Content migration project

The brief was to migrate existing content from the flagship website into a brand new website design. SEO was a major factor as the existing website relied heavily on organic traffic — with over 100 pages ranking highly for prized keywords. 

The challenge was to migrate the existing content into a vastly different website layout, without heavily altering the wording or compromising any major on-page SEO factors that could alter the high organic rankings.

Who was involved?

• Myself as Project Lead, SEO Manager and Copywriter.

• A second Copywriter.

• An external Graphic Design agency.

• A Web Development team.

• A Quality Assurance tester

Process

• Existing high priority pages prioritised for transfer — based on pages with search engine rankings between 1-30 and internal traffic numbers higher than 30 views per month.
  
• New high priority page templates tweaked on demand via Web Developers to ensure transferred content fits perfectly into the new design.
  
• Lower priority legacy pages exported into a generic full width main body template — to preserve their original layout and ensure compatibility without micro managing their design. 
  
• On-page SEO factors mirrored from existing pages — such as page titles, meta descriptions, H1-4 headings, multimedia, image file names and image alt text. 
• Intensive quality assurance testing — both visual and technical, with high focus on metrics provided by Google Analytics and external ranking / SEO tools.

Visual and UX improvements

New layout dramatically improves the look and feel of the website by reducing clutter and confusion. Navigation is now streamlined with a clear  'book now' call to action prompt.

Old homepage design example:

New homepage design example:

Content improvements

Due to SEO constraints we were unable to radically re-write existing content during the transfer, however we were able to vastly improve its presentation.   

Old content example:

Updated content example:

Custom news / blogs system

News and blogs were a major source of traffic for the existing website — thanks to frequent celebrity visits and rapid expansion of the company. For that reason, we took the time to design a brand new news/blog system with better visuals and modern features.

Old blog/news example:

New blog/news example:

Results

Improved on-page metrics such as decreased bounce rates, more time on page and deeper navigation from users. No negative movement in search engine rankings, with many pages actually climbing in rank thanks to technical improvements — such as the addition of schema, social media cards and vastly improved navigation.