How CARET Legal's SEO exploded post-redesign Case Study

The Challenge

AbacusNext, a long-time client of WebMechanix, announced a big transition at the beginning of 2023. They were rebranding to CARET. They were also combining their two legal practice management platforms into a new product, with a new brand name (CARET Legal)… and a new website, too.

They specifically needed help combining the content from their existing sites into the new site, without hurting SEO, and while growing the organic presence of the new brand.

There were different objectives for the 2 existing sites: Amicus Attorney and Zola Suite. The client wanted to keep Amicus Attorney to service legacy customers, but still pass the SEO value to the new CARET Legal site. On the other hand, Zola Suite was to be completely absorbed into the new CARET Legal site.

We’ve had multiple instances where team members have said “Wow, we’ve never seen that much progress accomplished in such a short amount of time.” James and Lisa agreed they’d never seen it either! They both shared our results in our company-wide town hall 2 weeks ago and we received so many comments from team members.

The Process

To navigate the complex process of merging two existing sites into a new one, WebMechanix initiated a comprehensive audit of both Amicus Attorney and Zola Suite. The goal was to identify core content that would be valuable to retain in the new CARET Legal site. This process involved meticulous mapping of the new site’s core content, ensuring that target keywords were incorporated and the valuable SEO-rich content from the old sites was integrated effectively.

The team at WebMechanix worked in close collaboration with the redesign and branding agency to optimize the content as it was being written. This step was crucial to ensure that the SEO value was not compromised during the rebranding and redesigning process. If this collaboration hadn’t taken place, the process would have been based solely on the original recommendations from the redesign/rebranding company, putting SEO performance of the new site at risk.

In addition to the core content, the team cherry-picked blogs from both old sites to move over to the new CARET Legal site. This provided a rich repository of existing content that was already optimized for SEO, helping to boost the organic presence of the new brand from the get-go. This effort was coupled with a redirect strategy.

WebMechanix also recommended the creation of at least five new pieces of content each month. By the summer, CARET wanted to ratchet up the volume & WebMechanix doubled to ten new pieces of SEO-optimized content per month.

Throughout the entire process, the team at WebMechanix maintained a keen focus on the continuous optimization of content. This ensured that the site’s SEO performance was constantly monitored and adjusted, keeping it aligned with the evolving SEO landscape.

The Results

The strategic approach to the rebranding process yielded impressive results. A month after the soft launch at the end of March, the new CARET Legal site saw a significant increase in organic traffic, with impressions up 96% and clicks up 70%.

The hard launch brought further success. Just a week after the hard launch, impressions had risen by an additional 113%, and clicks had increased by 31%. This upward trend continued over the following months. Approximately three months after the hard launch, impressions had grown by a further 31%, and clicks had skyrocketed by 113%.

The decision to double new content production also proved fruitful. This strategy led to a 48% increase in impressions, a 60% increase in clicks, and a 47% increase in sessions.