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Haphazardly replacing or moving a Dutch website risks revenue

A Dutch website migration can take place for several reasons. However, changing the address of your Dutch website entails great risks when you are already findable in the search engine.

There doesn’t have to be a transfer of the website to a new domain, but usually this is the case. For example, when a new domain name is chosen. But also just installing an SSL certificate in a website, is in fact a website migration.

The consequences of a bad website migration:

  1. Website down for a long time
  2. Search results are suddenly untraceable
  3. Search results no longer link to your pages
  4. Orders on eCommerce platforms no longer come to
  5. Resources on the website and beyond are no longer loaded
  6. Links to your pages on other websites and social media no longer work
  7. Your advertisements in ongoing Dutch marketing campaigns no longer refer to your pages
  8. Links, (such as payment systems), and licenses are no longer active
  9. Image damage due to prolonged downtime of the website
  10. The company is not accessible via the website
  11. Additional costs for SEO damage repair
  12. Security risks arise

Restoring organic findability of Dutch search results in the search engines can mean a significant additional investment and can mean a long-term loss of revenue. When an important part of a company’s annual turnover comes from Dutch organic findability, this may mean that a company is forced to lay off staff.

For that same reason, performing a redesign or a rebrand is unwise in most cases. A web designer must be aware of the risks involved in making major changes to a website. Do you doubt the expertise of the Dutch web design agency? Then don’t take any risk and do not accept their offer.

A wrong migration breaks everything outside of your website

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How can I move my website?

Moving a website is done by first making a backup of your website and all content, as it is on the pages. In addition to the backup of your website files, you also want to have all information, such as your texts, stored separately. Put all information clearly in a file and state where it was mentioned on the page.

Subsequently, a large inventory must be made of all link references in and around the website pages and of all (media) sources that are called up at the website. You put the references, in the form of URL addresses, in a large datasheet. The sheet is a ‘redirect map’, in which you map out in columns how all references should be made from the old to the new addresses.

The redirect map is an essential part of the website migration, because not properly redirecting old addresses to their new locations can have major consequences for the display of pages and media on and around the website and can also major damage is done to organic findability and possibly to ongoing advertising campaigns.

When it comes to a large website or webshop, it is sensible for efficiency reasons to have the pages read (‘crawl’) by special software that can extract the texts from the pages for you. This is usually a complicated and expensive process, which absolutely cannot be performed by an inexperienced website migration specialist.

The biggest mistakes occur during the execution of simple, boring tasks, which are often a lot of work to do. For this reason, migration work should not be performed by a website developer without supervision and control by an experienced SEO specialist.

The work performed by automated processes must also be carefully checked for errors. The risk of automation is that there is laxity and that control over the ‘output’ of the process disappears.  

How long does a website migration take?

Preparing for a migration can take weeks, sometimes even months. This is because all steps to be taken must be handled with care. The duration of the preparation and migration work itself depends on the size of the interests, the complexity of the website and the backlink and media profile around the website. Of course, these factors also affect the final cost of the website migration.

Are organic search results important to your company’s revenue? Do not carry out a website migration without engaging a professional SEO specialist.