SEO Case Study: How to increase website traffic by 150% after website migration

• Niche: Medical Insurance
• Timeframe: June-July 2021
• Region: United States
• Service: SEO migration

SEO Case Study: Client

The client is a Medical Insurance broker with a sophisticated online platform that simplifies and personalizes the process of selecting and buying a plan. The client purchased an authoritative content website with the purpose of using that content to drive traffic to the main website. We were hired to handle the migration process and future SEO activities. 

SEO Case Study: Goals

The end goal of the entire migration was to:

• Increase the number of overall users on the website;
• Increase the number of visits to the main website from the blog; 
• minimize the loss of traffic during the migration, and even grow the number of users post-migration;

SEO Case Study: Strategic tasks: 

• Supporting the IT team while preparing and executing the migration;
• Supporting the design team while preparing the new blog layout;
• Optimizing the website architecture to properly position transferred content ;
• Preparing new content to facilitating growth in the most critical category;

SEO Case Study: Challenges: 

1. The domain that a client purchased was a lifestyle content website, including categories such as home, money, health, entertainment, etc. In order not to dilute the topical authority of the Health category, the decision was made not to mix all categories on one blog but split all content into 5 different domains (the entire “Health” category was transferred to the existing website blog, the remaining four categories received their own umbrella domains). This also meant splitting the domain authority between the domains instead of accumulating it all in one place. Fortunately, the category that we were interested in the most (Health) was also the biggest one, so we managed to keep the majority of SEO signals. 
2. The purchased website had well-known authors/industry experts working as contributors, often having their own regular rubrics and influencing the EAT in a positive well. After purchasing the website, we did not have an opportunity to continue working with those authors in the future due to the high cost. 
3. The purchased website had many great images that were generating traffic, but unfortunately, because of licensing issues, we were unable to keep them. All images had to be replaced. Entire sub-categories, as well as some single articles, had to be removed because it was impossible to replace them.

SEO Case Study: Team actions:

1. Preparation of technical recommendations and redirection map. 
   1. To make the process of moving painless, we prepared recommendations that included:
   2. some changes to the URL addresses;
   3. changes in categorization/tags for optimal reflection of thematic relationships on new domains;
   4. speed optimization recommendations;  
2. Pre-production website review and fixing errors. 
3. Before going live, we:
   1. Reviewed the entire website and fixed internal linking errors, 404, and other technical errors; 
   2. We also implemented image optimization since all images on the website were new. 
   3. We also created additional functionality, such as ad banners, to improve conversions. 
4. The content plan preparation for a new website.
   1. Since we knew the purchased domain did not have a lot of content (and, correspondingly, traffic and authority) in a specific topic the client was interested in, we prepared keyword analysis and created a content plan for that specific blog category. We created around 60 articles and published them on the blog according to the content calendar. Internal linking and metadata on the blog were also improved to reflect those changes. 
5. Link building.

We started link-building activities a few months in advance to create brand SEO authority. 

SEO Case Study: Results

+157% clicks to the Health category post-migration
+294% clicks in the Medicare section

Overall results comparison

Main domain pre-migration—barely any traffic, website consists of less than ten pages, no history, no backlinks. 

Post Migration after adding Health Category + newly created content: up to 90K organic clicks monthly, a growing trend.   

Health category comparison

Interestingly, the Organic Results for a “Health” category are better post-migration vs pre-migration: 44.6K vs. 115K

Pre-migration results: (44 days since the launch of Google Search Console for the purchased website (unfortunately, the historical GSC was not transferred during the purchase process, so we had to create a new one) until the migration day):

Post-migration results, same category (renamed to “Wellness” for business reasons): 

We attribute this growth mainly to UX improvements, better and more readable page design, and improvements in mobile-friendliness. The old website theme was pretty old-fashioned and not the most user-friendly. 

Medicare section comparison 

Medicare (the category the client was mostly interested in) grew 295% since we added new content in this category.

vs

Summary

The client is delighted with the increased traffic to their website, and we are proud of the work that we did. If you need help with your website, please contact us today for a free consultation. We would be more than happy to help you increase traffic to your site.

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