Migration involves several aspects. Today, we will discuss a very crucial, but usually overlooked one — SEO. Drupal, one of the most popular enterprise web development platform, delivers its services to industry leaders like AL-Jazeera, URRWA, and Georgetown University. With a skilled & dedicated team of developers, it makes up as a flexible, scalable, and highly secure platform for both small and big businesses. Performing Drupal 7 to 8 Migration can prove game changer for enterprises if they are planning to boost their workflow efficiency, however, the move must be performed with utmost care.
A major concern that looms while migrating is whether the SEO and the content value will remain integral or not. SEO plays a significant role in brands’ online visibility, alongside a huge impact on traffic, leads, conversions, and sales. Failure to keep SEO intact may result in loss of potential customers, sales & ranking.
Therefore, enterprises planning to carry migration work must put content auditing into effect and strategize safeguarding the SEO value on a priority basis. Also, make sure all the modules are updated for smooth Drupal installation process.
SEO Checklist for Smooth Drupal Migration
Perform Website Audit
In order to analyze the performance of current site, it is essential to perform a complete audit of your website. An in-depth analysis include evaluation of every component and how they appear to search engines. This offers an overview to help you manage and improve search engine rankings to your business. Google Analytics is a perfect tool to evaluate the site as it identifies key issues on your top pages and aid you avoid traffic loss.
Read More:- How to Boost Your Website Ranking with Drupal SEO Modules ?
Review Content
Creating effective content needs time and efforts and thus, enterprises must implement all the measures carefully. It involves preservation and customization of the content elements during Drupal SEO processes. Also, enterprises should not remove content by considering it old. Development team should keep a keen eye on old content and find out ways in which it can be updated. Because sometimes, the old content is valuable and can contribute effectively to SEO value. Enterprises must follow all the measures to keep content pieces fresh & unique during Drupal 8 migration. Filter out the content and push them into trash only after retaining everything that is of great value for engagement purposes. Teams can make optimum use of tools like SEMrush, or Google Analytics to analyze URLs and content. The content audit will facilitate in achieving long term business objective.
Evaluate Landing & Transaction Page
The key objective of improving traffic on websites is to generate leads and revenue. To execute the same, keep a tab on the landing & transaction pages and the conversion rates of each one of them on your website. Figure out the approach to improve these rankings, for example, you can check your call to actions (CTAs), shopping carts, and contact-us forms. Make sure too much emphasis is not on filling forms or information in the first step only, that annoyed users leave your website. Executing these methodologies will surely lead to a surge in sales. Further, it is easy to download your SEO pre and post-migration checklist to address any important step.
Make Website Search Engine Friendly
When migrating a website and planning to change the domain name, it is imperative to let search engine know what you are up to. Search engine giant Google offers a mechanism in its search console to inform that a site is shifting to a new address. Google Analytics is another key place that needs some adjustments. The best approach is to consult Drupal 8 developer to install the Javascript tracking code on every webpage. In addition, run a crawler to check whether the code is showing up or not.
Modules to Crawl your Website
Redirect
The Redirect module guarantees that visitors are redirected from old URLs to new URLs whenever content piece is moved. It also creates 301 redirects to make sure URL which ranks gets resolved when a visitor arrives. This module highlights the power of Drupal CMS. It automates what seems to be an active and constant SEO chore.
Robots txt
This module is perfect whenever multiple Drupal sites are running from a single code base. But you’ll need a unique robots.txt file for each one. Robots.txt generates this dynamically and enables editing, on a per-site basis.
Read More:- Top Rated Drupal SEO Modules For Website Optimization
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1.What is Drupal good for?
Well, Drupal is a highly flexible CMS that can be used to create simple websites or blogs, but it excels when customized
Q2.Is Drupal a headless CMS?
Drupal is mature and is a fully ready headless CMS. The Services and JSON:API modules are now in Drupal core. They receive the full support of the core project team. For more information about Drupal benefits, consult Drupal E-commerce Developers as they will offer best solutions for your business expansion. It can handle thousands of pages of content and millions of views each month – and has an unlimited range of development possibilities.
Q3.Is Drupal in demand?
There is a massive demand for Drupal developers as the number of job requirements exceeds the number of qualified developers. With the Drupal 9 released, the demand is only going to rise.
Q4.What is Drupal hosting?
Drupal hosting is any web hosting plan that promises compatibility with the content management system Drupal. All of the hundreds of thousands of Drupal websites require a web server and hosting to be accessible to visitors on the wide web.
Wrapping Up:
It’s not over yet! In fact, SEO has just begun post-migration. It is an ongoing technique that enterprises need to pay attention to enhance their digital presence and boost growth. Drupal 8 is a dynamic open-source software platform to build appealing websites. Organizations that have outgrown their existing non-Drupal CMS must consider migrating to Drupal 8. In case of any trouble with the performance, Drupal Support & Maintenance is always available to guide. However, migrating has its unique challenges, including data migration, and SEO retention.
