Case Study: How a UK Agency Streamlined Website Migration

Agency

Mr Digital is a UK-based, data-driven, digital marketing agency that assists small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) achieve substantial growth and ROI. They offer a comprehensive suite of services, including SEO, digital advertising, content creation and social media management. The agency also crafts custom strategies for businesses across various industries.

To confront and solve digital marketing problems effectively, Mr Digital uses SE Ranking tools. These tools help the agency:

• Optimize link-building strategies
• Conduct thorough website audits
• Improve on-page elements
• Create detailed SEO performance reports
• Etc.

Ross Crawford

Managing Director at Mr Digital

We use SE Ranking to overcome many SEO-related challenges, from researching keywords to conducting granular analyses of various client-related issues that ultimately help us save a significant amount of time and streamline processes.

Client

Premiere Klasse is a family-owned kitchen and bathroom showroom business based in Ascot and Basingstoke, UK. With a unique blend of carpentry, plumbing, and electrical expertise, they specialize in: 

• Conducting precise technical surveys
• Designing innovative layouts
• Professionally installing custom kitchens and bathrooms 

The company initially partnered with Mr Digital to boost visitor traffic to their showroom. The agency then devised a robust custom SEO plan that propelled Premiere Klasse into the top 5 search results on Google for their target keywords. 

But Premiere Klasse soon presented Mr Digital with a different, but no less challenging, request. They had a Squarespace-powered website but wanted to migrate to WordPress. 

Although Squarespace was easy to use, its customization limitations prompted this move. Premiere Klasse sought a sophisticated website that could accurately reflect their commitment to superior service, exceptional craftsmanship, and exclusive quality brands. WordPress’s extensive customization features and greater variety of plugins made it the ideal platform to enhance Premiere Klasse’s online presence and effectively reach its target audience.

Nithin David

Senior SEO Analyst at Mr Digital

As a business considering platform migration, you should choose the platform wisely by considering your business and needs. For example, if we are in the business of selling certain products, we can choose an e-commerce platform. In our case, where we were not selling anything, WordPress was the best choice for us as it gave us a wide range of options and was easy to navigate.

The company was aware of possible issues, so they asked Mr Digital to create and implement a migration plan that would have minimal impact on Premiere Klasse’s website SEO performance and effectiveness.

Goals

Mr Digital’s primary objective was to ensure a smooth website migration for Premiere Klasse, but they also aspired to improve their website’s SEO performance. Their focus was to: 

• Ensure the migration didn’t negatively affect current keyword rankings.
• Prevent any potential decline in organic traffic resulting from the migration.
• Address technical issues and protect the migrated website’s performance. 
• Selectively preserve existing backlinks, media files, and content while removing some outdated blog posts.
• Optimize existing keywords and content to suit the new website’s requirements.

Steps taken to reach these goals

Establishing keyword rankings

Using SE Ranking’s Keyword Rank Tracker, the Mr Digital team diligently recorded the current rankings for all of Premiere Klasse’s keywords, including their focus keywords.

They documented each position to establish a comprehensive baseline for comparison with post-migration results. This ensured that no critical keyword placements were lost.

Analyzing organic traffic

Next, Mr Digital examined pre-migration organic traffic. To do this, the agency integrated the client’s Google Analytics data with SE Ranking’s platform for the project. This allowed them to access essential traffic metrics on a unified dashboard, complete with clear charts and graphs. 

The agency documented the volume of Premiere Klasse’s website visitors, capturing screenshots of traffic charts to maintain a visual record. These visuals served as a reference for easy before-and-after comparisons following the migration.

Backing up backlinks

Mr Digital understood that backlinks play a crucial role in maintaining a site’s SEO performance. With Backlink Checker’s help, they identified, listed and exported approximately 400 backlinks from 100 different referral domains. They identified 32 broken links.

The team took thorough measures to back up valuable backlinks, ensuring they remained secure during migration.

Archiving content and metadata

Then, Mr Digital used SE Ranking’s Website Audit tool to crawl all the pages on the old site. With the help of the Crawled Pages report, the team compiled a list of website pages along with crucial SEO elements, including:

• Meta title
• Meta description
• H1 and H2 tags
• Images
• Internal inlinks
• Internal outlinks
• External outlinks
• Etc.

