How a Flawless Migration Immediately Increased Traffic and Page 1 Rankings for Elucidat
Elucidat is an e-learning platform that allows companies to build engaging courses for their employees.
Key Results
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Key Deliverables
- Pre-migration support and collaboration with client and third-party developers.
- Post-migration support at weeks 1 and 2, and months 1, 2, and 3 to ensure all new pages had been indexed, rankings were stable and traffic wasn’t declining
- Support during adoption of the new Google Tag Manager container.
- Support during switch from OneTrust to CookieYes consent management platform.
- Set up Google Services and implemented a robust reporting strategy.
A site migration can mean different things to different people. It could mean transferring to a new domain, a total website redesign or an acquisition of another site—but no matter what it means, a migration can easily go sideways if the proper steps aren’t taken before and after the switch has been flipped.
This wasn’t the case with Elucidat, who had enough wisdom and SEO knowledge to understand the fragile nature of migrations.
Keep reading to find out how our migration support and SEO services helped Elucidat steady the ship during their migration which involved a brand update, website redesign including changes to the UX of the site, and culling part of the content.
The Client
Elucidat is an elearning platform that allows teams to create, manage, and release engaging courses for various e-learning purposes. Its course-building platform has been trusted by the likes of Tesco, Coca-Cola, Renault, and Primark (to name a few).
The Challenge
- In-house marketing team needed guidance on the forthcoming migration, as there were many high-value rankings and plenty of non-branded traffic that the company didn’t want to lose.
- With two third-party agencies sharing the responsibilities of SEO and web development, a clear course of action was essential.
- A bloated Google Tag Manager container and the need to change consent management platforms providers meant that there was a lot to consider before the migration.
Elucidat’s very capable marketing team recognised the need to maintain their rankings and traffic while updating service pages to reflect current offerings in the evolving eLearning industry. They faced questions about which pages to retain, how to handle page deletions and redirects, and the potential impact of these changes.
They hired us and another third party for their web development, and needed to ensure that we all understood each other’s roles and responsibilities. Additionally, their Google Tag Manager container needed to be tidied up, or replaced, and at the same time, they had decided to switch from OneTrust to CookieYes and planned to align this with other changes—so yeah, lots of stuff going on!
The Solution
- A proper pre-migration that prioritised pages with traffic.
- Consultation on URL mapping.
- Prioritise major changes rather than enabling them all at once, so as to maintain the possibility of troubleshooting in a worst case scenario.
- Provide post-migration support at weeks 1 and 2, and months 1, 2, and 3 to ensure all new pages had been indexed, rankings were stable and traffic wasn’t declining.
- Provide dedicated reporting to demonstrate the migration’s quantitative success.
Source: Google Search Console
Source: Google Search Console
One of the first things we did with Elucidat was to have a scoping conversation with all parties involved to make sure we understood exactly why they were redesigning their site in the first place. It helped to know what else was going on behind the scenes, what they hoped to achieve from this migration, and how they would measure its success. This Q&A session allowed us to flag potential issues before anyone was committed to a solution.
Elucidat had plenty of spreadsheets detailing which parts of the site would remain, which would be culled, which were their ‘high value’ pages, etc. We also had a spreadsheet focusing specifically on organic traffic, and by combining our data, we made sure nothing slipped through the cracks.
We advised them to stagger their various housekeeping exercises. They ended up moving from OneTrust to CookieYes roughly one month before their launch, which we helped test to make sure there were no sudden flat-lines in Google Analytics. They created a brand new Google Tag Manager container and extensively tested it ahead of time with our digital analytics support. When they launched the new site, everything went smoothly without conflicts or panics.
Our post-migration support phase included catching any pages that had not been redirected before Google stopped ranking the previous URLs. We monitored all their page rankings and made sure that their new sitemap was getting indexed at a reasonable rate.
Our dedicated dashboard showed them that they were not only retaining their previous levels of traffic, but had very quickly seen an impressive increase.
Source: SE Ranking. Target keyword and Google position shown.
The Results
- A successful SEO migration
- All previous page 1 rankings retained
- 4 new page 1 rankings
- Average increase of 11 positions over the 16 target keywords.
- 4% increase in organic clicks
- 8% increase in non-branded organic clicks
Elucidat’s migration went off without a hitch. In fact, it even saw a surge in traffic soon after the migration, which is usually unheard of. In our experience, this was one of the smoothest SEO migrations ever.
Not to toot our own horn or anything, but our migration process has been polished, fine-tuned, and tested enough times that we can recognise when things go well. We tip our hats to Elucidat, whose pragmatic approach and foresight contributed greatly to their migration success.
Other Wins Along the Way
- 68% increase in ICP MQLs
Source: Looker Studio
Although not explicitly part of the remit of the migration, more leads should always be celebrated.
Reporting on this can be tricky due to lead times and exact date ranges, but the closest we can get is a Q2 vs Q1 comparison, which showed a 68% increase in ICP MQLs, or marketing qualified leads who met the criteria of their ideal customer profile.
That’s a win-win-win-win-win-win-win situation.
See more results
Key Deliverables
- Pre-migration support and collaboration with client and third-party developers.
- Post-migration support at weeks 1 and 2, and months 1, 2, and 3 to ensure all new pages had been indexed, rankings were stable and traffic wasn’t declining
- Support during adoption of the new Google Tag Manager container.
- Support during switch from OneTrust to CookieYes consent management platform.
- Set up Google Services and implemented a robust reporting strategy.
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