When migrating your e-commerce to Shopify, the last thing you want is to lose your hard-earned SEO ranking. SEO needs to be a priority during the process, which is why many businesses choose to make the move with a Shopify migration expert.
As a platform, Shopify offers significant benefits, one of them being that it boasts a range of SEO tools to help you reach more customers and drive sales. Without proper SEO management, however, your organic traffic can be at risk during the move.
In this guide, we’ll look at some ranking-related challenges that migrating businesses face, and the solutions that can be implemented to protect SEO. There are various important steps to follow during your pre-migration planning, while managing redirects mid-migration, and as you monitor the SEO performance post-migration.
There’s a lot to keep in mind, which is why we’ll also look at the benefits of having expert support during Shopify SEO migration.
The Critical SEO Challenges of Shopify Migration
Common Technical SEO Difficulties in Migration
There are some key technical difficulties that businesses commonly face as they migrate to a new e-commerce platform. When migrating to Shopify, SEO issues that need to be handled include improper URL structures, missing redirects, and broken links.
In this day and age, customers expect a seamless user experience from online stores. If they discover broken links or missing redirects, it breaks brand trust. These issues are also virtual dead ends, which can disrupt visitors' shopping experience to the point that they’re put off and leave your store.
Remember that URL redirects need to be created not only for your main pages but also for your subpages and product URLs.
SEO and Technical Integration Challenges
While the aforementioned URLs require a meticulous eye so no redirects are missed, some technical challenges require more expertise. Some technical integration challenges that involve more advanced work include setting up canonical tags, optimising page speed, and analysing crawlability. Handling these factors is vital to avoid ranking loss during migration.
Search engines crawl your store and index its pages on a regular basis, recording various metrics. For example, they might record page speed, bounce rates, and traffic. These metrics are factored into your SEO rankings. Experts who offer SEO migration for Shopify merchants can help you gain insight into how your site is crawled and indexed by Google. For example, they can provide valuable information on aspects that might be affecting your ranking, such as indexing issues or crawl errors.
A dip in SEO performance is to be expected as Google crawls your site after a migration. However, if SEO is handled well during the process, the dip should be small and temporary.
Pre-Migration Planning to Protect SEO
SEO Audit and URL Mapping
Pre-migration planning is key to SEO success. The first step in this preparation phase is to conduct a full SEO audit, document current rankings, map URLs, and identify priority pages. Before you get started with the SEO migration, it’s the perfect time to review your existing pages and remove dead weight.
If your site has URLs with poor rankings that don’t generate organic traffic, getting rid of these now will make your migration easier and have a positive effect on your SEO performance. Create a list of your current site pages with their keyword rankings and site traffic, and analyse which pages should be migrated and which should be redirected to better pages.
Metadata Backup for SEO Preservation
Before you decided to migrate to Shopify, SEO optimization was no doubt something you worked hard at. Now, it’s time to preserve all the metadata you’ve crafted to protect SEO value.
Back up all your metadata, such as titles, descriptions, and structured data. It’s also beneficial to back up metrics—taking note of your current site and SEO performance. This allows you to use these metrics as a benchmark after the migration.
While backing up metadata is extra important for SEO preservation, it’s highly recommended to take a backup of your entire old store. It is uncommon but not impossible for data to be lost during a Shopify migration, and as such a loss could be catastrophic for your business, a complete backup is essential.
You can create a staging site for the new changes, as search engine crawlers won’t index your test site’s URLs until they are published. If any issues should occur, you have peace of mind knowing that your old version is still safe and can be reinstalled.
Managing 301 Redirects for SEO Preservation
How to Plan 301 Redirects
Creating 301 redirects ensures that your old store’s traffic is seamlessly redirected to your new pages. This is crucial for both SEO preservation and user experience. Failing to redirect your URLs to the equivalent pages on Shopify will result in broken links and a loss of organic search traffic. If a shopper uses an old link and arrives at a 404 Error page, they’re likely to bounce. Setting up proper redirects also gives your current customers a smooth transition.
During pre-migration planning, you hopefully conducted a thorough audit of your existing store to map out your URL redirects. You can use tools like Screaming Frog to automate and simplify this inventory process.
During your Shopify migration, you can set up the 301 redirects in the Shopify dashboard. If you’re migrating a larger website, it might help to use an app, such as Shopify’s free app SC Easy Redirects – Bulk 301 Redirects. Follow best practices for 301 redirects, for example, by keeping your old domain live for a transition period, giving search engines time to index your new URLs.
Testing Redirects Post-Migration
After you’ve set up 301 redirects for your Shopify Plus migration, it’s crucial to keep monitoring your store for 404 Errors and test your redirects. Visit your old URLs to make sure they redirect to the correct pages on Shopify.
You can use various tools to track 404 errors and test your redirects. Google Search Console can provide you with comprehensive data on interactions between your site and users or search engines. It can also detect broken URLs, giving you the chance to implement 301 redirects before they affect your SEO.
