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Navigating a Website Migration like Indiana Jones: Ensuring a Smooth SEO Transition #SESCHI
 | Let's face it— at one point in your life you've probably wanted to be James Bond, Indiana Jones, Wonder Woman, or any other number of superheroes. Personally, I've wanted to be all of them…more than once. For some odd, and inexplicable, reason Indiana Jones was always my favorite.
If you're like me, you gave up that life of dodging sink holes and escaping life-threatening situations in creatively unrealistic ways to work in digital marketing. But, Simon Heseltine from AOL and Dave Rohrer from Covario are giving us the chance to be channel our inner superhero again—by navigating the sinkholes created by website migrations.
In their SES session (moderated by Jim Hedger who couldn’t resist a photo-op with the speakers) these two experts addressed the sinkholes created by different migrations, as well as the ways to avoid the potential traffic decreases and reduced ROIs.
Types of Website Migrations:
You can’t very well escape danger if you don’t know what the danger is right? So Heseltine starts us off with 5 main types of website migrations and a few precautions to take when executing:
- Domain Moves: this is when you change things on the same CMS. You won’t have many (if any) permalink changes. With a migration like this, you’ll want to plan as much as possible for a pattern match global 301 redirect. Then you’ll have to move the content to the new domain and set up the redirect (and of course tell Google in WebMaster tools). Lastly, you’ll want to submit new XML sitemaps and tell Google News about the domain change if you use it.
- Multi Domain Moves: this takes place when your site is going from one domain to multiple domains. This happens when there’s no agreement on a replacement primary domain, like Hesteltine’s dentist. This migration will require you to remove all other links except to the new domain, redirect all other pages to the old home page, tell the story on the home page
- CMS Migrations: changing from one platform to another. Create a redirect mapping from the old permalink structure to the new. As much as possible use pattern matching–it makes it a lot easier. Then prep and submit XML sitemaps. You’re only going to put the new pages in the XML sitemaps, not the old ones. If there are pages you’re not going to migrate, you may want to ‘curtain’ them. All that means is you put a banner across the top of all the pages that advertises your new site.
- Redesigns: If all your design is look and feel, you wont have any URL changes and there won’t be much to do. However, you can change those URLs and if you do, you’ll have to add in 301 redirects to send users to the new location.
- Site Closures: Sites close down for any number of reasons. If you’re considering closing a site look for the content that gets traffic that you could serve elsewhere and set up 301 redirects for these pages. For the rest? Set up 404 pages and tell the story of what happened–that the site is no longer there. If you’re shutting down just sections of your site (known as section closures), you’ll follow those same steps.
Pre-Launch: Is Indiana Jones ever without his hat or whip? Nope. He prepares well, and you should too. Before you launch there are several things you should remember to do
- Determine your goals: You want to come out on top right? In order to do so, several things should be considered at this point: platform change/update, legal compliance, do you want to increase leads or sales or conversions etc.
- Determine migration scope: What are your phases? What kind of window do you have? Do you want new features? Pick what you’re going to update and what’s priority, then move on. Draw the line in the sand of when you’re going to stop the migration and stop working on it
- Establish the how and when: What teams are involved? What do they have scheduled and when? Dates are extremely important. When are you going to QA? When is your soft launch? When is your content freeze? When is the very last day changes can be made
- Baseline Everything: use internal analytics like traffic, conversion rates, bounce rates, visits, conversion, typical pathing etc. Then use external 3rd party tools like Google Webmaster and Bing Webmaster tools and Majestic SEO for crawls, errors, indexation, links, sitemap, and other link data.
- Categorize and Document: current URL, future URL, what content is going away, if it’s being reused, if thinner pages are being combined
During the Migration
Now it’s the fight scene. You’ve got your hat, your whip, you’ve got your not-quite-as-cool-as-you sidekick and you’re in battle. Here are a few things you can do to channel your inner Indiana Jones:
- Verify Baselines: You know whether or not Indiana Jones is winning or losing a fight, because you know what success and failure look like, and you keep watching hoping for success. Your site is no different. As the site is launching keep track of errors. Are there thousands popping up? Are you still ranking for your keywords? Spot check thinks. Technical issues like 404 errors, crawler traps, duplicate content pings, server failures, missing files and missed 301s will occur. Know what success looks like and see how your site is measuring up.
