Content Migration Done Right: A Smart Approach

This post is a continuation of our CMS Migration Series. If you haven’t read Part 1—we recommend starting there: A Strategic Guide When Switching your CMS

Choosing to migrate to a new Content Management System (CMS) is one of the most complex decisions you can make for your website. But with the promise of a more efficient, flexible, and scalable platform comes a significant amount of planning and strategy. Content migration isn’t as simple as just picking up your old site and dropping it into a new system—there are technical, content, and business considerations that need to be planned and implemented to ensure everything runs smoothly.

With the right approach, content migration can be an incredible opportunity to optimize content, improve user experience, and future-proof your website. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to prepare for a successful migration, highlight common pitfalls to avoid, and share best practices that will set you up for the best transition. Think of this as your roadmap to ensure the process doesn’t just work—it works right.

Preparing for a CMS Migration: Technical Feasibility & Planning

Before you dive into a CMS migration, it’s helpful to understand the technical side of the process. You can’t just flip a switch and move content— there’s a lot of planning that goes into ensuring everything runs smoothly. A little foresight now can save you a ton of headaches later. Here’s how to set yourself up for success:

1. Conduct a Thorough Content Audit

A solid content audit is the first step in evaluating what needs to be moved and what needs to stay behind. Without one, you risk migrating outdated, unnecessary, or underperforming content. Start by assessing the following:

Content Volume & Types
How much content is there? Is it mostly text-based, or does it include images, videos, and other media types? The more diverse the content, the more complex the migration.

Quality & Relevance
Do you have content that’s out-of-date or no longer aligns with your goals? This is the perfect opportunity to eliminate clutter and streamline your website.

SEO Performance
Take note of your high-performing pages. These are the ones that you’ll want to ensure are properly transferred and optimized in the new CMS.

A content audit helps you prioritize content migration and clean up irrelevant or outdated assets, improving your site’s overall quality before you even begin the move.

2. Evaluate Migration Tools vs. Custom Scripts

Depending on the size and complexity of your site, you’ll need to decide between using automated migration tools or writing custom scripts to facilitate the migration process. Here’s how to decide:

Automated Tools
Many CMS platforms offer automated tools to help with migration. These tools can simplify and speed up the process, but may not handle complex content types or integrations.

Custom Scripts
For highly customized or large-scale migrations, you may need to develop custom scripts. This is especially true if your website relies on third-party integrations or unique content structures that automated tools can’t manage.

If you’re working with a development team, they’ll help assess the best route for your site’s specific needs.

3. Reimagine Your Content Model

One of the key reasons for migrating to a new CMS is to unlock new features and capabilities. This often means rethinking how your content is structured. Now’s the time to consider how your new CMS can better support your content strategy and business goals.

Content Types & Taxonomy
Does your current content model match your needs? Do you have overly complicated categorization or a lack of flexibility in organizing content? Moving to a more flexible content model will help your team scale content creation and improve your overall workflow.

Content Relationships
Consider how different types of content relate to each other. Will the new CMS support internal linking in the same way? Are there new relationships that you should be establishing to optimize user experience and SEO?

A solid content model is the foundation for a successful CMS migration. This step can often feel like building from scratch, but it’s worth it for long-term flexibility and growth.

4. Integration Requirements

In addition to handling content migration, you need to evaluate how your new CMS will integrate with other tools and systems. From CRM software to email marketing platforms, there’s a lot of backend tech that can affect how smoothly the migration goes.

Ask yourself:

• What tools are essential to your business processes?
• How does the new CMS handle integration with third-party platforms?
• Are there any new integrations you want to implement post-migration?

Planning ahead will ensure that your new CMS plays well with other technologies, helping you maintain continuity across your business operations, easing the transition, but also maximizing the impact of the new system, allowing you to make the most of your investment.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid During CMS Migration

CMS migration can feel like a balancing act— there are many moving parts, and it’s easy to drop the ball if you’re not careful. However, avoiding a few key mistakes can significantly improve the process and help you avoid costly setbacks. Here are the most common pitfalls to watch out for:

1. Underestimating the Time and Cost of Content Auditing and Cleanup

Before the actual migration happens, there’s the step of auditing and cleaning up content. It can be tempting to think that all your current content is ready to be transferred, but that’s rarely the case. Depending on the size of your website, this step can take longer and cost more than anticipated.

A rushed audit will likely result in:

• Outdated content making its way to your new CMS, which drags down site performance.
• SEO issues like broken links or missing metadata.
• Frustration for your team as they deal with excessive or unorganized content.

Make sure you budget ample time and resources for this step- it’s crucial to clean up before migrating, not after.

2. Overlooking the SEO Impact: URL Structure, 301 Redirects, and Metadata

One of the most critical, and often overlooked, aspects of CMS migration is managing your SEO during the transition. Migrating content can often lead to changes in URL structures, and if those changes aren’t handled properly, it can lead to broken links, 404 errors, and ultimately a negative user experience. Even more damaging, though, is the SEO impact: search engines rely heavily on URLs to index and rank your content, so improper URL changes can harm your site’s search rankings.

But that’s not all. The SEO benefits you’ve built up with your current content such as metadata, internal linking, and established page authority will need to be preserved during the migration. Failing to maintain these aspects can undo years of hard work in improving your search visibility. Mitigate these risks and preserve the SEO value of your site during migration with these tips:

Map it Out
Lay out the new URL structure before migrating to ensure consistency and prevent errors during the transition.

