Case Study: A Site's First Introduction to SEO
In the past year I’ve had the pleasure to work with a client who wanted to get more out of their website. After the initial consultation it was clear that SEO had not been part of their website set-up, or their migration to a new domain. This left the client with two sites live, and the old site ranking above the new and improved site.
This B2B site had barely any traffic at all from organic search, so the goal was to improve its’ exposure in search engines, and work on fixing the errors related to the migration.
Reducing migration impact
The first step was to look at how the migration had been executed. The initial need came from wanting a new design for the site. In conversation with the web designer a move to a different domain was agreed. However, the impact from a migration or the correct steps to redirect the domain to the new entity were not considered, and so the company ended up with two live sites.
Furthermore there was no existing tracking on either site, making it difficult to understand the impact of the initial migration. It had been almost a year since the new site was launched, so both sites had been competing against each other for a while, reducing the original sites’ performance.
Implementing redirects was not only to resolve any migration traffic to the correct site, but mainly to stop multiple entities showing in search results for the brand name.
Implementing SEO best practice
After the redirects it was time to start working on SEO best practice. The SEO audit at the beginning of the project had shown that no basic SEO principles had been applied. Keyword research and basic optimisation were added to the site, and this had an almost immediate effect on search performance.
Getting the whole site indexed
While search performance was improving, it was clear that not all pages were being considered for indexing. The design of the new site, while looking great, used linking structures that weren’t visible for search engines. This means that an entire subfolder of pages wasn’t being crawled or indexed.
Adjusting the internal linking structure to a version readable for search engines took a bit of effort, but paid off in the page indexation rate going up to include the previously ignored subfolder.
Unexpected fast results
Most people who have hired or employed SEO professionals will have been told that it is a long term strategy, which it certainly is. This site saw improvements in a relatively short amount of time, with increases in traffic month on month from the start of the SEO work.
Usually this would take more time, and I am attributing its pace to the lack of previous work done; the site was a blank canvas open to opportunity. Further recommendations were made to help continue organic growth, such as improving the user journey through the site, and improving and adding to their existing content to help with E-A-T and their site relevance.
Get help with your own website
If like this client, you are also looking to improve your organic traffic performance, get in touch to see how I can help your business get more out of your website.