Seer has worked with multiple clients to help mitigate traffic and revenue loss during site redesigns and website migrations. Although Seer was not pulled in to assist with the redesign and migration for our client in the CPG industry from the beginning, our Technical SEO team worked with the client to reverse the loss experienced post migration.
Problem: Client Saw 26% Traffic Drop YoY the Month After Site Redesign and Platform Migration
Our client went through a site redesign and migrated to a new CMS, in which they changed their URLs and information architecture. Post-migration, they saw a 26% decline in traffic and gap in year-over-year performance the month after launch. They approached Seer to diagnose and rectify these issues.
Hypothesis: URLs Not Redirected Properly During Website Migration Created Critical Site Architecture Issues and Excessive 404 Errors
During the initial technical SEO audit, Seer found the following technical issues:
- 163,198 URLs not properly redirected
- 90k 404 pages from URLs that existed and were missed in the redirect map or directories that were created but never contained content
- Excessive URL parameters created and indexed
- Mass amounts of duplicate content
- Missing/mismatched canonical tagging
In order to solve the issues identified, we needed to work with our client to properly redirect URLs, block parameterized URLs, and update canonical tags site wide.
Action: Ongoing SEO Technical Audits and Log File Analyses
Over the last year, we worked with our client to identify and fix major issues through regular technical SEO audits/check-ups and log file analyses.
- Crawled staging site and identified URLs that were not properly redirected and presented new redirect map to client for implementation
- Reduced 404 errors by 94% (90k down to 5k) by observing traffic and backlinks to determine valuable URLs that should be properly redirected
- Used log file data to observe wasted crawl budget and blocked excessive URL parameters
- Presented solutions to fix faceted navigation and consolidated duplicate content via 301 redirects
- Identified duplicate folders throughout the site and 301 redirected URLs and implemented 410s for URLs containing little to no value
- Updated canonical tags site wide to ensure proper URLs were being canonicalized and indexed
Findings & Impact: Client Has Seen a 126% Increase in Organic Sessions YoY
By rectifying these website migration issues and continuing to provide regular audits and analyses, our client has seen a 126% increase in organic traffic, a 25% increase in organic transactions, and a 30% increase in organic revenue YoY.
Next Steps: Continuing a Strong Client Relationship and Supporting Content Optimization Efforts
Seer will continue to provide quarterly technical audits and log file analyses to address any index bloat, crawl bandwidth waste, and duplicate content issues that arise. Seer’s SEO team will also begin on-page optimizations for thin pages and pages with un-optimized/duplicate meta data.
Planning a Site Migration or Redesign? We Can Help
Let Seer help you prevent issues that can arise during a website migration. Contact us to learn about our pre-migration and redesign services!