- Divide and Conquer: In the latest Indiana Jones movie Shia Le Bouf fights a lot to protect and help Harrison Ford. There’s always some sort of underdog and helper that gets him out of a pickle just when he needs to be helped. When you QA don’t try to tackle the project alone–have help. While you’re QAing your site make sure different people are doing different things. Don’t forget to look at it from different IP addresses to make sure it’s not just your office that can see it.
- Communicate: If you’re having help, you can’t very well be dead silent and not let them know what you need right? Make sure everyone knows when things will go live, when they are going live and how things are going. You don’t want your social team to promote a site that isn’t working.
Post Migration:
You’ve migrated your site–you’ve escaped danger. Now what (other than feeling quite proud of yourself for being the nerdy version of Indiana Jones)?
- Monitor. Does Indiana Jones take his eyes off his enemy during a fight? No, of course not. So don’t take yours off your site. Make sure you look at Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools. Analytics are a great way to see if there are any trends you should worry about and see how your site is doing. Use crawlers (Screaming Frog is a great tool for this) to see what’s going on with your site and if what you expected to happen is there, chances are tools will catch something you didn’t. Keep an eye on indexes and redirects.
- Expect a minor traffic drop. Let’s face it after a huge fight, Indiana is tired. He might not admit it but he is. A migration is a big deal, and for the first few weeks you can expect a drop, but then expect traffic to creep back up. Running crawlers on your site can help you find any issues that could prevent the increase.
- Keep communicating. It wouldn’t be fun if the movie ended with everyone going their separate ways right? So don’t just stop talking once the migration is complete. Keep people updated on what’s going on. The chance there’ll be another project at some point is very high, so don’t just disappear into the ether once the migration is complete.
Stay tuned for more from SES Chicago! We'll be live-blogging sessions throughout the remainder of the conference.
Want instant information? Follow the action live on Twitter @elizalynnsteely and@bslarsonmn.
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2013. | Navigating a Website Migration like Indiana Jones: Ensuring a Smooth SEO Transition #SESCHI | http://www.toprankblog.com
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How IBM Turned B2B Social into a Lead Gen Machine & How You Can Too #SESCHI
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IBM is famous—there's no doubt about that. They’ve been known for everything from innovative products to impressive profits. But at SES Chicago, they're known for their ability to generate leads from social—something B2B companies don't necessarily always do well.
90% of brands say they measure social engagement, but only 15% of CMOs say they can quantify social ROI. Clearly, there's some sort of disconnect that needs to be addressed. Michelle Killebrew and John Lee bridged the gap in their presentation with an IBM case study on how B2B companies can leverage social media for lead gen.
What IBM Did
Killebrew shared a case study that serves as a powerful example of how IBM used social to take their website and social to the next level:
Challenges
The corporate giant was facing several challenges when it came to their digital marketing:
• what to do first
• how to scale
• how to leverage technology to get the lowest CPL
• how to educate extended teams/analysts about acquisitions and vision
• a polarized spectrum of audience needs
Objectives
The company had several objectives for their digital marketing efforts:
- create a digital experience that's optimized for engagement
- personalization of the user experience, sharing and conversion
- drive huge lead volume through paid, owned and earned media
- integrate the latest trends in digital marketing (like more video-content, message amplification through social-media, retargeted based on visitor behavior)
Questions They Asked
Those are quite the challenges, and some ambitious objectives to achieve on top of them. In order to do so, IBM asked themselves three questions:
- Is This What My Audience Craves? The new age of marketing means that you have to target what searchers and your prospective customers care about most.
- How can we Contextually Craft Content to the Lighter Audience? It's all about helping identify personas, and looking at human identification for resonance
- What is going to keep my audience engaged? Focus on key concepts your audience cares about, it's not a library of everything. Help them find what they need as quickly as possible.
What They Found & What They Did:
- People Crave Relevance: IBM linked social to their site so relevant hashtags show up that the user will actually care about
- People Resonate with Visuals: IBM created unique personas on their website based on the needs and characteristics of their audiences. They then gave the personas a human face because, after all, people resonate with human photos. They also included videos on their site that were tailored to the different audiences, making content relevant and visual.
