Not every SEO problem starts from zero. Sometimes the damage comes from something that looked like an improvement at the time. This case study covers how we recovered, and then grew, organic traffic for a home services company after a well-intentioned website redesign quietly cost them years of search visibility, and how we made sure the new site outperformed the old one instead of just restoring it.
The Challenge
This home services company had invested in a new website about a year before we started working together, a modern, good looking redesign. The problem was that the redesign had quietly cost them the search visibility they’d spent years building. Rankings for their core service terms dropped within weeks of launch, and organic traffic had been sliding ever since, even though the business itself hadn’t changed at all.
What Our Audit Found
A migration audit is one of the most common, and most avoidable, problems we see, and this one had textbook symptoms. The redesign had changed URL structures without proper redirects, so pages that used to rank were now either returning errors or redirecting straight to the homepage, flattening years of accumulated authority. The new site also compressed what used to be several distinct, keyword targeted service pages into a handful of generic pages, and dropped the internal linking that used to connect blog content to service pages. On top of that, the new theme loaded several unused scripts and full size images on every page, dragging down mobile speed.
We also found that the new site’s analytics and Search Console properties hadn’t been reconnected correctly after the migration, so for several months the business had no reliable way to even see that traffic was declining, let alone why. That kind of gap is more common after a redesign than most business owners realize. Getting clean, accurate measurement back in place was one of the first things we fixed, because every decision after that depended on trustworthy data.
We also found that the new site’s analytics and Search Console properties hadn’t been reconnected correctly after the migration, so for several months the business had no reliable way to even see that traffic was declining, let alone why. Getting clean, accurate measurement back in place was one of the first things we fixed, because every decision after that depended on trustworthy data.
Our Approach
Technical SEO and Search Console Cleanup
We started in Search Console, mapping every URL that had lost rankings against its old version and building a full redirect map to restore the link equity the migration had broken. We fixed the coverage errors this created, resubmitted a corrected sitemap, and used the URL Inspection tool to force re crawling of the highest priority pages so recovery wasn’t left to chance.
On-Page SEO and Site Architecture (Silo Structure)
We rebuilt the collapsed service pages into a proper silo, separate, fully optimized pages for each core service instead of one generic page trying to rank for everything, with title tags, headers, and body content rewritten around the specific terms customers search, and internal links connecting related service and blog content the way they used to before the redesign.
Google Business Profile and Local SEO
We audited and corrected the Google Business Profile, which had also been affected by the changes around the relaunch, updated categories, a full service list matching the new site structure, and a consistent name, address, and phone number across the directories that still referenced the old site’s information.
Site Speed and Mobile Responsiveness
We audited every script and asset loading on the new template, removed what wasn’t earning its place, compressed and lazy loaded images, and fixed mobile layout issues, oversized elements colliding, text too small to read without zooming, that the redesign had introduced without anyone noticing during launch.
Content Strategy
Once the technical recovery was underway, we built out supporting content, service specific FAQ sections and location pages, to rebuild the topical depth the generic redesign had flattened, giving search engines more reasons to see the site as a genuine authority on each service rather than a single page trying to cover everything at once.
Reporting and Communication
Because this engagement started as a recovery situation, clear reporting mattered even more than usual. We sent weekly updates during the first month showing exactly which redirects and fixes had gone live and how rankings were responding, then moved to a monthly cadence once the recovery stabilized, so the business always understood what was happening and why.
Our Process
The first month was entirely recovery focused, redirect mapping, Search Console cleanup, and re establishing the silo structure, because until that was fixed, no amount of new content was going to move the needle. From month two onward we layered in content expansion, Google Business Profile work, and ongoing speed optimization, tracking recovery week over week in Search Console rather than waiting for a monthly report to find out it wasn’t working. By month four, traffic had not only recovered to its pre-redesign level but continued past it, which shifted the conversation from damage control to genuine growth planning for the remaining months of the engagement.
The Results
Over a six month Local SEO program, organic traffic grew 198%, recovering past its pre redesign baseline within the first ten weeks and continuing to climb from there. Indexed, ranking pages for core service terms went from a handful of collapsed pages back to a full set of dedicated, ranking service pages, and Search Console coverage errors dropped to zero.
Key Takeaway
A redesign can undo years of SEO progress in days if the migration isn’t planned with search in mind. The fastest path back to growth wasn’t new tactics, it was fixing what the migration broke, then building forward from a properly structured foundation. It is also a reminder that a website redesign should never happen without an SEO migration plan alongside it, no matter how good the new design looks.
Client name withheld for confidentiality. Results reflect this specific engagement and are not a guarantee of future performance.