Our Money Where Our Mouth Is: Edge45®'s SEO Website Migration Success

It doesn’t take long to become outdated in the Internet age. Our website may have been the bee’s knees back in 2015 but, as time ticked by, we knew there was a bullet to be bitten – edge45.co.uk needed a facelift.

In order to appeal to the type of clients our growth plan aims to work with, our OG site simply wasn’t fit for purpose. The real problem we faced, however, was that this revamp entailed much more than an aesthetic overhaul.

Not only did we need a new look to give Edge45® the premium feel we knew the company deserved, but we also had to modernise the message. We needed to rubber stamp the move away from who we were back in 2015 to who we are now in 2022, by creating fresh content relevant to our new target audience.

Despite years of experience in SEO website migrations, as well as troubleshooting and resolving our fair share of failed ones performed by others, we knew such a radical overhaul was a big ask. In short, as experts in the website migration field, this truly was a case of putting your money where your mouth is.

The risk of disrupting our existing search rankings was very real. After all, a LOT was going to change, including a dramatic shift in the copy that contributed to those rankings. Dropping off Google’s first page is bad for any business, but for a SEO agency it would mean irreparable harm to our reputation.

Everything was on the line.

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“Our primary challenge was to find a web developer and designer who could deliver the high-end vision we had for the new site. We wanted fast load times, exemplary Lighthouse scores & Core Web Vitals, a contact form that qualified leads whilst also being intuitive, to beat all accessibility standards whilst also retaining existing rankings and traffic at a minimum…despite all the changes we were making.
Easy, right?”

Colm Docherty – CEO & Founder, Edge45®

Pinpointing the Perfect Partner

After a long 18 months of researching and searching for the right team, Edge45® partnered up with a local agency, Built By Mike. Based in Leeds, BBM had an incredibly strong creative portfolio and their work resonated with what we were trying to achieve.

Best of all, we’d already been working alongside BBM for a mutual client, so we were well acquainted and he was already on board with our stringent SEO standards. Despite this, BBM had their work cut out. Our full website migration brief set the bar unbelievably high, demanding ‘best in class’ across the board.

Increase in organic visibility
£££

Practising what we preach

Before we did anything else, we implemented a preparatory website migration benchmarking technical SEO audit, exactly as we would if we were working on a site migration for a client. Being able to measure and compare is absolutely vital during a site migration where SEO is at play, so this was priority number one.

Out with the old, in with the new

While BBM worked on the design and build of the new site, Edge45® got to work, too. We started to photograph the team at work and play (no stock images were used in the production of this website), prepare updated case studies (including video shoots of clients giving us glowing testimonials), and create new assets that would convey the enterprising nature of the organisation we had become.

As experts in Conversion Rate Optimisation, we knew that imagery of real people and up to date case studies (vouched for by clients anyone was free to contact) was important to validate the quality of the service we provide, so we focused hard on working with existing clients to get these things in place…

…and then COVID hit. The project was derailed, all our plans for a big year were brought into serious jeopardy.

In times of economic turmoil, advertising and marketing budgets are often amongst the first areas where companies begin tightening their belts. However, as a digital marketing agency ourselves, we knew the importance of holding strong and continuing with the project.

In hindsight, that decision was crucial. Ecommerce and internet-based businesses saw a huge boom due to the lockdown restrictions placed upon everybody, so demand for our services was only increasing. The completion of our new website was more pressing than ever.

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Our checklist Was Demanding

We wanted a site that resonated with the client demographic Edge45® had elevated itself to.

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Mission accomplished…and then some.
YOY increase in new organic users
YOY reduction in bounce rate
YOY increase in average session duration

“Our number of inbound leads has increased, the quality of those leads has increased and we now have a strong pipeline of talent wanting to work for us coming through the website too. It’s great to not only practice what we preach, but to also prove that this is a science that works.”

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