Reasons of Organic Traffic Loss after Magento 2 Migration and Ways to Overcome

At Perception System, San Jose, USA, we have had a number of Magento merchants recently requested helping hands from our seasoned Magento migration team. Their main issues almost confined to loss of SEO traffic caused by faulty migration from Magento 1.x to Magento 2.x platform.

Their tone was consisting of complaints about migration agencies, which are for unknown reasons ignore the many vital aspects. For instance, the main issue that we have determined was organic traffic loss in considerable percentages. Therefore, we have decided to educate our esteemed readers mainly Magento merchants who are planning to go Magento migration within a short span.

Dilemma in Dealing SEO Traffic Loss Due to Magento Migration

When clientele come with SEO and other issues for that they are losing their organic traffic we try to determine it. Based on the nature of the complaint whether it is factual, persistence, as well as indicating what goes wrong during the migration so that we can come up with proper fixing.

Unfortunately, the client has no more time to spend in thorough examination/audit of various parameters to determine traffic loss with valid reasons.

Moreover, we are short of pre & post-migration analytics, and other webmaster-concerned historical data that can give us proper insights to do the correction.

Challenges We Face to Tackle Magento Migration Traffic Loss

In due course, we have several challenges to face, such as:

1) Fixing that Traffic Loss is Due to Migration

If the client has Google Analytics installed successfully previously, and after migration, it is a big help for us to fix that the traffic loss is due to Magento 2 migration mistakes. Otherwise, we have to rely on third-party analytics/software services that can provide us historical data at a price.

2) Recognize Affected Pages due to Magento Migration

After verification of traffic loss is thanks to migration, we immediately focus on the ecommerce pages that affected the most in traffic, ranking, and conversion rate.

The modern Google Analytics has all provisions to analyze per page traffic and other parameter changes with historical data.

3) Identify Magento 2 Migration Impacts on Impressions, Clicks, and Positions

We go to Google Search Console if possible and check Google Analytics report that can provide you pages related data for impressions, clicks, and position parameters.

4) ‘Segregate Structural Content’ Issues in Magento Migration

It is possible to recognize the loss in keyword ranking for the site pages by comparing the pre & post-migration period it may help us to fix the structural content issues happened due to migration.

To obtain reliable data, we used to take help of premium services offered by SEMrush, SearchMetrics, and Sistrix.

Once we have a complete list of affected ecommerce pages due to migration, we compare the traffic drop and performance of running the entire Magento website.

Now, we use ScreamingFrog and Deepcrrwal like 3rd party services to crawl the site in ‘List Mode’ as well as ‘Crawler Mode’ by integration in your Google Analytics. Thus, we can compare the data and find the gaps caused by Magento 2 migration.

Causes for eCommerce WebSite Traffic Loss after Magento 2 Platform Migration

Apart from these,

How to Recover SEO Organic Traffic Due To Magento 2 Migration

Before re-launching your migrated Magento 2 ecommerce store, we pass through below-mentioned essential steps to obtain maximum recovery.

We Address Crawling Issues of Magento Ecommerce Site at Post-Migration Stage

We submit all the affected pages to Google Search Console for re-crawling in ‘Fetch as Google’ section. Before the submission, we update the XML sitemaps of the storefront to remove old URLs.

After submission for simulation of fetching the pages to Google, we use Screaming Frog Log Analyzer to watch the behavior of affected pages for indexing, crawling, performance, speed, etc. via weblogs. We also monitor indexation of pages, their rankings and traffic trends.

We Manage Inbound and Outbound Links during Magento 2 Migration

We try to keep URLs of all affected pages as such they were at pre-migration time/stage. Thus, we can manage inbound links and keep their advantages intact for the migrated site. For changed URLs, non-existing pages, and similar cases, we apply proper redirects including 301, 302, 401, and so on.

We also take care of internal links and assure that those should go directly to the destination URLs. We redirect the external links of non-existing pages properly to keep linking and SEO benefits intact.

We Manage Analytics Issues in Magento 1 to Magento 2 Migration

There are more chances to commit mistakes in Google Analytics and third-party analytics as well as analysis software and tool setups. Therefore, we recheck everything related to analytics and expect a recovery of all lost traffic within 90 days of final migration.

Our experiences indicated that most of Magento 2 sites get recovery within the prescribed time frame and start yielding benefits of Magento 2.x platform soon.

We Do Benchmark at Pre-Migration Stage

We recommend Magento merchants to add benchmark data by adding an annotation in Google Analytics indicating your launch date. It will appear in graphs and provide us perfect clues that you are regaining the traffic loss or not within three month period

We Select Proper Time for Magento 2 Migration

We use to avoid pick seasons of Magento merchants and use the slack time to go for migration so we can minimize the revenue loss to some extent. Past data from Google analytics help us to determine high sell and traffic periods throughout the year. Thus, we can select a safe period of at least three months.

We Accomplish Data Migration Beautifully in Magento Migration

Meta Data, product data, categories, orders, customer data, content, and much more need careful attention while migrating from one platform to another. It is true that Magento 2.x platform is significantly different from the Magento 1.x. Therefore, it requires some prior knowledge and experiences to accomplish successful data, content, and resources migration.

We use to take two types of backup of the entire site and its resources on the server. The cloud and local hard disc backups assure us for data security in the case of any mistake, mishap, disaster, or accident.

We Go for Thorough Site Testing after Magento 2 Migration

We test site using ‘Noindex’ tags or block the pages through Robots.txt file. Thus, we assure mobile-friendliness, UX, loading speed, and much more without influencing site ranking in SERPs.

Who Can Help You in Dealing Traffic Loss Due to Magento Migration?

After a thorough reading of the post, you might have realized the following things.

“Only thorough knowledge of technical SEO can save you from traffic loss by giving perfect insights.”

A team of Magento developers with profound experiences in Magento migration only can help Magento merchants in recovery after migration.

Our last piece of advice is that you must look an avid Magento migration team and reliable Magento Development Company like Perception System in San Jose, USA. It has a knack for technical SEO. It will help you in the accomplishment of your migration project. It also can help in the recovery of traffic loss by implementing the right measures at the technical and SEO point of views.

The authenticity and reliability of Perception System in Magento migration are unbeatable. It can give you a solid return over your every penny spent on Magento store migration and development, which is out of the question. Let’ move to ask for a quote and see what the differences between a high quality team and a mediocre team.