Growing Performance through International Multi-Domain Migration

The Challenge

A global investment management firm came to us with a challenge. They wanted to consolidate all of their EMEA domains into a single .com domain. While each country site was broadly similar to each other they had, over time, diverged, meaning, their website structures and content differed from country to country. 

Our challenge was to manage the technical aspects of the migration to provide a more cohesive experience for users across EMEA and to make website management tasks easier for the client.

In addition to this challenge, we were tasked with continuing the growth of their organic performance in their  competitive niche. This challenge was heightened due to the ongoing  migration project.

Solution

We created a general migration plan so that each migration would be conducted in the same way each time, in each country.

1. First we conducted a risk analysis to understand which content had SEO value and  which content could be culled.
2. Then, we mapped the local keyphrases to the proposed structure, using rules to format on page elements such as page titles and meta descriptions.
3. Once each new site was available in the staging environment we then conducted an audit to ensure that all technical elements were correct. This included a review of internal links and hreflang to ensure all new URLs were reflected.
4. Prior to each launch we carried out a full redirect mapping to ensure that users (and search engines) would be directed to the most relevant pages.
5. After each launch we conducted another audit to ensure all technical recommendations had been carried over.

Impact

Over a period of 3 years, tens of migrations were completed with zero disruption to users. Our localisation and optimisation efforts also helped to drive an increase in performance during this period. 

• 44% increase in top 10 rankings
• 162% increase in YoY organic traffic
• 10+ sites migrated