- People Like Quick & Easy: IBM made 'factoids' of interesting statistics that web visitors can scroll through. They designed them to be easily shareable with ready-to-go tweets, and built-in images for Facebook and LinkedIn shares. They took it a step further and put social sharing widgets in email so readers can click to share even from emails. When it comes to mobile, easy clicks are extremely important to users. So IBM made it easy for mobile users to click with big, huge buttons.
- People Like Themes: IBM created 'rethink' messaging customized to each of the personas they created that represented audience roles and their interests.
How You Can Be Successful At Using B2B Social
Lee was up next to teach the audience how they could leverage social media like IBM to increase their lead gen and successfully attract new customers. His advice came in two unique packages: DJs and Twitter Lead Gen Cards.
Be Successful by Being like a DJ
A DJ is trying to take a group of people in one place that don't know each other, a little uptight and a little shy from one place and move them to a place where they're dancing and having fun. As a marketer that's what we have to do. We have to move our customers and our searchers from a place of inactivity to one of activity that they enjoy. There are 3 lessons marketers can learn from DJs to help us do just that:
1. Think ahead. DJs always plan their playlist—what they hear isn't what you hear. Always plan out your content and your messages, be thinking of the offer after the offer after the offer.
2. Don't think of yourself. DJs play what their audience likes not what they like. Publish what you're your audience craves, not what you want. They're the ones who have to act on it, engage with it, and share it so cater it to their preferences.
3. Watch your audience. If no one's dancing, the DJ is probably doing something wrong. Marketers also need to watch their audiences to know what's resonating and what isn't and respond accordingly.
Twitter Lead Gen Cards:
Twitter saw an opportunity to help B2B marketers bring in more leads without spending more, and turn those leads into meaningful engagement in a shorter amount of time despite the challenges of distracted users that take multitasking to the extreme.
So they introduced lead gen cards that show up in Twitter feeds making them clear and convenient. Users no longer have to click away from Twitter and be taken to your site to fulfill an action, it can all be done in the Twitter Lead Gen Card. These cards have several important elements:
• Content Hook: 140 characters like any other tweet that appears at the top of the card. This has to be interesting and valuable. Don't use just a blog title. Take your best tip, your best fact and put that here—make people want to read and look at the rest.
• Supporting Copy: 50 characters to brand yourself and communicate the experience. If you have to email them something tell them that here so they know how they'll get what they want–tell them what’s going to happen.
• Social Visual Impact: 150 pixels by 600 pixels for banner ads. This picture can be text, but be sure to keep it clean. This is a good place for the name of your blog post or whitepaper. Create multiple images for each image you promote so you can see which one works and which doesn't.
• Integrated CTA Button: users click this button and you automatically get the conversion. Best practices from web and landing pages apply to this button as well. Encourage immediacy with things like "download now", "sign up now"…emphasize the now. The trick with these is they don't actually get the download. A box will pop up and say the company will contact you shortly. So how do you work around? Integrate with marketing automation so they get the asset automatically emailed to them with no lag.
• Auto Lead Capture: when someone clicks that button you get the name, handle, and email associated with that Twitter account. Most people don't use corporate email addresses for that, however there's still opportunities for nurture there and people still respond to follow-up emails.
• Engagement: the number of retweets & favorites still show at the bottom of the card.
How to Set-up a Twitter Lead Gen Card
Twitter knows marketers like easy, so they made it super simple to create a lead gen card. Log in to the Twitter advertisement interface, and from the drop down choose the option that says create new lead gen card, and you're good to go.
How to Nurture
Now that you have all the data, you've connected with this person on social, how do you nurture? Set up a program. Consider emailing 24 hours later with relevant information or other things they may find useful. These tend to be opened more often and have higher click-through rates than traditional emails.
Then start all over, seriously. Continue to improve, redesign, and personalize your marketing efforts so it’s not just a one-and-done initiative. Like Lee said, always be thinking of the offer after the offer.
Stay tuned for our live blog coverage of the last day of SES Chicago.
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