects conducted with the new CMS?

Some CMS’s are not search engine friendly

• Do your due-diligence and research online

DNN is SEO-friendly!

SEO Capabilities in DNN’s Evoq CMS

10 SEO Considerations for a Web CMS

1. Customizing page titles and metadata

2. Drop-down navigation is built in CSS

3. URL structure

4. Support for the rel=canonical tag

5. XML sitemap creation

6. No frames or i-frames

7. 301 redirects, not 302

8. Pagination

9. Custom Alt tags

10. Breadcrumb navigation

Read more in “10 Ways DNN Can Improve Your Website SEO”

http://www.dnnsoftware.com/blog/10-ways-dnn-can-improve-your-website-seo

A Note About JavaScript and Ajax

If you’re coding in Angular or Ajax make sure Google and other search engines can crawl your site.

• Test with a crawler that can crawl Angular and Ajax sites like GoogleBOT would

• These crawlers use ?_escaped_fragment_= to find the search engine content

Prioritize High-Priority PagesEnsure your most important pages are accounted for

Always move important pages to the new site if:

• They have high entrances

• They are important to the funnel

• They have high authority and link to other important pages

• You believe users might miss them

• They represent valuable content

Content is Still King! Have a plan of action for your new site content

If your plan is to dramatically reduce your content, be prepared for a big drop in rankings and traffic.

Move as much content to the new site as you can

Don’t replace important content with images

Consolidating content can also cause issues

Use the new website as an opportunity to create and refresh relevant, quality content that users will find helpful

Keyword DensityAre your important keywords accounted for in your new content?

Evaluate where important keywords are used on your site in content

• If your money keyword is represented 100 times on your old site and 10 times on your new site that is a red flag

The new site should have similar or better keyword density for important phrases

Anchor text links should help with matching pages, title data, and content

301 RedirectsThe ‘Holy Grail’ of site migrations

Every page that was on the old site and not on the new site needs to be redirected

• Changes in URL’s also need to be redirected

Redirects that are permanent should be 301’s

• Don’t use 302’s

• Avoid meta redirects!

• Check redirects using an HTTPS header check

301 redirects help pass any existing authority from current pages to the new pages. Not using them is like starting all over from scratch!

Which Pages Need to Be Redirected?

Get a list of all of your old pages from your initial site audit, or from analytics

• Check each page to make sure it has a replacement on the new site

– If there isn’t an exact replacement redirect it!

– Titan SEO’s TitanBOT technology can crawl old sites and compare to new sites

Double check your external links to fill in the gaps for any additional redirect needs

• You can also contact the site with the link and ask them to change the URL to the new page (if appropriate).

If you are changing your domain name or your file extensions are changing (ex. moving from an .html site to a .php site), ALL of your URLs will need to be 301 redirected.

URL StructureWill the new URL structure be SEO-friendly?

URL’s should be short and to the point

If keywords are represented in a URL and you rank for that keyword the URL will be bold in the results

URL’s should make sense from a user perspective

Avoid too many special characters (?%& etc.)

We mentioned before that URLs should be

static and unique. Make sure that’s the case!

Mobile Friendly SitesIn 2016, mobile is more prevalent than ever. Does your new site make the cut?

Mobile Friendly Sites have an advantage with SEO

There are multiple ways to make your site mobile friendly

Make sure mobile redirects are setup correctly if you have a separate mobile site

• Never redirect a desktop page to a different mobile page

– Search engines have been known to drop all mobile rankings when mobile redirects are not setup properly

Test your site with Google’s Mobile Friendly Test: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

Robots.txt

Evaluate your old site to see if Robots.txt is present

• Go to yoururl.com/robots.txt

If Robots.txt is present compare to the new site and make sure it’s still appropriate

No Index, No Follow TagsKeep your site hidden from the public (and search engines) until launch time

Use no index, no follow tags on all development sites

• A duplicate site can be indexed if not used

• Robots.txt is ideal for blocking indexing

• Meta tags can also be used, but are easy to forget about

Make sure to remove those tags when you go live

• Forgetting to remove the tags will cause your site to disappear from search results.

