In Marketing We Trust

Expedia already had an existing internal link structure widget which was providing some level of internal linking, however the links were being rapidly outdated by changes in the site caused by ongoing business activity.

Challenge

• 18 Million pages site with too many page templates
• Over 50k links pointing to 404 pages
• Multiple teams working on website
• Inventory changing frequently
• Time consuming update every 6 months
• Needed to use historical solution and include manual overrides

Results

• Over 50k links pointing to 404s removed
• 25% of useless links removed
• Designed a new architecture with approx. 99% cleanliness
• Daily recommendations and automated updates sent

Goals

• Fix the internal link structure for a very large site (25 Million pages indexed) with over 50k links pointing to 404 pages
• Ensure all internal links point to canonical pages and reduce 301 redirects
• Design a dynamic, automated solution to provide ongoing updates to the internal architecture

What To Do

Expedia already has had an existing internal link structure widget which was providing some level of internal linking, however the links were being rapidly outdated by changes in the site caused by ongoing business activity.

Built a Customised Web Crawler

• The currently available crawler solution would not make the cut for this site.
• IMWT has ended up upgrading their own customised web crawler to rapidly and efficiently crawl through the website to identify broken or underperforming links.

Working closely in regards to the business concerns of the client, the agency also built an automated logic engine which identified the best action to take with a broken link – to change its target, remove it, or to flag it for human attention.

Developed a Recommendation Engine

Using some of the agency’s existing Machine Learning solutions, In Marketing We Trust developed an algorithm capable of suggesting the most accurate replacement for an error page and turned a painstaking manual process into an automated one.

The internal link structure is now progressively kept up to date, with fix recommendations being issued every 24 hours. This has brought the number of bad internal links down from tens of thousands to less than a thousand at any given time, and has considerably improved the valid-to-invalid Googlebot crawl ratio, meaning that the site is updated faster and is seeing improved organic results on search engines.

Connected Crawl Rate With Sales Numbers

The next step on this project was to start analysing the landing page conversion outcomes of pages, and influence the internal link structure to prioritise pages with better conversion outcomes, while maintaining the breadth of internal links necessary to ensure that crawlers can still find everything on the site, and that internal links keep high levels of relevancy.

Results

• Over 50k links pointing to 404s removed
• 25% of useless links removed
• Designed a new architecture with approx. 99% cleanliness
• Daily recommendations and automated updates sent
• Integrated with historical system, including manual overrides
• Tied up to business metrics, increasing sales

Globus Family of Brands is a global group of a coach tour, river cruise, and independent travel package companies that operate worldwide.With 4 brands in 13 countries and 52 websites, Globus chose In Marketing We Trust to provide support during, pre and post-Sitecore migration.

The goal was to create a better user experience for both consumers and travel agents, growing both B2B and B2C sales and improve brand positioning in the market.

Situation

Globus Family of Brands has 4 brands in 13 countries. With 1 domain per brand and per country, equaling a total of 52 websites, migrating was a huge undertaking. Starting 12 months prior to the move In Marketing We Trust began planning to provide support during, pre and post-Sitecore migration.

Globus wanted to create a better user experience for both the consumer and travel agent to grow sales and improve brand positioning in the market. The decision to migrate to Sitecore was simple due to non-converting websites that were not customers focussed. The old websites lacked functionality with a blanket approach to marketing communications due to dirty customer data.

The initial migration plan put forward to In Marketing We Trust was challenging due to the volume of sites and the risk to organic visibility. On top of that risk, there was already no trust in the data. All 52 websites had a different analytics setup. Due to the complexity and lack of maintenance, trust in the data was lost. Without fixing these issues before migrating to Sitecore, there was no way they had be able to correctly measure its impact.

Rachelle D., Digital Marketing Coordinator, Globus Family of Brands said:

We don’t feel like a client, we feel that we work together as they are passionate about what they do in order for us to achieve their business goals. IMWT staff is highly skilled and are experts in their field.

I especially appreciate that IMWT are so proactive in ensuring that we are kept up to date with reporting and have been a major help with migration. One of the best agencies we’ve worked with.

How In Marketing We Trust Increased Traffic 50% And Conversions 148% YoY

With 30% of traffic coming from organic search, the risk to visibility as a result of an aggressive migration plan was huge. To mitigate this risk, In Marketing We Trust created a Sitecore migration success plan. This included rolling out 1 brand at a time with a rollback option based on priorities and testing the site with live traffic.

In Marketing We Trust greenlighted stages throughout the migration journey and had daily standup meetings with Globus, the development agency, and the building agency to mitigate any risk. ,They also provided post-migration training on how to complete health checks, training on Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Google Ads. They also provided training on “Advanced Analytics for Travel Marketers”.

As part of the migration process they thoroughly cleaned house. Over 10% of Globus Family of Brands pages were 404s. In Marketing We Trust also focussed their efforts on SEO to reduce the risk of a drop in organic visibility.

Taking Cosmos Australia as their example:

• Reduced the number of 404s by over 13%, Cosmos now has less than 1% of 404s
• Increased the sitemap relevancy to 100%
• Doubled page speed, from 4 seconds down to an average load time of under 2 seconds
• Increased domain authority and reduced spam score to zero

Objectives

• Maintain footprint and current rankings
• Transfer ALL the authority from legacy site to new site
• Facilitate indexation of new site
• Maintain KPIs and metrics measurements

What to Do before Staging

Site Audit

Audit your current site. Provide a list of errors and elements to fix to maximise SEO authority. Include recommendations for the new site (structure, content, URLs, etc.).

Enhance Site

Enhance your current site, including:

• Errors
• Redirections
• On-page
• Content
• Internal linking structure
• Meta-descriptions
• Canonicals
• Robots.txt
• Sitemaps

Benchmark

Set your benchmark with your current KPIs and metrics. This will be used post migration to provide insight into how well you currently perform. Identify your key pages and current footprint.

Review Tracking

Audit your Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager and develop a measurement and implementation plan.

What to Do during Staging

Audit and Enhance Staging Site

Audit and enhance your staging site using the above checklist. This process needs to be repeated until your staging site is healthy and ready.

Plan Redirects

Ensure you’re transferring authority with URL and image mapping.

Implement Tracking

Implement Google Tag Manager and configure Google Analytics. Implement Data Layer for form tracking.

Healthy Site Checklist

• No errors
• No broken links
• All meta-descriptions are defined and optimised
• Hreflang is supported for all pages
• Sitemap includes all pages that need to be indexed
• No redirections
• All titles are defined and optimised
• Canonicals and meta-robots correctly implemented
• Tag Manager Container is included in all pages
• Data Layer is implemented for form tracking

What to Do on Migration Day

Sitecore Migration Day Checklist

• Launch the new site
• Implement redirects to transfer SEO authority
  Monitor
• Audit the new site (check for any potential errors)
• Switch the tracking (publish new tracking)
• Validate redirects
• Verify robots.txt and sitemaps
• Implement fixes (critical problems must be resolved
  on the day of Sitecore migration)
• Analyse and report after migration
• Compare metrics before and after migration
• Provide recommendations and enhancements as applicable

What to Expect after Migration

• Fluctuation in rankings from week 1 to 3 after migration
• Indexation can take from 4 days up to 1 month
• Slight drop in traffic is to be expected due to redirections
• Changes in Analytics will be noticed as the tracking is updated while migrating

The days after migration are critical. Site performance must be monitored and errors must be fixed as soon as possible.