Certainly were unsure how to maintain a strong digital presence following a rebrand and website migration.
But Klint was able to mitigate loss in organic reach by implementing a strategy that allowed Certainly to migrate their SEO equity along with their brand assets.
Within a month, Certainly had regained their Domain Authority and continued to grow organically as a result.
The Client
Certainly provides conversational AI chatbot solutions for clients in the eCommerce and customer service space.
Their innovative chatbots optimize customer experience by providing a superior UX, and solving customer issues 24/7. Certainly also maximize eCommerce conversion rates and customer satisfaction with conversation flows based on zero-party data about customer behavior and intent.
Certainly’s chatbots have been incorporated by global brands such as Carlsberg, Trustpilot, Booking.com, and Daniel Wellington.
The Problem
Prior to working with Klint, Certainly were anticipating a significant drop-off in organic traffic associated with the move to a new website.
By mapping Certainly’s website architecture, then creating and executing on a flowplan for the migration, Klint was able to save Certainly’s SEO equity from being lost, maintaining their domain authority and organic traffic.
Klint’s Solution
Klint began by assessing the scope of the project, discovering that there were two key factors that complicated the migration:
- Certainly had two domains (.ai and .co) that needed to be consolidated onto a single website (Certainly.io).
- Certainly was changing CMS, from WordPress to a custom site built with react.js.
The switch to a custom-built react.js site meant that there was no standardized process to follow using a single platform, and few established best practices for such migrations exist.
Certainly’s secondary site (.co) was already set up to redirect to their main site (.ai), however, it was determined that a 3-link redirect (.co > .ai > .io) would reduce the authority of those redirects significantly.
This meant that the website architecture of both sites had to be carefully mapped, each page’s value determined, and all valuable assets manually redirected, leaving a lot of room for error, and thus requiring a keen eye for detail.
Once the structure of Certainly’s sites were mapped – the SEO value of each page was ascertained by reporting historic page views, organic sessions, backlinks, and value of keywords that the page accrued.
Recommendations were then made regarding which pages should be redirected (301 redirect) and which should be deleted (404 remove).
This streamlined the process significantly, allowing Certainly to shed much of the superfluous content on their site, aligning with their rebranding goals.
Once the new website had been created, Klint used 301 redirects to redirect all pages with SEO equity from .ai and .co directly to appropriate pages on Certainly.io (even if the original page had not been recreated).
Klint was then able to insert noindex code into pages on the new site that were likely to compete internally for keywords, and canonical tags for duplicate pages.
These actions reduced the risk of keyword cannibalization once the new site was crawled, and ensured that search engines understood which pages were most important for Certainly’s audience.
Finally, Klint was able to sync Certainly’s tracking and analytical software (such as Google Analytics), connecting the pre-and post-migration data streams to ensure that no data was lost during the transfer.
The Results
If Klint hadn’t inserted the 301 redirects correctly, Certainly would have lost all the organic authority they had built up, starting again from zero. This left little room for error, and the possibility of severe consequences from an SEO perspective.
However, having prepared a workflow for the website migration and executed on much of the recommendations prior to launch, Certainly’s SEO equity was maintained and their organic traffic remained constant.
Certainly experienced minimal loss in factors affecting their SEO equity (such as backlinks), due to the 301 redirect architecture that Klint established.
Within 30 days of launch, Certainly.io had regained its extensive backlink profile measured by common tracking software.
This safeguarded Certainly’s domain authority, ensuring a consistent flow of organic traffic to Certainly’s site, thus providing stability throughout their rebranding phase.
Klint’s synchronization of Certainly’s data streams also allowed them to track their traffic against what it had been previously (as well as other business-critical KPIs such as conversions, sign-ups, free trials, etc).
Ultimately, the establishment of a website with a strong digital presence provided a platform to build out from following the rebranding, boosting the success of assets such as Google ads that would not have been possible with a completely new domain.
What Certainly Said
“Certainly needed to rebrand, and with that we developed a new website to showcase the new functionalities that our platform provided. The problem was that we didn’t want to lose all the hard work we’d put into building our brand until that point.
This was especially relevant for the digital aspects of the rebranding. Our SEO strategy had been gaining traction and we wanted to continue that momentum. We enlisted Klint to oversee website migration from an SEO perspective, with the goal of preserving our Domain Authority.
We were impressed by both the process and the results. The Klint team was meticulous in its tracking and execution of our assets to the new site.
As a result, we were able to quickly restore our Domain Authority to that prior to the rebrand. More than this, we were also able to maintain the consistency of our analytic platform, which helped us immensely in monitoring our success moving forward. Great job Klint!”
Beatrice Carraro – Head of Brand and Communications, Certainly
Do you need help with a website relaunch?
Are you worried about how your strategic objectives could impact your digital presence?
Klint can provide an assessment of the risks to your organic reach and help build out a strategy that takes into account every aspect of your technical SEO.
