You’ve decided to move your website to another web host, but you’re worried that it might be too late. You’ve already lost traffic! What can you do? The truth is, there are ways to avoid traffic loss when migrating websites. In this post, we’ll cover how to make sure everything goes smoothly with your migration and what signs indicate when something has gone wrong so that you can fix it before it becomes a bigger problem down the road.
Make backups on your old web host
- Make backups on your old web host
- Make a backup copy of your site on the new host and then restore it after migration.
- If you lose access to the file containing your website backup, here are some steps you can take:
- Ask them for help (if they’re helpful they’ll help) or ask someone else in their support team who might know what happened and how to get things back up and running again. You could also try calling their customer support department directly if there’s no one available at the moment.
Make sure your DNS and URL redirects are set up correctly
To avoid losing traffic, make sure your DNS and URL redirects are set up correctly.
- DNS: You’ll need to update all of your domains’ DNS settings to point to their new host site address. This includes A records (for example, www.mysite.com) and CNAME records (www.mysite.com/blog). Make sure that the new host’s IP address is listed as an alternate for each domain in the zone file when you submit it through cPanel or WHM if using Plesk Panel; otherwise, manually edit each record on their respective control panels before you move them over manually with FTP software like FileZilla or WinSCP if using cPanel Hosting Manager
- Redirects: If there are any old links pointing towards other sites on your server, add 301 permanent redirect codes so that they all point back towards where they belong (e-commerce sites might also have 301 “canonical” redirect codes).
Test everything after you’ve finished moving your website
After you’ve finished moving your website to another web host, it’s important to test everything. This will ensure that all of the links work and that your email accounts are set up correctly. You’ll also want to make sure that any SSL certificates are working properly before you publish content online.
Conclusion
Moving a website to another web hosting provider is not easy, but it is worth it if you want to ensure that your site will still be accessible after the move. It might seem like a small thing, but when dealing with such high-traffic websites, keeping things running smoothly is crucial. If you follow our tips, then hopefully we’ve given you some ideas for how best to avoid traffic loss during migration time (and beyond).
