How to prepare a content migration plan

Last updated on April 17th, 2023 at 12:56 am

Have you ever needed to redesign your website? Or to create a new one altogether? A website redesign doesn’t mean that you want to get rid of your entire web content. Sometimes, you may want to keep some subpages or blog posts. In such a situation, you have to migrate your content to a new place. Hence the need for a content migration plan.

Content migration is the process of moving your digital assets (texts, graphics, files) to a new website. If you want to do that effectively and save time instead of losing it, you need a content migration plan or a checklist if you will.

Plan the successful migration of your content

It all starts with creating a so-called content inventory. It’s a place where you keep all the texts that you want to migrate. Most likely, you won’t want to migrate all of your texts. Some of them need updating and optimising, and some aren’t relevant anymore. The content inventory helps you keep all of that under control. Typically, companies going through the content migration process divide their content into four categories:

1. Stay as is
2. Rewrite/update
3. Remove
4. Need to be added

Of course, there are more things to consider. Your new website should have an SEO-friendly structure so that it will be easier for you to reach high positions in the search engine. If your old website is no longer operational, you ought to create a list of redirects so that your users don’t see a discouraging message saying something like that: “Error 404. The requested URL was not found on this server.” One of the best ways of dealing with this problem is through 301 redirects that automatically direct the user to a correct web address.

Three questions to consider

A good content migration plan should comprise answers to three crucial questions:

1. Who is responsible for what during content migration?
2. What is the timeline?
3. What happens with every old section, text and subpage?

Also, remember to include such questions as metadata, file formats, brand identity elements and links in your plan. They all have to be taken care of.

Monitor the condition of your new website

You decided to create a brand-new website so that it can be better than the previous one, correct? That’s why you ought to monitor all of your website-related activities. This comprises primarily:

• Compliance with Google requirements 
• Possible errors
• User behaviour – continually check how users react to your new website. If there are any alarming reactions like frequent bounces, you need to take corrective actions.

Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console will come in handy here.

A new CMS

Website migration is a perfect opportunity to implement a new, more effective CMS. Find out what enterprise CMS platforms can offer and how they differ from, e.g., WordPress. You can also opt for a B2B platform such as Hubspot.

Ask for help

Content migration is a difficult and multi-faceted process. If you’ve never done it in the past, you’d be better off with support coming from an experienced team. If you want to know more, read the full version of this article on the NoA Ignite website and drop them a line to see how they can help you with migrating your digital assets to a new website.