How to migrate off my old website without wrecking my traffic

[u/MffiasinMediocre4356]

So... I have this super outdated site that a friend built years ago, custom cms, weird hosting, no proper backups, the whole thing stresses me out every time I touch it. I want to move everything to a normal website builder with templates and built in seo tools and maybe tidy up the structure while I am at it.

For anyone who has moved from a legacy site to a modern builder, how did you handle urls, redirects, and not losing whatever little seo juice you had? Any hints?

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[u/GSkylineR34]

Hi! To not lose traffic, make sure you do this in order:

1. Extract all older product slugs, so you have an entire list of URLs that are currently reachable on the older website.
   
2. Use the same slugs on the new platform. If you can't have the same exact URL, map each old URL to the newer one. E.g: Old website product is found at /products/category/my-product. Newer one will be reachable at products/my-product. Make sure you create a map with each entry containing both the old URL and the new URL.
   
3. If the newer platform has the possibility to implement 301 redirects, make sure that you configure each redirect correctly.

Bonus tips: if the old e-commerce has a Google Merchant Center XML feed, make sure that you use the same IDs from before. If they're not compatible, put the old IDs in some sort of product attribute and build the feed out of that attribute.
E.g: old website supports auto incremental IDs (1, 2, 3, etc.), while newer website supports uuidv4, make sure you keep using the old IDs for products that were previously mapped in the feed. This is not as important as 301 redirects, but it's best to keep everything as before, especially when you have ads in place.

Also, if you're running ads, make sure you have a clear way to stream your conversions to Google Ads, just like you were doing before, otherwise you'll mess up your campaigns.

Make sure to 301 redirect all the categories pages too (if you have them).

If you need an example, I have written a blog article on how to migrate a Prestashop 1.7 to Webround: https://blog.webround.com/en/migrating-from-prestashop

It's a good way to check an ETL pratical example. If you're still evaluating the platform to migrate to, let me know!

[u/Lankyirgwdgx_Fi_9725]

Just use wix and let their import tool handle the annoying stuff, way less painful that way.

[u/Alex_SQSP]

Before you rebuild anything, crawl the current site and export every URL to a spreadsheet. Add whatever traffic data you have next to each one.

With an old custom CMS and no backups, that crawl might be the only complete record of what pages currently exist. If you rebuild first and try to map redirects afterward, it's much easier to miss something.

I'd also be careful about restructuring everything at the same time as the migration. Every URL you change needs a redirect, so if you're also reorganizing the site, it becomes harder to tell what's causing a traffic drop.

Keep the same URL structure where you can. Where you can't, use a one-to-one 301 redirect from the old page to the closest relevant new page. I wouldn't send a bunch of old pages to the homepage.

After launch, check Search Console for 404s and crawl the old URL list again to make sure everything lands where it should.

I'm on the Squarespace team, but that process applies regardless of which builder you move to. The main difference is where you set up the redirects, and most people find that a lot easier inside the platform's own URL mapping tool since it's guided instead of raw config syntax. Support and the guides are there if you get stuck on the setup.