Heart of the Customer

The downtrend had two causes. The developer behind Heart of the Customer’s redesign ignored technical SEO best practices, and the content, old and new, was written without SEO best practices or data.

By the time we started implementing fixes, monthly organic traffic had fallen to 1.1k sessions, a major disruption in lead flow.

Our comprehensive SEO audit surfaced two problems. The new architecture overlooked SEO best practices: poorly designed tag pages were indexed, legacy 404s lingered, and hundreds of orphaned pages created crawl waste. And the content lacked keyword research and on-page optimization, so HoC wasn’t showing up for the terms its ideal clients searched. We fixed both in two tracks.

Technical SEO changes

• Removed or de-indexed low-value WordPress tag pages that weren’t part of the user experience.
• Pruned links to pages that no longer existed, reducing errors and improving crawl health.
• Evaluated 219 orphaned pages; low-value, non-performing posts went to draft for consolidation or retirement.

Keyword research & content strategy

• Identified priority topics and search terms for HoC’s services, target industries, and thought leadership.
• Rewrote and optimized 14 existing blog posts for target keywords, on-page SEO, and clearer search intent.
• Built a forward-looking content plan and SEO guidelines so HoC’s team could write posts that grow their organic footprint.

Within four months of the most critical technical fixes, HoC’s organic traffic stopped declining and began to rebound. By October 2023, organic sessions had doubled, a 100% increase from the low of 1.1k sessions.

As optimized and new content matured, the recovery accelerated, sending traffic to service-aligned pages and strategic posts instead of legacy URLs. And these were better-qualified visitors, searching for the CX strategy, journey mapping, and measurement expertise HoC provides.

Platforms vary, but this kind of SEO engagement typically involves:

• Analytics & tracking: GA4 and search visibility tools to diagnose drops, monitor recovery, and track page-level impressions, clicks, and CTR from search.
• SEO auditing & research: ahrefs and SEMrush for site audits, backlink and competitor analysis, and keyword research.
• On-page optimization: Yoast in WordPress to standardize meta titles, descriptions, schema, and readability and keyword checks.
• Marketing & CRM: HubSpot to capture leads from organic traffic and attribute form fills and opportunities to SEO-driven sessions.
• CMS (WordPress): working directly with HoC’s team to adjust page templates, update metadata, and implement the recommendations.

This engagement shows what happens when strong thought leadership gets a solid SEO foundation. Heart of the Customer already had the expertise and case studies B2B CX leaders needed; search just wasn’t surfacing them.

Cleaning up a well-intentioned redesign’s technical debt and aligning content with real search behavior turned a six-month downtrend into a rapid recovery and a more durable growth channel. For B2B consultancies facing similar “mystery drops” after a redesign, targeted SEO can stabilize traffic, then amplify existing marketing.