SEO migration shelving unit.co.uk

SEO knowledge of stakeholders is key

The great thing about Stellingkast.nl is that all colleagues are perfectly attuned to each other. This was also onder part of the migration, because Edwin knows very well how to onder keep the website up and he gets help from Jeroen where necessary. SEO basic knowledge was there, but when things got a bit more technical, we had to make sure it was actually transferred properly to the developer. 

We therefore decided during the migration process to choose to schedule a video call every Wednesday so that we could discuss all ongoing tasks. Where there was therefore also an opportunity to clear up any question marks among colleagues at Stellingkast.nl. 

Even if the developer had certain questions or sometimes a different opinion, we could switch briefly and quickly by e-mail. Explanations often followed in the weekly meeting, anything to avoid a "f*ck-up".

Targets (2023)

1. Successful migration
2. Obtain position 1 on "shelving unit"
3. More organic traffic on non-branded terms

Successfully migrating from Custom dated CMS to Prestashop i.c.w. Odoo.

The problem for Stellingkast.co.uk was that it was running in a custom CMS that no longer met the requirements of 2023. The display, layout and load time were no longer satisfactory.

So the objective after watching the SEO migration f*ck-up video was clear; "Migrate successfully". Of course, this is easier said than done. The choice of the new CMS had already been made; Prestashop. In combination with Odoo as ERP(Enterprise Resource Planning), this would be the ideal combination for Stellingkast.nl. After all, Stellingkast delivers customised products and this sounds simple, but in practice this means a "dynamic" product detail page with a configurator for each product type. 

Besides the dynamic product detail page, migrating to a proper URL structure was also a challenge. Prestashop has fixed rules for this, so we wanted these overwritten so that the correct keywords were included in the slugs of the URL structure.

The goal of the migration was to obtain position 1 on "shelving box". This does not sound very difficult as it is an Exact Match Domain(EMD). But the fact that the competitors are Hornbach, Praxis and Ikea makes the challenge a bit bigger. Of course, we understand that this is a logical desire, but business-wise, it is also very important to get more organic and relevant traffic on non-branded terms. After all, Branded in this case is "Shelf Cabinet"....

Hands on

All in all, this is obviously a wonderful challenge because there are several customisation hooks and the objective was clearly defined. 

My colleague Bart and I (Ivo) started with a plan of action. The first steps were quickly clear to us, I started writing out a new URL structure that included all the money keywords and interesting product groups. Bart, as technical SEO specialist, started briefing the developer. Here, we specify in a clear document what our wishes and requirements are for the new situation we are migrating to (in this case, Prestashop).

After the briefing and URL structure were agreed by Stellingkast.nl and their developer, we could start crawling the old environment. This forms the basis for our redirect file. We supplement this data with Google Search Console (GSC) urls with impressions and clicks.

After a clear list of URLs, we were able to link them to the URLs of the new Prestashop environment. Meanwhile, we also received an update from the developer that the ideal URL scenario was not possible. Since Prestashop requires a separate blog module to be installed, this also disrupted the URL hierarchy. So we had to make a concession on all URLs within the blog module. This was acceptable to us as a SEO party because it did keep the E-commerce structure of the money-pages within reach. This is therefore also one of the disadvantages of a webshop in Prestashop, but then again, every CMS has its pros and cons as far as SEO is concerned.

Result

The migration ensured that non-relevant pages were cut. The total number of visitors to the website increased and the average position in Search Console was also improved. 

Completion

It was quite a challenge to migrate Stellingkast.nl successfully. In the end, partly thanks to weekly meetings, we were able to guide Stellingkast.nl well throughout the migration. 

By actively holding meetings, we were able to actively transfer our knowledge and take the developer as well as Edwin and Jeroen to the point where everything was technically ready for migration.

After we switched to Prestashop, we shot straight to position 1 on the word "Rack cabinet" and "Buy rack cabinet". After a Google Update, we dropped back to position 2. This prompted us to further analyse the results of Ikea and Hornbach and saw that they in particular had a better display due to the "Image-pack display". 

"Image-pack" often has a higher CTR so they might have brought in more traffic at the lower position. This could have caused us to lose the position.

After this, we have switched with the developer to display a product lister on the homepage as well and provide it with the right structured data. As a result, we are confident that, in the not too distant future, we will regain the No 1 position from our competitors.