Andre GuelmannA high-risk pivot and partial migration, turned into a ~3× recovery - and a base that scaled to ~500k/month.
During a complex rebrand and audience shift from B2C to B2B, we protected core organic equity, intentionally retired misaligned B2C rankings, and rebuilt visibility around the new product. Traffic fell to an expected trough, then recovered ~3× by the end of the engagement (Mar 2018 → Sep 2020). After hand-off, the same base scaled to ~500k/month in late 2021, with the keyword footprint rising from ~1.4k at the trough to ~22k by Sep 2020 and ~180k by early 2022.
Deliberately shedding the old audience without losing the equity worth keeping.
- Audience and intent shift: large volumes of legacy B2C URLs with rankings we no longer wanted.
- A partial migration (not a simple 1:1 domain swap): a mix of 301s, 410s, and canonicals.
- Equity triage: deciding what to keep, consolidate, or retire.
- Proving “good loss” vs harmful loss required clear measurement.
Triage the equity, rebuild around B2B, and keep a tight recovery feedback loop.
Redirect & retirement plan
A page-level “keep / redirect / retire” matrix - 301s for high-equity, B2B-relevant assets; 410/noindex for misaligned B2C pages.
B2B content rebuild
A topic map and briefs for use-cases, templates, and integrations, with hub pages to focus internal links and link equity.
Technical cleanup
Canonical and sitemap hygiene, internal-link rewiring from legacy posts to new hubs, and structured data on product and hub pages.
Recovery playbook & monitoring
Monthly tracking of traffic and keyword buckets, with iterative redirect fixes guided by crawl and rank movements.
Value-at-stake governance
Priorities set by risk and business impact, so engineering time went where it mattered.
A planned contraction, then a rebuilt base that kept compounding after hand-off.
≈3× recovery off the trough
≈15× vs the trough
post-handoff, the base kept scaling
≈8× vs Sep-2020; ~7k+ in #1-3
The trajectory, charted.
≈3× recovery off the trough during the engagement - and later peaked ~500k/mo post-handoff.
Rebuilt from ~1.4k at the trough to ~180k as the B2B base compounded.
The decisions that made the difference.
- 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.
I have been jealous of Andre since we started to work together. As time went by, I realized that he was much more… he literally knew everything about everything… On-page, off-page, strategy, user intent, algorithm updates, content best practices, navigation and website structure, structured data best practices, canonical URL optimization, site speed, AMP, multilingual websites… And the worst thing, I couldn't share my frustration with anyone, because everybody loves Andre.
Andre was fantastic to talk with. An SEO-focused chat on both high-level company strategy and solid tactical advice that's actually up to date as of HCU. He also opened my eyes to the business possibilities for us in localization, something he's done - a new path and channel for us to test out. Incredible value.
Have a project like this?
Tell me what you're planning - a migration, a pivot, a growth push. I'll show you the risks and how I'd protect the downside.
I read and reply to every message personally - usually within 1-2 business days.