Content Migration: How & When to Do it Right 

By Shelly Hicks & Erin Schroeder

A shiny new website. A sophisticated new design. New features. New options for patients that improve access to care. What a dream! 

Moving a website or redesigning is like moving a house: You start packing boxes thoughtfully, labeling them by room and cabinet. As the moving day gets closer, all that goes out the window, and you’re just throwing things into boxes at random. 

And then you get to the new house, and you’re stumped.  

This is often how website redesigns and migrations happen, too. It’s time to plan and execute with intention. Like on moving day, surprises happen, but that’s when a thoughtful content migration plan is critical. 

Why websites get redesigned 

There are many good reasons to redesign a website. At Geonetric, we’ve heard many reasons, including: 

• Accessibility updates, making an inclusive website experience  
• Brand refresh, or a new brand launch 
• Consolidated or expanding health systems, clinics, and more 
• Functionality improvements or enhancements, like online scheduling 
• Modernized design  
• New content management system (CMS) 
• Physician or location acquisitions or marketing  
• User experience improvements 

Or maybe it’s just… time. You’ve outgrown your previous CMS. Your stakeholders and web users are expecting more from your website.  

Know what content you have & need 

If your organization doesn’t know what content you have or lacks a content governance plan, as-is content migration is a risky short-term fix. Leaving your content to migrate as-is could result in: 

• Poor user experience in the new design 

• Inaccessible content that increases legal risk 

• Forcing old content into new components where it doesn’t fit 

So how do we get around this? With a content audit.  

The content audit – a careful review of every page and piece of content on your site – is essential. It’s also the first step in content governance. 

One of our favorite tips is to audit and archive content that fits the ROT method: Redundant, outdated, and trivial.  

The goal of your audit is to identify which pages to keep, which to refresh, and which to remove before migration. And if you find opportunities for new content, capture them, too. 

Find your migration team 

Once you have an idea of how many pages you need to migrate, identify internally who you can work with.  

If you’re a solo practitioner, you may be balancing migration with other tasks. That’s hard. Ask a vendor for help or hire freelance contractors who understand content strategy and migration for healthcare websites. 

If you have a team with you (congratulations!), you can do some quick math: 

• We have X-number of pages 
• We expect 30 minutes per page to migrate and proofread 
• X-number by 30 minutes per page = time to migrate 

From there, identify who on your team can be available full-time, part-time, etc. and work the math backward for: 

• Who’s available on the team? What time can they commit? 
• How much time does it take (backward from launch day) to migrate content? Per day, per week, etc.? 
• How will content be reviewed for approval and published? 

Put an asterisk on this topic because migration will change based on a few things. 

Document your migration strategy 

Not everyone is a project manager, but some project management-like documents are necessary for a successful migration.  

Enter: The content matrix. 

A content matrix takes the content audit and breaks it down into: 

• Page type 
• URL structure 
• Staging link (working preview link from the CMS) 
• Status of the page, such as Planning, In Progress, Ready to Review, Done 
• Status of any attachments, including PDFs, images, etc. 
• Migration notes to share with your team or vendors 
• Accessibility requirements, including alt text, PDF links, and more 

The matrix is a sitemap that displays parent/child relationships of pages, so you know where every page of your website will live in the “new house.” 

Be ready for new design pieces 

Remember the asterisk? Here it is. Content migration isn’t just one-and-done. It’s about digital transformation. 

If you’re redesigning your website, you’re probably getting beautiful new colors and components that will improve your user experience (UX) from callouts and carousels to new layout styles like card-based grids or dynamic elements. 

And this is where auto migration can increase your risk of rework and negatively impact the UX. Some, but not all, of the things auto migration can change include: 

• Improper formatting of migrated content to new design components 
• Lost paragraph breaks or improper word spacing  
• “Junk” or unusable code from the source to the new CMS 

It’s important to work with a vendor that can customize your audit to avoid issues or help you fix them. 

When you start outlining your design and components, think about the content you audited:  

• What does that content look like?  
• What content can you break into more visual, easier-to-read components? 
• Is there a call-to-action for each page? (Hint: There should be a next engagement step!) 
• How can taxonomy help you with create once, publish everywhere (COPE)? 

Auto migration opportunities & pitfalls 

You may have heard of “lift and shift” before. It’s a tech term also known as “rehosting.” IBM defines it as “the process of migrating an exact copy of an application or workload (and its data store and Operating System, or OS) from one IT environment to another.”  

Auto migration is a useful solution for large websites of 1,000 pages or more. It can be especially helpful for data-specific sources, such as: 

• Provider or doctor directories 
• Location profiles (such as addresses, phone numbers, basic contact information) 
• News releases 

Keep humans first with accessibility 

But remember: All auto-migrated content works best with human review to ensure proper field mapping and web accessibility practices. 

That human eye includes adding missing or unformatted:  

• Accessibility practices (remove those “click here” links!) 
• Paragraph breaks 
• Headings and subheadings 
• Bulleted lists 
• Content that should exist in a new component, such as a Call to Action 
• Accessibility  
• Schema applications, and more 

For more complex pages, like medical service lines or multimedia blog posts, manual migration gives you greater control. 

What about AI content migration? 

If you’re not sure how to use artificial intelligence (AI) in-house, work with a vendor that does. Some AI advancements can help build the site’s pages and structure with a button click; others may offer more advanced migration options. As with all AI technology, vet the requirements carefully with your information technology (IT) team.  

AI is changing every day. As of this writing, AI can be a useful tool in content strategy and UX. We find that it can help content migration in a few useful ways: 

• Breaking up content on a text-heavy page so it’s more scannable 
• Rewriting content for character limitations or guidelines in design components 
• Moving content from PDFs or documents to HTML pages to make them accessible  
• Editing content to fit your style guide and writing for the web best practices 

As with all AI, prompt, try, prompt again. There is no “done” with AI until you, the human in control, decide that you got what you needed. 

Expect changes & delays in SEO 

Content migrations, whether automated or manual, often involve changes beyond your control. This could include: 

• Temporary changes in search engine optimization (SEO) 

• Temporary changes in page ranking 

• Broken links or page paths (correct with redirects) 

• Delay in new page indexing 

• Ongoing stakeholder feedback, pre- and post-launch 

• Missing media, including images, document uploads, and more  

Preparation with a content matrix or migration map helps identify these areas in advance.  

Likewise, preparing your content for AI and large language model (LLM) searching may require some post-migration content governance and strategy. 

Your website is never done 

Your website should grow and shift with your brand, new functionality, and alongside the changing needs of your core audiences. 

Finally, one of the most useful parts of manual migration is often ignored: it gives you and your team hands-on time in your CMS. Your abilities as an author or admin are essential to the success of a well-published page.  

Ask for help 

Content migration for any website project, whether a redesign or a total change of CMS, is a big lift. Don’t delay asking for help from internal resources, contractors, or vendors to avoid throwing things together in haste, like on moving day. Contact Geonetric to get started.