Sit down kids and let me tell you a story. The events are all true, but the names have been changed.

A few years ago a musician wanted to update his website. His site at the time was static and all graphics. Even the copy in the website was a graphic image. His ability to update the site was next to impossible and the site had nearly no SEO value. I helped move him into a brand new site built on WordPress. We put time into updating the copy, making sure he had proper keywording throughout the site and inserted the site into his newly created world of social networking sites.

All was happy in this new world. Content was being added. Posts were being shared into Facebook. The SEO value was growing. We even got a comment from a longtime fan who for years had been running a fan site which always had the number one search result for this artists name… he said he was amazed at how quickly we took over all the search results as his fan site was no longer returning even on page one of Google.

Over the course of a couple years as the artist released new product we easily and quickly rebranded his WordPress site with new imaging, without disturbing any of the content or destroying his SEO strength.

The a few months ago the artist connected with another musician who sold him on doing a new website. I informed him I would be happy to review whatever was being created, but please make sure this new “designer” understands your site is in WordPress as you don’t want to lose all of your existing content or SEO. The artist was eager to add some color and moving/scrolling pictures to the site and this other musician said he would do it. Fair enough, I let him know all of that is possible in WordPress and even set him up with a premium theme as a example.

Three months later the new site is ready to launch. They reach out to me because nobody has the server login info to change domain name servers. I quickly discover the new site is built using the free Wix.com platform, not WordPress. Two days later the new site is live and his old site is gone.

What did this artist do in launching the new site…

1. Two years of old content on the WordPress site is gone, deleted. Not migrated into the new site. This content includes reviews, release announcements, videos and much more. Anyone linking into those old stories from another website or Facebook will never find the content.

2. All SEO key wording in the site is gone, overnight. Will you lose your search ranking immediately? No. But, over time it is going to suffer. This means potential missed opportunities when someone can’t find you online.

3. They had been pushing a new EP for five months on Noisetrade, gaining hundreds of new emails. The new site no longer has the Noisetrade widget. Instead they elected to give you a link to a Soundcloud stream for a email address. There is no ability to download from Soundcloud, just stream.

4. They now have two identical sites on two different domains. One is the official domain, the other was a domain with very strong SEO. Now duplicate content exists on two domains with weak SEO.

5. Rather then news being front and center it is now buried in a drop down menu with the artists initials.

Many articles have been written about what you need to include in your website, but very few are written about what you need to think about when creating a new website.

1. Think about SEO. Yeah I know SEO is not sexy and its not something you think has any real value, as in income. But it does! Bad SEO means you are not found when someone searches for you or something related to you. Not being found means a lost fan and a lost opportunity.

2. Think about all your existing content. Everything you have already posted in your website needs to be moved into the new website. EVERYTHING! You don’t want to lose it. Losing it means broken links, poor SEO. It means all the effort and money you invested in the content the first time is now thrown away.

3. Do a site to site comparison. This means look at the old site and the new site BEFORE you launch the new site and make sure you haven’t lost any site features… such as email signup or a Noisetrade widget.

Once this musician launched his brand new site he almost immediately contacted me in a panic. He was searching for his name on Google and couldn’t find any results now… WHAT HAPPENED! He had a big showcase event in a week and people needed to be able to find him… WHAT HAPPENED! I hate to say this, but my first response was… ask your new web developer. He should know what happened, he was a experienced developer right? I “suggested” that after doing a quick scan of his new site he had no tags, no keywords, lost all of his old content. All of the old web pages were now gone. No 301 redirects were ever created. Everything Google had indexed had been deleted. Of course he wanted to know how to get everything back NOW! Sadly that is not possible at this point.

Don’t let this panic happen to you. Don’t wake up and see your career disappear on Google. Moving to a new website is a big deal and should not be taken lightly. It needs to be planned. It needs to be executed properly. There are steps to follow. Someone who has never done this before is not going to know what to do or what could happen. Do yourself a favor, hire someone who can guide you through this the right way. So when you launch your new website nothing happens, nobody notices anything other than a new design.

Feel free to contact Michael Brandvold Marketing if you need assistance with your new website or website migration.