Preparing Your PPC For A Website Migration

Updated January 12, 2023

Coordinating With PPC

If you’re thinking of creating a new website or a website migration in 2017 then you’re probably not alone. As the drive for everything to be mobile friendly continues, more and more companies are creating new websites to make sure they are fully optimized for smartphone users.

If you’re in the process of creating a new site you probably have a long to-do list of things you need to remember before the site goes live. So, we’re sorry, because we’re about to add another one. PPC.

Managing Your Website Migration

If you’re running any PPC ads on Bing or Google there are a number of things you need to keep in mind before the new site is open to the public:

Change Your Destination URLs – This one’s pretty obvious, but is a little bit more tricky than it sounds. Obviously, you’ll need to update the destination URLs for your PPC ads, directing leads to the new landing pages. But as you can’t have two different URLs in the same ad group, you’ll need to copy your ad groups, then change the URLs in the new groups. When you’re ready to go live, pause the old ad groups and turn on the new ones!

Check your Conversion Tracking – Another thing you need to think about is any conversion tracking that’s live. You’ll need to make sure that conversions on the new site are still being recorded. Otherwise, you’ll lose a lot of data when it launches.

Branding – If you’re using the old URL anywhere in your ad copy, you need to change that. The most likely place you will be using it is the display URL, but it may also be present in other places. Don’t forget to check any display ads you have too, in case the URL is included as part of an image.

Ad Extensions – Another place you’ll need to check is the Ad Extensions. The extension section is hidden away in the interface so you’re liable to forget to look there, but you will also need to make sure that any evidence of your old URL is updated.

Check Your Keywords – If you’re running any branding ads you may have your old URL as a keyword. We would recommend you don’t remove that for a while, as some users will still be searching for the old URL. However, make sure to add in new keywords that cover your new URL and any typos or misspellings you think might come up.

If you cover all of these five points you won’t need to worry about your PPC when the new site goes live. You’ll just need to turn on the new ad groups and switch out any ads/ad extensions that are no longer relevant. Can you think of any other PPC tasks related to a website migration?

Photo credit – Top: Joe the Goat Farmer
Photo credit – Bottom: MyPreview