The team then recorded all of this data to prevent the loss of vital on-page SEO data during the migration, enabling its use for optimizing the new site.

Optimizing the post-migration website

After completing the migration to WordPress, the team ensured that every keyword for which the site previously ranked was optimized on the new platform. This process involved:

• Creating a backup of metadata from the old site.
• Adding all the metadata to the new site manually using the YOAST SEO plugin.
• Adding image texts for all images from the backup.
• Creating 301 redirects for old pages that weren’t used on the new site.
• Adding internal links that were used on the old site.

The keywords used to optimize the client’s content included:

• bathroom supply stores
• bathrooms Basingstoke
• kitchen showrooms Berkshire
• kitchen showrooms Berkshire
• bathrooms Winchester
• bespoke kitchens Hampshire
• luxury kitchens Hampshire
• etc.

Mr Digital used SE Ranking’s Website Audit tool, specifically the Crawled Pages report, to simplify the optimization process. By using filters, the team identified pages that needed to be fixed and then addressed these issues. This improved the website’s overall performance post-migration. 

They even extended this process to the client’s blog pages to preserve and enhance keyword relevancy. 

Comparing traffic before and after

To gauge the success of their efforts, Mr Digital compared the website’s traffic before and after the migration. They backed this with screenshots taken during the initial stage. Through SE Ranking’s Analytics & Traffic tool and GA4 integration into the project, they evaluated the impact of the migration and their SEO strategies. This ensured that the transition was not only seamless but also beneficial.

Results

Mr Digital’s focused and strategic approach, backed by the power of SE Ranking, yielded impressive results for Premiere Klasse:

• Technical health improvements 

The migration went beyond preserving SEO attributes; it also enhanced the overall technical health of the site. By addressing critical technical KPIs, including issues like redirects, broken pages, page loading speeds and missing tags, Mr Digital elevated the website’s technical health score from 62 to 76.

• Enhanced keyword rankings 

Mr Digital also did more than simply retain the ranking positions of Premiere Klasse for their target keywords. They even helped improve many of them:

This increased visibility placed Premiere Klasse more prominently in front of their target audience, resulting in higher quality leads.

Mr Digital’s meticulous planning paid off, as Premiere Klasse experienced a noticeable increase in organic traffic: 

• Sessions increased by 676.
• Users increased by 976.
• Page views increased by 910.

These statistics indicated not only the successful retention of their previous audience but also the acquisition of new visitors, amplifying their online presence.

Coupled with the robust capabilities of SE Ranking, Mr Digital’s strategic approach ensured that Premiere Klasse not only transitioned smoothly from Squarespace to WordPress but also experienced a surge in its online performance metrics. These results underscored Mr Digital’s reputation for delivering top-tier SEO solutions, even in challenging scenarios like website migrations.

Takeaways

Mr Digital made ample use of SE Ranking’s powerful toolset. They were successful in executing the website migration project for Premiere Klasse, underscoring the platform’s value in achieving SEO goals.

Website migration can be a complex process fraught with risks of traffic loss and SEO impacts. Nevertheless, Mr Digital’s successful collaboration with Premiere Klasse highlights how expertise combined with powerful tools can simplify this task, ensuring uninterrupted SEO performance during the transition. 

Here are some actionable tips to help agencies succeed in assisting clients with platform migration:

• Choose the platform wisely: Select a platform that aligns with your client’s business needs. Consider factors like customization options, ease of navigation, and compatibility with your client’s goals.
• Meticulously manage redirections: Ensure that all redirects work correctly to prevent user experience deterioration and SEO disruptions, maintaining your client’s traffic and rankings.
• Monitor key metrics: After migrating, keep a close eye on the following two core metrics: traffic and conversion rates. Monitoring these changes will help gauge the success of your migration efforts and allow for data-driven adjustments when needed.
• Content optimization: Pay attention to critical elements such as meta titles, meta descriptions, header tags and image alt text. Optimizing these elements is crucial for maintaining and enhancing SEO performance on the new platform.

Whether you’re contemplating a website migration or assisting a client through one, SE Ranking offers valuable support. Dive into this meticulous process with SE Ranking by your side, or explore our complete guide on successful website migration. Additionally, you can kickstart your 14-day free trial to see for yourself how these tools make migrations smoother and more SEO-friendly.