How to rebuild domain authority after a website migration

How we drove SQL growth after Agile’s domain migration

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Agile, a specialist data consultancy, migrated their website domain from agilesolutions.co.uk to agile.co.ukas partof their brand transformation.

Domain changes carry real risk. Rankings drop. Links break. Lead flow stalls. For Agile, the stakes were high with organic search being a core acquisition channel for enterprise buyers. We needed to protect organic visibility during the migration and use the opportunity to grow commercially focused search demand.

Here’s how we planned and executed the SEO migration, rebuilt authority on the new domain, and shifted focus towards high-intent commercial queries that produced sales-qualified leads and closed into high-value client engagements.


The challenge

The website migration automatically meant the ‘domain authority’ (DA) was reset, meaning Google no longer treated the website as an established and trustworthy source. That meant that many competitors in the data consultancy space ranked higher for key terms like ‘Master Data Management’, out-competing Agile for attention and qualified leads.

Our task was to build that authority back up.

Typically we would have used a link building campaign, to establish authority by having other websites link back to Agile, but with no budget for that activity, we could not proactively acquire those links.

Our objectives were:

  • Increase SEO traffic by 80% by year-end.
  • Generate 200 new leads.
  • Maintain customer acquisition cost (CAC) under £100.
  • Restore visibility lost from domain migration.
  • Build authority through service-based keywords, not informational ones.

Our approach

There were four pillars to our strategy:

  • On-page SEO
  • Technical SEO
  • Authority Building
  • Performance tracking and optimisation

On-page SEO

We re-focused the content on the website to target the searches of people who have strong buying motivation. For example, ‘data platform engineering services’.

We re-optimised the headings, titles, and metadata of the website content, so that more visitors would click through to full pages.

We created links between the pages for the three pillars of Agile’s data offering ‘Modernise’, ‘Manage’, and ‘Monetise’ to aid navigation and to allow Google to detect and reflect the depth of expertise on the website more easily.

We performed keyword research to support the creation of further content that would demonstrate Agile’s experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, which Google uses to help rank websites.

Technical optimisation

We audited the website, and found that the average page load time was 4.9 seconds, which Google (and users) view as too slow, and which damages ranking in Google search.

We addressed that by removing technical barriers to performance, and in doing so improved the site health score from 62 to 76 (SEMrush).

We used structured data to make the website eligible for Google AI overviews and ‘featured snippets’ that appear at the top of relevant searches.

Authority building

The creation and optimisation of highly relevant, expert content meant that despite being unable to actively pursue backlinks:

  • The website and the business got organic mentions from Microsoft.com, Crunchbase, Snowflake.com, and SAS.com.
  • We increased the number of backlinks from 407 to 1,121 (a 175% increase)
  • The website’s authority score rose to 24, having been reset to 0

Performance tracking and optimisation

We used Google Analytics (GA4) and Google Search Console (GSC) to monitor visits, clicks, user behaviour, and ranking for keywords. We also encouraged the business to use HubSpot reporting to link traffic to lead generation and business growth.


The Results

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The new domain not only matched, but surpassed the old website for search ranking, organic visitor numbers, and visitors who were in the market for a new partner.

The refreshed and rebranded website is supporting and driving business growth in a highly competitive sector, in which competitors are often very large and well-known consultancies.

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We also achieved high and top rankings and Google AI overviews for highly relevant and specific key words:

  • Customer MDM → Rank 1 + AI Overview
  • Streamsets data engineering services → Rank 1 + AI Overview
  • Data fabric vs data mesh → Rank 1 + AI Overview
  • Data platform engineering services → Rank 1
  • Financial services data solution → Rank 2
  • Data management in finance → Rank 6 + AI Overview

A commercial SEO strategy built around service-based intent, clean data, and authority development delivers measurable growth. If you need more inbound leads, but find it difficult to link SEO to revenue and growth, Nutcracker’s framework makes clear the link between the technical and the commercial.


Nutcracker Digital starts with your commercial goals and works backwards, finding out where you need to be and the best way to get you there. Our approach to digital underpins everything, to maximise your results at every step on your customer’s journey.

Start with an audit, competitor evaluation, and audience analysis, and begin planning your digital marketing outreach.

Email our CEO at jenny.knighting@nutcrackeragency.com to discuss your business goals, and to see if we’re the partner to transform your digital marketing.