BlueMagnet

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the COO of a manufacturing company based in South Africa. We produce colors to the glass and brick industry both locally and internationally and have been operating for the past 50 years. I am in charge of all our online media and strategy.

For what projects/services did your company hire BlueMagnet?

We had a previously outdated website which over the years had picked up a lot of problems. It was a very sensitive project to migrate all the good content and URLs and prevent all the previous toxic backlinks to move with the new migration. The other concern was to maintain page rank and authority as this transition happened.

What were your goals for this project?

To migrate from the old website to the new website without losing any rankings while removing any bad association and redirect all the traffic to all the new content and structure. We also wanted to increase ranking keywords and overall authority.

How did you select this vendor?

Extensive research online while also reading numerous reviews from many vendors. A lot of reviews are filled in by family & friends but you can easily filter through and see which reviews are genuine and which are not. I also took the rankings from people who had more than 1 review and weighted it higher.

Describe the project in detail.

We originally met to discuss some problems I was having with a multilingual platform. They immediately identified a problem with my migration plan and suggested that we come up with a strategy to address the initial migration and then to deal with the multilingual platform.

A month of research and information went into the project where they generated a report and highlighted all our strengths and weaknesses. From there they suggested the best way to migrate with the least amount of disturbance and then to improve on any other problems afterward.

What was the team composition?

We dealt with Ceri (Partner, BlueMagnet) who was the lead contact person and CIO. We then also dealt with Samantha (Account Manager) who was the project manager for this. They were both incredibly involved and very informative throughout the process.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We were ranking on 11 keywords before migration. After migration, we were ranking on 33 keywords within a few days. Exposure to new markets has been gained as well as new inquiries from the new product sectors we added into the new website. The rankings did not fall and all my keywords are beginning to hit higher and higher results each week.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Great communication between the three teams that were involved with this process. We were on a very time-sensitive migration due to our hosting company upgrading servers which would have rendered our website obsolete and removed. We couldn't take the risk of even having a few hours down lets alone a few days. BlueMagnet ensured that all the 301 redirects were in place and the launch of the new site went seamlessly.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The sheer amount of knowledge they have in their team that covers so many elements of SEO. They have such incredible people working at their company that you certainly feel that your website is in good hands. They made sure the project went well and the comfort you have knowing that everything is being handled.

Are there any areas for improvement?

As a new website migration, you want to know information every day about how it's going and this is basically nerves. We often receive updates on a monthly basis but during migration, you are a bit nervous about what is happening. I know that all the time spent migrating is where the focus should be rather than generating reports but sometimes nervous customers like myself need that bit of info.