Project work ยท A multilingual hearing care website
Reviewing a multilingual sitemap before a migration
A colleague had mapped the old site onto the new multilingual structure. I was asked to check that mapping against what was actually live and to log everything that did not match, so the discrepancies could be fixed before the switch.
Sections on this page
Scope
The task and my part in it
A hearing care provider was moving to a new website that served content in more than one language. Before a migration, someone has to decide where every existing URL will point afterwards. That mapping had already been prepared by a colleague. My contribution was the review stage, which means I did not design the architecture and I did not decide the destinations.
The mapping had been prepared by the person who knew what was intended. My part was to read it against what the site actually showed and to record where a correction was required.
What a mapping document proves
A completed mapping shows the intended destination for each URL. It does not show that the destination holds the equivalent content or that the language version is the one a visitor to the old URL would expect. Those have to be looked at.
Complication
Why a multilingual mapping is harder
A single-language migration has one target for each source URL. A multilingual site multiplies the surface, since a piece of content may exist in several language versions and each version has its own destination on the new structure. The same comparison therefore has to be repeated for every language version the mapping covers.
Method
How I checked it
I worked through the supplied mapping row by row, opened the pages a row referred to, compared them and recorded a correction where one was needed.
- 01
Work through the mapping row by row
Read each row of the supplied mapping in turn.
- 02
Compare the mapped pages
Open the pages a row refers to and compare what they show, across the language versions the mapping covers.
- 03
Record the correction
Write down the page and what it should show, so the fix does not require repeating my check.
Feedback
An example of the feedback I gave
The mapping itself belongs to the client, so one example stands for the kind of feedback the review produced. On the Contact Us page I recorded that the H1 needed correcting to read as follows.
Recorded correction
Contact Us or Find Your Nearest Hearing Clinic
Feedback of that form can be acted on directly. It names the page, states what the element should say and leaves nothing for the colleague correcting it to interpret.
Reflection
What the review involved
A migration is the point at which a site's accumulated structure is either carried across or lost, and the mapping document is what decides which. Checking it is therefore a substantive piece of SEO work in its own right.
Reviewing an existing implementation depends on careful page-by-page verification, since a mapping row reads as correct until the pages behind it are opened. Useful feedback then has to identify what requires correction in terms specific enough to act on.
The same discipline appears in the backlink work, where the useful output is a verified observation with its reasoning attached and the decision belongs to someone else.
Outcome
Value and limitations
Value to the company
The review gave the team a second reading of a document that had been prepared by one person, with each observation recorded in enough detail to be acted on without repeating the check.
The limitation is that my check covered the mapping as it stood when I read it. I was not involved after the review, so I cannot say what was corrected or what the migration achieved once it went live.