A migration plan is usually about URLs: what goes where. That is necessary, but it is a technical question. The substantive one rarely comes up: will we still cover the same topics as we do now?
In a redesign or a replatform, pages almost always fall by the wayside. Not out of neglect, but because the new structure does not accommodate them. There is no place for that one in-depth explanation, so it goes. Six months later traffic is suddenly missing on a topic you used to rank well for.
What a GAP analysis does
A GAP analysis puts two sets side by side and shows what is in one and not the other. In a migration those are your old and your new site. In an acquisition they are your site and that of the acquired company.
You look at three levels:
- Topics — which themes does one cover and the other not
- Proposition — which services or products are explained, and which are not
- Depth — where does one paragraph stand against a full page
That third level gets skipped most often and often yields the most. Two sites can cover the same topic, but if one gives it three sentences and the other three pages, that is not overlap — it is a gap.
Why beforehand, not after
Do the analysis beforehand and a gap is a choice: we take this topic with us, or we deliberately let it go. Do it afterwards and it is a loss you have to repair — and repairing costs more than carrying across.
—A page you carry through the migration keeps its history and its links. The same page rewritten six months later starts from zero.
In an acquisition it counts double
If you acquire a company and bring the sites together, something else comes into play. The acquired company may have built authority on topics you say nothing about. That is precisely the value you paid for.
Without a GAP analysis that content disappears in the merge, because it does not fit your structure. You have then paid for a position and gone on to clear it away yourself.
How to run one
- 1Build a complete list of URLs with their main topic, for both sites
- 2Group those topics into themes, not into individual keywords
- 3Put the themes side by side and mark what is missing on either side
- 4Weigh each gap: how much traffic and how many links hang off it
- 5Decide per gap: carry across, rewrite or let go
Steps one and two are the most work and the least interesting. Step five is where the judgement sits. Our Benchmark Agent handles the first four, so your energy is left for the last.