Website Migration
Subdomain Migration to improve on-site SEO & UX for RYOBI
How we were able to implement a subdomain migration strategy that increased keyword rankings and improved search engine visibility for a leading power tool manufacturer
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OVERVIEW
RYOBI is a manufacturer of power tools and outdoor equipment. With its global online presence, RYOBI came to us hoping to move the international versions of their website from several ccTLD’s (country code top level domain’s) to a shared gTLD (global top level domain) to help improve their website’s SEO performance.
Their aim with this move was to consolidate their domains to make it easier for customers to find information on product lines due to the shared ranking signals associated with a single domain. However, they also had many subdomains that they wanted to keep in place while moving the main site over.
The Client
We started off by working with RYOBI’s web developers to suggest a new site structure, which would allow them to easily manage content across in a single gTLD. To do this, we first had to decide on the URL that would be used to store the subdirectories, making sure it would tie into the redirects that needed to be set up and that it was able to include the language/country code.
Our prior experience completing successful website migrations allowed us to set aside clear goals and timeline targets for the project, meaning we were able to clearly communicate our progress to RYOBI at every stage of the migration.
The Migration Process
We started off by working with RYOBI’s web developers to suggest a new site structure, which would allow them to easily manage content across in a single gTLD. To do this, we first had to decide on the URL that would be used to store the subdirectories, making sure it would tie into the redirects that needed to be set up and that it was able to include the language/country code.
Our prior experience completing successful website migrations allowed us to set aside clear goals and timeline targets for the project, meaning we were able to clearly communicate our progress to RYOBI at every stage of the migration.
Our Solution
This overarching migration strategy was supported by our technical seo efforts that saw us making sure their “hreflang” tags are updated, making any required updates and changes to Search Console properties and ensuring that new sitemaps are generated.
The sitemap generation was a particularly important step. Following the switch, we needed to have either a sitemap for each subdirectory, or a sitemap index containing each international subdirectory to allow the site to be properly crawled and indexed by Google.
In order to ensure that tracking worked successfully on the new subdirectory, we also had to ensure properties in Google Analytics were updated to ensure that they reflect the new URLs for each international variant.
In Google Search Console, new properties needed to be created for each subdirectory, with a change of address being required for the older subdomain properties.
The Results
We were able to help them achieve their goals by leveraging our expertise in both migration and technical SEO to help maintain and improve their current keyword rankings by as much as 64% overall.
The RYOBI team was excellent to work with. They were responsive and provided us with a lot of useful feedback throughout the migration process. We couldn’t be happier that they chose us as their SEO agency and we’re very proud of the work we were able to complete for them.
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