Moving existing website to a new platform and server

[iprosoftware]

This post is deleted!

[RyanKent]

The server and platform changes in and of themselves do not have any impact at all on SEO.

If you move a site from server A to server B, it makes no difference. This assessment is based on a few basic assumptions: the server speeds are relatively similar, both servers offer similar uptime, etc. If you really want to stretch for a corner case, it is possible your site could be crawled during a time when your DNS change has not fully propogated and a crawler could experience an issue. Even if that happened, it would be resolved during the next crawl.

You can change software version, or even CMS or shopping cart software. The change in and of itself does not impact SEO. If the URLs change, then that can impact SEO. If the new software offers other changes such as the navigation is modified or other alterations, those can impact SEO. But the change itself is not impactful.

The bottom line, you need to determine exactly what changes will be made as a result of this software upgrade. It is those specific changes which may cause SEO issues. Will the URLs change? If so, every URL will need to be properly redirected to the proper URL on the new site. Even if the redirection is performed perfectly, there will likely be some minor ranking drops as redirects do not pass 100% of a link's value.

With the above in mind, there should be some tangible benefits for your client's users from this move. Generally speaking a major software version upgrade is an improvement. Will the site be faster? Will the site look better? Will the site have backend changes which translate into content being added or updated sooner? If so, the benefits of the change should more then offset the minor loss of URL redirects if they are necessary.

[linztm]

Very well said.  Backend factors (beyond the obvious speed and uptime) do not easily influence SEO practices in the least.

However, when changing the backend of an established site, always make sure that you don't pick up any unwanted errors in the exchange.  Simple things that can be easily over looked such as 404s and misplaced 301 redirects can have a negative impact on your new site!