Case study · Industrial manufacturing
A new website, and the rankings came with it
A manufacturer was replacing a fifteen-year-old website. Its enquiries depended on thousands of product and specification pages that ranked well and had never been mapped. This is how we moved the site to a new platform without losing the traffic those pages earned.
Project overview
An SEO-led platform migration.
- Industry
- Industrial manufacturing
- Client
- Confidential
- Solution
- SEO migration
- Platform
- Legacy CMS to WordPress
- Timeline
- 12–16 weeks
- Team
- 3 people
- Pages
- Several thousand product and spec pages
- Risk
- Enquiries that depend on organic traffic
- Monitoring
- Daily for the first month
Expected business outcomes
What the client set out to achieve
A migration is judged by what is not lost, then by what the new site makes possible.
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95–100%
Of organic traffic retained through launch
Every ranking URL redirected to its closest new page, tested before go-live.
Target range in the first eight weeks; compared with the same weeks a year earlier
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100%
Of ranking URLs mapped and redirected
No page with traffic or links left to return an error.
Checked by crawl before and after launch
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15–30%
Faster page loading
The new templates were built to pass Core Web Vitals.
Target range on mobile, measured in field data
Business challenges
How the old site worked before
The old site was ugly and slow, and it brought in most of the company's enquiries.
Pages
Thousands of product and specification pages, many ranking for exact part numbers.
Structure
URLs that had grown over fifteen years, with no pattern and no documentation.
Links
Distributors and trade directories linking to pages nobody remembered.
Previous attempt
A redesign years earlier had cost a third of the traffic.
Fear
The sales director would not sign off a launch that risked the enquiry line.
Proposed solution
What the migration covered
The design was the visible change. The work that protected the business was the mapping.
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Full URL inventory
Every URL from crawls, analytics, Search Console and the link profile in one list.
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Redirect map
Each old URL matched to its closest new page, one to one, with no chains.
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Staging audit
The new site crawled and fixed before launch: titles, canonicals, structured data and internal links.
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Launch checklist
Robots rules, sitemaps, redirects and tracking verified in the first hour.
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Daily monitoring
Rankings, crawl errors and enquiries watched daily for the first month.
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Speed work
Templates built and tested against Core Web Vitals.
Project requirements
What the client asked us for
The request was a modern website. The unspoken requirement, after the last redesign, was that the phone would keep ringing the week after launch.
We joined the project before the new structure was fixed, so the information architecture was shaped around the searches that already brought in enquiries.
What the project had to deliver
- 01No loss of organic enquiries
- 02Every old URL accounted for
- 03A faster site on mobile
- 04Evidence at each stage, not reassurance
Key challenges & considerations
What made it harder, and what we did
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No record of which old pages mattered
What we did
A full URL inventory was built from crawls, analytics, Search Console and the link profile, then ranked by traffic and enquiries.
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A new structure that merged several product ranges
What we did
Merged ranges were mapped page by page, with each old page redirected to its closest equivalent rather than to a category.
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A launch date tied to a trade show
What we did
The launch date was protected by finishing the redirect map and staging audit three weeks early.
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Part-number pages with almost identical content
What we did
Near-identical part-number pages were consolidated where they competed, and kept where each had its own demand.
What we watched for
- Join before the new structure is fixed
- Map from real data, not from the old menu
- Test redirects on staging
- Watch daily for the first month
Development process
Map everything before moving anything
The launch itself took an evening. The preparation took three months.
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Inventory
Every URL collected and ranked by traffic, links and enquiries.
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Structure review
The new information architecture checked against the searches that mattered.
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Redirect mapping
One-to-one mapping, reviewed with the product team.
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Staging audit
The new site crawled and corrected before anyone outside saw it.
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Launch
Redirects, sitemaps and tracking verified on the night.
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Monitoring
Daily checks for a month, then weekly, with fixes released as found.
Technology stack
Crawlers, logs and a very long spreadsheet
Migration work is mostly careful data handling.
Crawling
- Screaming Frog
- Google Search Console
- Server logs
Platform
- WordPress
- Redirect rules at the server
- Structured data
Analytics
- Google Analytics 4
- Rank tracking
- Looker Studio
Performance
- Core Web Vitals field data
- Image optimisation
- Caching
Quality assurance & deployment
Checked before it went live, measured after
Marketing work is only as good as its measurement. Tracking was verified before anything launched, technical changes were tested on staging, and every result was reconciled with the client's own sales or booking data.
- Conversion tracking tested end to end before launch
- Technical changes checked on staging with a full crawl
- Redirects, links and structured data validated
- Copy and claims reviewed by the client's experts
- Reported figures reconciled with the client's own system
Deployment
- 01LaunchRedirects, sitemaps and tracking verified on the night.
- 02MonitoringDaily checks for a month, then weekly, with fixes released as found.
- 03Staged releasesChanges went live in small batches, each one watched in the first days.
- 04Reporting and handoverA monthly review against the agreed targets, and documentation the client's team can work from.
Final deliverables
A launch nobody noticed in the enquiry figures
The new site went live over one evening, and the enquiry line carried on. Old links from distributors and directories land on the right new pages.
The client has the full redirect map and a launch checklist to reuse, so the next change to the site starts from a record rather than from memory.
- Organic traffic carried through launch
- Every old URL redirected once
- Faster pages on mobile
- A documented URL structure
Handed over to the client
- 01Audit and roadmapFindings ranked by their effect
- 02Implemented changesIn the client's own site, accounts and tools
- 03Tracking and dashboardResults in the client's own figures
- 04Content and campaign assetsTemplates, pages and creative
- 05Documentation and trainingSo the client's team can carry on
Success metrics
How success is measured
| Measure | Outcome | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| Of organic traffic retained through launch | 95–100% | Target range in the first eight weeks; compared with the same weeks a year earlier |
| Of ranking URLs mapped and redirected | 100% | Checked by crawl before and after launch |
| Faster page loading | 15–30% | Target range on mobile, measured in field data |
Verified reviews
What clients say about working with us
Verified reviews from our clients, published on Clutch.
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Web Development
Custom Web Development for a Software Solutions Company
We can rely on them to handle almost any task with confidence, as they consistently deliver good results.
Casper Hougaard Jensen
CEO & Co-Founder, Iterator IT Jul 2021 – Sep 2022
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Web Development
Web & Mobile App Development for a Software Development Company
They efficiently organized tasks and deliverables while promptly addressing questions.
Damien Retzinger
Founder, Graycore Jun 2021 – Feb 2023
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Web Development
Website Development for a Software Engineering Company
They have a broad understanding of different technologies.
Eugene Bosikov CEO, Ezibeline LLC Mar 2022 – Ongoing Verified review on Clutch (Eugene Bosikov, opens in a new tab)
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