301 redirects
Set up 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones so that any traffic coming to old URLs will be properly redirected to the correct pages, and the SEO value of those old pages is transferred to their new counterparts.

Preserve internal links
Keep your internal linking structure intact by preserving internal links. Broken internal links can harm both the user experience and your SEO.

Maintain SEO metadata
Title tags, meta descriptions, alt text, and other elements that help search engines understand and rank your content should be preserved and carried over to the new CMS to ensure that your search engine rankings are not negatively impacted.

By carefully managing your URL structure, redirects, internal links, and metadata, you’ll preserve the integrity of your site’s SEO during migration.

3. Failing to Properly Test Migrated Content

When you migrate content from one system to another, testing is non-negotiable. It can be easy to assume that everything will go smoothly, but issues often pop up once the content is live. For example, images may fail to load, formatting could go awry, or content may display incorrectly across different browsers or devices.

You should:

• Conduct thorough testing on a staging environment before going live.
• Test key content types such as blog posts, landing pages, product listings, etc.
• Check for broken links, missing media, or formatting issues across different devices and browsers.

The goal is to make sure that everything looks and functions as expected before the new CMS is fully live and accessible to your users.

4. Oversimplifying the Process or Lacking the Necessary Experience

A smooth CMS migration requires expertise, planning, and careful attention to detail. While it might be tempting to take a “we’ll figure it out as we go” approach, this often leads to poor results. You could overlook important technical requirements or miss out on opportunities to improve the overall user experience. It’s easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day tasks, but remember that migration is a complex, multi-phase process.

If you don’t have the necessary expertise internally, consider working with an experienced partner. They can:

• Help you navigate the complexities of the new CMS.
• Assist with technical challenges like content modeling and third-party integration.
• Guide you through the necessary testing and optimization stages.

Bringing in a seasoned expert or migration team can save you time and money, and it ensures a smooth transition.

Best Practices for a Smooth CMS Migration

Migrating your CMS is a big deal, but with the right strategies in place, it can be a smooth, stress-free process. A successful migration requires strong project management, collaboration, and a strategic approach to both technical and content teams. Here are some best practices to keep your migration on track:

1. Establish Strong Project Management and Set Realistic Timelines

A CMS migration affects multiple teams, from content creators to developers. To avoid miscommunication and delays, create a detailed project plan with clear milestones and deadlines. Here’s how to manage the migration process effectively:

Define roles and responsibilities upfront 
Who is in charge of content, technical elements, testing, and quality assurance?

Create a realistic timeline 
Include time for unexpected challenges. Be sure to allocate enough time for content audits, testing, and revisions.

Use project management tools 
Monday, Asana, or Trello can track progress and assign tasks. These tools keep everyone aligned and ensure that nothing slips through the cracks.

A well-structured timeline will keep the migration on schedule and reduce stress along the way.

2. Ensure Collaboration Between Technical and Content Teams

A successful CMS migration is a team effort, requiring both technical expertise and content knowledge. While the developers will handle the back end, the content team will ensure that all assets, from blog posts to images, are accurately migrated and formatted. Effective collaboration between these teams helps avoid silos, communication gaps, and potential issues with data loss. To make sure everything runs smoothly:

Set up regular check-ins between the technical and content teams to address issues as they arise and make quick decisions.

Encourage open communication across teams, especially when unexpected challenges arise. If the technical team encounters issues with content formatting or links, let the content team know right away so they can adjust accordingly.

Effective communication ensures that technical and content teams are on the same page and can work toward the same goals.

3. Adopt a Phased Migration Approach to Minimize Risks

Rather than migrating everything at once, consider breaking the migration down into smaller, manageable phases. A phased approach allows for better risk management, reduces the chance of significant disruptions, and makes it easier to identify issues as they arise. Here’s how you can approach a phased migration:

Prioritize high-impact pages and content
Start by migrating core pages, like the homepage, key SEO pages, and landing pages, before moving on to less critical areas of the site.

Test thoroughly in each phase
After each phase of migration, conduct thorough testing before moving forward. This minimizes the risk of making large-scale mistakes that are difficult to fix later.

Address issues in real time
With a phased approach, you can address any content or technical issues quickly before they escalate into bigger problems.

A phased approach gives you more control over the process and allows for continuous optimization.

4. Keep a Comprehensive Backup of Your Original Content

One of the best practices for CMS migration is ensuring that you always have a backup of your original content. In some cases, this may not be possible—such as when contracts expire or data security concerns prevent it—but having a backup allows you to roll back to the previous version of your site if anything goes wrong. To safeguard against data loss:

Perform regular backups
Secure your content and database. Ideally, these backups should occur right before the migration begins and after each major phase.

Store backups in a secure location
If something goes awry during the migration, a backup provides a safety net for your site’s content.

Keep version-controlled copies of your key content
This allows you to restore individual pages or sections in case issues arise during the migration.

Having a backup ready gives you peace of mind and ensures you can recover from any mistakes that may occur along the way.

Turning CMS Migration into an Opportunity

Think of CMS migration as a chance to give your website a fresh start—like a tune-up for a high-performance machine. It’s not just about switching platforms; it’s about enhancing your strategy, optimizing content, and improving the overall user experience. When done right, it can streamline workflows, elevate your content approach, and future-proof your site for growth.

And if all of this sounds a little overwhelming, don’t worry—we’re here to help. Start a conversation with our experts at Peaktwo to see how a smooth CMS migration can impact your business. Here’s to a seamless transition and a stronger, more efficient website!