BACKGROUND
Stanley consolidated two separate web properties of the Stanley brand into one site. This process was designed to mitigate traffic disruption and improve traffic and increase results from organic search. The migration was managed by Digital River Marketing Services with the organic search strategy, execution, and tracking supported by the BrightEdge seo platform.
THE PROBLEM
A large focus of the migration was on limiting any negative impact to the organic channel: reductions in organic traffic, organic revenue, total keyword presence in the Search Engine Results Pages, or total pages indexed by the Search Engines. There was an understanding that removing a product category from the site would most likely lead to a decrease in all categories, but that through careful planning this decrease could be minimized.
THE RESULTS
Multiple data points were used to track the progression of the Stanley site over time to ensure goals and expectations were met. All of this was achieved through the detailed process of mapping, planning, auditing, and information sharing at regular intervals over the months prior to launch, and now exists as an outline for how a typical migration and redesign can benefit from a focus on the organic channel during such a time. In September, roughly 50% of all keywords for the ShopStanley commerce site were crossovers from the Stanley Merchandising site. Out of all of the keywords unique to ShopStanley, less than 25 ranked on the first page. This meant that the additional keywords the new Stanley store ranked for on the first page of Google were new terms and not just previously ranking terms from the ShopStanley site.
Those first-page term increases totaled a 77% lift in just the 1st month, and by the end of December, a 156% total keyword increase was achieved versus October.
Not only did the ranking keywords increase, but the percentage of keywords at #1 and the percentage of keywords on the first page were doing well by December. Nearly 40% of all the keywords Stanley ranked for were on the first page and over 7.5% of the total number of keywords Stanley ranked for were in the #1 position. From a traffic and business-results perspective, the impact was almost immediate. The site migration occurred in September.
Daily revenue numbers from the organic channel in the middle of January at nearly twice the levels they were prior to the store launch. The organic channel began to see traffic at nearly 200% what it was on the same domain prior to the changes. The effective site migration helped add more than 600 keywords to Page One.
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