Page Load SpeedA slow site can hurt more than just your users

Besides being frustrating for users, a site with slow load times may also affect your ability to rank high in the search engines. Here’s how to assess site speed so you don’t get dinged.

Test your new sites load speed

Test internal pages while under load

• Use a crawler to emulate high load

Evaluate your old site’s load time in Google analytics

Testing 1,2. How to test conversions and engagement on your new site.

Make sure forms, checkout, etc. all functions

You can also use PPC to test engagement, funnels, and overall site performance with a new site before it goes live

• Set Robots.txt to block the site

• Put the site on a sub domain

• Direct PPC ads to the new site to test it

Structured DataHelp make your site more appealing in the search results

Adding the structured data can help with rankings and engagement

• Ratings

• Videos

• Product Data

• Event Data

• Etc…

Canonical TagsWhat are canonical tags and when are the necessary?

Does your site have duplicate pages that are necessary for user experience?

• Make sure canonical tags are present for search engines

• Canonical tags tell search engines which page they should rank

• They prevent your site from getting penalized for duplicate content

XML Site MapsHow site maps can help the search engines find and index your new pages

If your new pages are not getting indexed an XML site map can help

• Make sure all pages are represented

• Load into Google’s Search Console, and Bing’s

• Update the XML site map with any new pages that are not in the index

Paginated ContentWhat to do when you have paginated content on your new site

If you have pages that use next, or 1, 2, 3, etc. to help users see paginated content you can indicate this to Google

This helps Google understand to rank the first page in the series

Use the Rel=“next” and rel=“prev” tags

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en

Alt Tags for ImagesWhat are alt tags and when are they useful?

Alt Tags help to describe images

Make sure they aren’t keyword stuffed

Alt tags can help with section 508 compliance

Heading TagsH1, H2, H3… What does it all mean?

Look at the old site and new site

Are H tags present?

Do they accurately represent important keywords

Are the reinforcing the content on the page

Do they match title and anchor data (pointing to that page)

Broken LinksEnsure all links are functioning properly before launch

Use a crawler like Xenu to look for broken links

Ideally all broken links should be fixed in the source code

Any broken links that can’t be fixed should be 301 redirected to the appropriate page

Site StructureHow will your new site be structured?

Is your linking structure or site structure going to change?

• If it changes too much you can lose internal link authority and see a drop in rankings

We use TitanBOT Nucleus to evaluate the linking structure of a site.

• You can draw out your own map (if your site is small enough) and look to see if linking structure is dramatically different

A different linking structure isn’t always bad. Sometimes you can improve upon your old site.

1,2,3 Liftoff!Ready for launch? Here are things to consider

Find the right day and time to migrate

DNS can take 24-48 hours to fully propagate

Problems can happen so make sure your web dev team is ready (don’t migrate at midnight on a Friday)

• But… try to migrate when customer traffic is low

Post-Launch ChecklistEnsure everything is running smoothly after your site launch

Indexed Pages (is the new site getting indexed?)

Google Search Console

• Check every single aspect if possible. Make sure you have a working email to receive any alerts

Analytics

• Look at Organic traffic

• Notate the exact time and date the new site went live

• Evaluate Goals, and revenue tracking

• Setup automated reports

• Setup alerts for traffic drops or other KPI drops

Most Important Tips

Sharpen your skills

5 Key Takeaways From Today

Check your Redirects (301 redirects are critical)

Make sure you have title data on all pages

Have unique meta descriptions on all pages

Don’t remove important content

Confirm your new site can be crawled

For the full list of tips email mike@titan-seo.com

Thank you!

We’d love to hear from you!

Danny Shepherd

Danny@TitanSEO.com

Mike Tretinjak

Mike@TitanSEO.com

Follow us @TitanSEO

For more information on DNN’s Evoq CMS:

http://www.dnnsoftware.com/products/evoq-content