Screaming Frog is a redirect checker tool that can scan your entire site and automate the process of checking that your redirects work properly.
Shopify-Specific SEO Considerations
Understanding Shopify’s URL Structure
Each e-commerce platform has its characteristics, and to ensure a successful migration to Shopify, you’ll have to gain insight into your new platform. You might even have to adapt certain strategies when migrating to Shopify, which is something a Shopify migration specialist can help you with. If you’re migrating by yourself, you should be aware of Shopify’s unique URL structure for product and category pages.
Simply put, URL structure is about how your product URLs and collection URLs are organised in your store. Shopify limits the editing of this URL structure, which means you have to adapt your URLs to still be SEO-friendly. This will require some planning and restructuring if you previously had a customised, layered folder structure with various subcategories.
Neglecting to adapt your URL structure can lead to ranking drops. For SEO best practices, spend some time making sure that your new URLs are consistent and concise. You can also consider using relevant keywords, lowercase letters, and hyphens rather than underscores for word separation.
Page Speed and Mobile Optimization on Shopify
Page speed and mobile performance are important factors in optimising SEO for Shopify. You want to ensure fast loading times and intuitive navigation across all screen sizes and devices. Use Shopify's Web Performance dashboard to see how real users experience your store through Core Web Vitals. You can also use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights for detailed reports.
Shopify Plus gives you access to advanced caching, which can significantly reduce load times. However, you should also use other best practices to keep your website quick and responsive, such as compressing your images and choosing a speed-optimised theme. You can also implement features such as Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to further improve the performance and speed of your mobile store.
Post-Migration: Monitoring and Continuous SEO Optimization
Tracking SEO Performance Post-Migration
As a platform, Shopify and its tools give you a great foundation when it comes to SEO. However, to ensure SEO success, you’ll need to track and monitor its performance post-migration.
After the migration, you’ll want to monitor key metrics using SEO tools such as Google Analytics. This will ensure that your website is performing well in search engine results. You should also monitor changes in conversion rates, keyword rankings, and organic traffic.
Google’s Search Console is a useful tool to implement before/after migrating. It can help you gain insight into how Google crawls and indexes your site. This allows you to identify technical problems that might affect your Shopify store’s SEO, such as indexing issues or crawl errors.
Analysing metrics through tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console empowers merchants to proactively address issues in the weeks following migration. When an expert performs a Shopify SEO migration for you, they’ll deal with this post-migration maintenance for you, providing you with ongoing support and SEO tracking.
Long-Term SEO Growth Strategies for Shopify
Optimising SEO is not just something you think about during Shopify SEO migration—it’s a continuous process. You want to implement long-term SEO growth strategies. Regularly refine your keyword targeting to keep content fresh and engaging. This requires research on search trends, user behaviour, and your competitors. A tip is to make use of Shopify Plus’ built-in blogging capabilities for this.
Another valuable step is to add structured data, using schema markup to help Google understand your content. Implementing JSON-LD for key pages will allow rich snippets to improve your click-through rates (CTR). Last, but not least, make sure to optimise internal linking by replacing old links that lead to redirects with fresh ones.
Conclusion: Partnering with Experts for a Successful Shopify Migration
SEO migrations can be a complex matter, as there are many factors to keep in mind to avoid ranking loss. Some examples are improper URL structures, missing redirects, incorrectly set up canonical tags, and unoptimised page speed.
Protecting SEO rankings through a migration requires meticulous pre-migration planning, with URL mapping and metadata backup. You also need to set up and test 301 redirects, adapt your strategies according to Shopify's URL structure, and optimise your store's page speed and mobile performance. Professional support from a Shopify migration expert ensures that SEO is preserved and even improved.
Get in touch with a Shopify migration SEO expert to protect your SEO and drive future growth. To stand out in the ocean of online stores out there, you need to continuously keep tracking SEO performance post-migration and implement long-term SEO growth strategies for Shopify.
Partnering with a professional can help you ensure that your online store undergoes a well-managed and SEO-focused migration and maintains SEO rankings in the future.
FAQ
Why is an SEO audit necessary before migration?
An SEO audit helps you preserve SEO rankings so you can bounce back with a stronger search presence after a migration. An audit highlights technical issues that you need to address before migrating and identifies opportunities for Shopify SEO optimisation.
What tools should I use to monitor SEO after migrating to Shopify?
After migrating to Shopify, SEO can be monitored with popular tools like Google Search Console and Screaming Frog. These tools are valuable for post-migration analysis as they help you identify crawl errors, indexing problems, and issues with your redirects.
Can I manage the SEO migration myself or should I hire an expert?
As SEO migrations involve complex technical challenges, it is beneficial to hire a Shopify migration SEO expert. A professional will help you avoid the loss of your hard-earned ranking and traffic, as well as implement long-term SEO growth strategies.
