Summary
Relaunching a website can be both exciting and terrifying in equal measure, particularly from an SEO perspective. While a brand new site offers an abundance of opportunities for new business and organic growth, it is also vitally important to protect existing traffic through tactical planning before the migration. In addition, technical SEO issues post-launch must be addressed swiftly to mitigate any negative consequences that could impact user experience or site crawlability.
Our client, a major player in the concrete manufacturing space, chose Knucklepuck to be their SEO expert and help guide their web development team as they went through the various stages of their site relaunch. Our client required careful management of thousands of URLs throughout this process to protect their existing organic traffic.
Post-launch, our client also wanted to take advantage of the new SEO opportunities afforded by their new website, which offered a much-improved user experience.
“We knew we had a problem with page-bloat and wanted expert advice on how to address it,” explains our client point of contact, who is a VP of Ecommerce. “We also knew that with the site overhaul, we needed to make wise decisions about redirects and other key technical SEO issues.”
“Knucklepuck was referred to us by another trusted partner, and after speaking with Brett Snyder, it was clear that not only did they have the ability to help us succeed from a technical and on-page strategy standpoint, but that they had a team mentality and would partner with us as if they were already part of our internal team – and they do!”
Organic Conversions for Our Construction Company Client
The Solution (Part 1)
First, we acted as our client’s trusted SEO subject-matter-expert throughout the site relaunch process. We did so by providing detailed recommendations through a series of project-based deliverables.
One of these deliverables was a robust Redirect Map. As part of the website relaunch, our client planned to reduce page bloat by consolidating thousands of older pages – many of which did not have ‘SEO-friendly’ URLs – into a leaner structure. To help maintain the existing organic traffic, Knucklepuck mapped thousands of URLs on the older site to the most appropriate URL on the new site. This ensured that users were seamlessly redirected to the most relevant page on the new site, while also providing clear instructions to search engine bots for indexation.
Knucklepuck also performed routine crawls and technical analyses. During one instance, Knucklepuck identified an issue with ‘Soft 404’ errors – over 35,000 URLs in total. These were legacy URLs that contained no content, but were loading as live pages. Left unchecked, this could have had a major impact on the client’s organic performance. Knucklepuck helped the client’s web development team identify and mark these with actual 404 status codes, ensuring the correct status code was communicated to search engines.
The new site launched with a solid technical SEO foundation, protecting the existing traffic and acting as a springboard for future organic growth.
“With Knucklepuck’s help we were able to launch our new site with virtually no disruption to our organic traffic and also present an improved user experience along the way.”
The Solution (Part 2)
With the site relaunch executed successfully, our client decided to engage us in an ongoing SEO retainer to build, grow and sustain organic traffic to the client’s site. Through a mixture of ongoing technical SEO monitoring and recommendations, our client has been able to grow their organic visibility since our engagement started Throughout this period, Knucklepuck’s work included:
- Complex technical reviews to ensure efficient indexation and crawlability
- Guidance on SEO best practices for a new product launch
- Implementing SEO fundamentals such as metadata optimization
- Keyword research and production of informational content
Knucklepuck’s ongoing strategic work is framed by our commitment to being an accessible and reliable partner through regular status update calls and transparent reporting on traffic and conversion data.
The Results
Since the beginning of our engagement, Knucklepuck has built a longstanding SEO foundation for our client whose footprint in the construction industry only continues to grow.
For example, this client saw a 88% increase in organic conversions in the first half of 2024, compared with the same period in 2023.
They also saw a 68% increase in Google Search Console clicks to Product pages and a 70% increase in clicks to Blog pages when comparing Q1 2024 with Q1 2023. Finally, between January 2023 and June 2024, our client saw a 190% increase in keywords ranking in positions #1-3.
Our Successful, Growing Partnership Continues
Our client continues to rave:
“We’ve been able to solidify our technical SEO strategy, identify ways to drive more organic traffic and seize on content opportunities to build our brand. They [Knucklepuck] are a trusted part of our team and also have helped us as we move into new product territory and expand our presence through best practices and keen monitoring of results.”
Knucklepuck is excited to continue driving organic growth for our client through our ongoing technical and on-page SEO initiatives.