SAI case study
Searches that used to land on a PDF now reach the product page
A migration that moved access to each product from the PDF catalogs to its product page, without losing what the previous site had earned on Google.
The starting point
Google was sending people to a PDF.
Searches for SAI products led to PDF catalogs, without the product page or the rest of the product line alongside.
Before the launch, catalog PDFs got more clicks from Google than product pages. Visitors landed on a standalone document, with no navigation, no related documentation, and nowhere to go next.
A website already in use has URLs people have saved and search engines already know. When the site is replaced, each one still needs to lead somewhere.
What we found
- PDFs competing with product pages
- Saved and already indexed URLs
- References to the old domain
The approach
A destination for every old URL.
We mapped the old URLs to their destinations, checked every redirect all the way through, and removed the references to the old domain.
The technical review was organized into three levels: what blocked publishing, what was worth resolving beforehand, and what could wait. The previous site's 511 redirects were audited through to their final destination, and none were broken.
After the launch, the cleanup brought to zero the 1,065 internal links across 302 pages that still pointed to the site itself with http:// instead of https://.
What we did
- Redirect map
- Three-level review
- Old-domain cleanup
- Measurement in Search Console
The work
What stayed in place
- 1,3083,227clicks on product pages
- 1,391324clicks on catalog PDFs
- 511redirects audited, none broken
- 1,0650internal links using http:// instead of https://
