Seed-stage SaaS pivoting from B2C to B2B
Guided a high-risk pivot and partial migration; pruning, B2B hub pages, and technical hygiene turned the post-launch trough into a ~3× recovery and set up sustained growth.
TL;DR
During a complex rebrand and audience shift (B2C → B2B), we protected core organic equity, intentionally retired misaligned B2C rankings, and rebuilt visibility for the new product focus.
Within the engagement (Mar-2018 → Sep-2020) traffic fell to an expected trough, then recovered ≈3× by the end.
After hand-off, the same strategy base scaled further: traffic peaked at ≈500k/month in late-2021 and the tracked keyword set rose from ≈1.4k at the trough → ≈22k by Sep-2020 → ≈180k by early-2022.
Context & goals
Company: Creative/video tools pivoting from broad B2C free tools to a freemium B2B product.
Engagement: Mar 2018 → Sep 2020.
Primary objectives:
Minimize “value at risk” during rebrand + partial migration.
Rebuild visibility around B2B topics and product pages.
Establish a clean technical baseline for scale.
Challenges
Audience and intent shift: large volumes of legacy B2C URLs with rankings we no longer wanted.
Partial migration (not a simple 1:1 domain swap): mix of 301s, 410s and canonicals.
Equity triage: decide what to keep, what to consolidate, what to retire.
Proving “good loss” vs harmful loss required clear measurement.
What I did (high-impact interventions)
Redirect & retirement plan — page-level “keep/redirect/retire” matrix; 301s for high-equity, B2B-relevant assets; 410/noindex for misaligned B2C pages.
B2B content rebuild — topic map and briefs for use-cases, templates, integrations; hub pages to focus internal links and link equity.
Technical cleanup — canonical and sitemap hygiene; internal-link rewiring from legacy posts to new hubs; structured data on product and hub pages.
Recovery playbook & monitoring — monthly tracking of traffic and keyword buckets; iterative redirect fixes guided by crawl and rank movements.
Value-at-stake governance — priority set by risk and business impact so engineering time went where it mattered.
Deliverables
Redirect/retirement matrix with implementation notes.
B2B topic map, briefs, and hub/landing templates.
Canonical/sitemap/internal-linking checklists.
Monthly recovery dashboard (traffic + keyword buckets).
Post-launch QA and correction backlog.
Results
Traffic trend
Start of work (early-2018): ~28k/month.
Trough (Feb-2019): ~9k/month.
End of engagement (Sep-2020): ~25k/month — ≈3× vs trough.
Post-engagement peak (late-2021): ~500k/month (sustained into 2022 before normalisation).
2023–2025 stabilised in the ~150–300k/month band for long stretches, with known market and product-mix fluctuations later in 2025.
Keyword visibility
Pre-pivot reference (Feb-2018)
Total: ~195k
#1–3: ~6.2k | 4–10: ~4.7k | 11–20: ~14k | 21–50: ~67k | 51+: ~102k
Trough (Feb-2019)
Total: ~1.4k
#1–3: ~0.18k | 4–10: ~0.30k | 11–20: ~0.10k | 21–50: ~0.16k | 51+: ~0.9k
End of engagement (Sep-2020)
Total: ~22k (~15× vs trough)
#1–3: ~1.0k (~5× vs trough) | 4–10: ~0.28k | 11–20: ~1.4k | 21–50: ~4.7k | 51+: ~15k
Post-engagement expansion (early-2022 peak)
Total: ~180k (≈8× vs Sep-2020; ≈130× vs trough)
#1–3: ~7k+ (≈7× vs Sep-2020; ≈40× vs trough)
Interpretation
The contraction around the pivot was planned: we retired B2C rankings that no longer matched the buyer.
By Sep-2020, the site had a rebuilt base of head-term (#1–3) and broad coverage aligned to B2B.
After hand-off, that base supported rapid scale to ~500k/month traffic and a ~180k keyword footprint, then settled into a durable range.
Why it worked
Intent-first decisions. We preserved and redirected only what served the new buyer; everything else was cleanly retired.
Systematic technical execution. Canonicals, sitemaps and internal links concentrated crawl on the right assets.
Tight feedback loop. Monthly bucket tracking and crawl diagnostics guided continuous fixes.
Risk framing. The “value at stake” lens kept the migration from over-engineering and focused effort on revenue-relevant pages.
Get in touch
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