Many a website has seen search rankings and organic engagement plummet after a Google algorithm update. We were smack-dab in the middle of tuning up a relatively new client’s keyword strategy when that very thing happened, which forced us to refocus on building a site that could work with Google before we got too deep in the keyword weeds.

Here’s what we did – and what we hope you can learn from it.

1) Identified the issue(s)

When the site’s performance started dropping, we did a deep dive that surfaced a few insights:

• the bulk of the issues stemmed from mobile indexing

• mobile core web vitals needed serious attention

• the site’s architecture made on-site optimizations slow and tedious

2) Recruited help

Since the project’s scope had expanded beyond keywords, DMi’s Web Dev team came in to help build a stronger foundation for the mobile and desktop experience. This initiative included updates to existing templates to bring them into compliance with Google and customized JavaScript to improve page load times.

This foundational work freed up the Search team to conduct optimizations that would have a greater effect on compliant pages. Those included mapping and incorporating strategic keywords into pages, improving accessibility metrics by incorporating keywords into images, and creating updated video and image assets from existing material to serve more efficiently in the mobile browsing experience.

3) Paved the way for better measurement

As we dug in, we discovered that the client’s GA4 data was flawed because of tracking issues on the site. We instituted temporary conversion events to give cover to a more comprehensive project: working with the client’s tracking resources to set up a more granular, SKU-based tracking system. These short- and long-term solutions helped us establish a base to more clearly see the impact of the larger web and organic projects we were executing.

4) Built a safety net

This is a critical step anytime a website is being overhauled (especially when it’s moving to a new domain, as the client did for this initiative): make sure you’re putting a plan in place to preserve the organic equity you’ve built.

We migrated the old site setup to the new one in April-May 2023. To preserve the client’s backlinks and site authority, the Search team took the following steps:

• Mapped source URLs to destination URLs
• Set up server-side redirect rules
• Kept both site domains active/crawlable as Google gradually replaced old pages with new ones

It didn’t take long to see the strategy taking effect and for the client to achieve top 10 rankings for their target list of keywords. Along with mobile core web vitals and site speed improvements, we helped the client increase organic traffic by 77% and improve organic engagement by 112% in the first 12 months of our partnership.