content audits for seo & site migration: picking a website up on your back and moving it
DESCRIPTION
Once I was tasked as part of a team moving a large Public Courthouse to a new location. It's something I'll always remember, and I'm reminded of it every time I'm involved in the migration of a new site to a new domain. Success is in the planning, and in successfully tackling small details. First question I asked everyone is, "How many of you have never moved to a new home? Moving a courthouse is a whole lot more work." No one raised their hand. They can related to the challege.TRANSCRIPT
Bill Slawski
Go Fish Digital
Tysons Corner Search Engine Marketing Meetup
December 10, 2013
Content Audits for SEO & Site Migration: Picking a Website Up
On Your Back and Moving It.
“What ever you are creating – be it a design, a product or a painting, if you wish it be successful, never forget that you are creating it for the benefit or the use of people.”
- Ron Wayne, Co-Founder of Apple Computers- http://p.barker.dj/applefounder
Understand changes/pain points Anticipate changesUse Helpful ToolsDon’t transport unneeded assetsExplore changes before a final moveElicit Feedback
Lessons Covered in This Presentation
In 2003, I was part of a team charged with moving a busy public building 5 blocks down the street
Architecture as an Analogy
Moving Frightened Us
The move ended
up going well, but
the planning
behind it reminds
me of the
planning that
goes into moving
a website to a
new domain, or
moving it in
rankings in
search engines in
significant ways.
Why We Moved the Court
There were a
number of pain
points that forced
us to move,
including no room
for growth,
inadequate
electrical
systems, unsafe
transportation of
defendants, little
storage room.
We were moving into a building with Family Court!
While we were the
highest level trial
Court in the State,
one of our biggest
concerns about the
move was that we
would be in the same
building with Family
Court, where cases
involving custody
and visitation issues
were highly
emotionally charged.
Unfortunately, that
concern ended up
being warranted.
The Key to a Successful Move was Careful Planning
Audit all your (Digital) Assets – Decide what stays, what moves, what gets changed or upgraded.
Don’t Transport Unneeded Assets
Test Changes in a Safe Environment
E-Courtroom was set up and tested in Old Court House
Field Trip to Annapolis Maryland Court House where the first Audio Digital Courtrooms where
set up court wide
Learn from Others
Elicit Input from Everyone
Know your audiences, listen to them, find out what they really need and try to improve things for everyone
Header Checker
http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php
Often for a quick check on error handling (404) and Canonicalization (301) re: subdomains
Xenu Link Sleuth
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
Check Broken Links, Redirects, and SiteStructure
Screaming Frog Web Crawler
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
I like this program because it makes it very easy to create a multi-sheet contentInventory for a site, to track different digital assets
DeepCrawl
http://deepcrawl.co.uk/
An Enterprise levelCrawler with an EnterpriseLevel price tag. It makes bigger sites easily manageable.
Builtwith
http://builtwith.com/
Allows for a quick lookinto the technologiesused on a site
Google PageSpeed Insights
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Provides suggestions on issues to help speed upa site and information on how to make those changes
Structured Data Testing Tool
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
Make sure thatSchema Meta DataIs set up correctly
Image SEO
http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/alt/
Check File Name,Image Size, and Alt Text quickly
Web Developer Toolbar
http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/
Swiss Army Knife of Tools – lets you view pages without images, without CSS, without cookies, and view different elements on a page as overlays
Google Webmaster Tools
Allows Access to data about a sitethat can’t be retrieved elsewhere
You see a Courthouse – I see a Challenge
Bill SlawskiTwitter: @bill_slawskiBlog: http://www.seobythesea.comSite: http://gofishdigital.com/LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/slawskiGooglePlus:
https://plus.google.com/+BillSlawski/
Thank You