Use case · Migrations and rebrands
Replatform or rebrand without losing the pipeline.
More inbound is lost to self-inflicted migrations than to algorithm updates. We baseline what you have, protect it through the cutover, and then hold the program to a recovery curve with dates on it.
Post-migration recovery · Series B AI platform · 2 mo vs prior 2
+237%AI-search influenced pipeline after a CMS migration had taken contact-form fills from double digits to single digits and left pipeline anemic.
Source · RTR client reporting · Series B AI platform, 2 mo vs prior 2
The problem you're living with
The site launched. The pipeline did not come back.
Four of the last fifteen prospects were mid-migration or cleaning up after one. In every case the launch was called a success by everyone except sales.
"Form fills fell off a cliff after launch."
A CMS move went live, the new site looked better, and inbound went from double digits to single digits a month. Nobody could point to the cause because nobody baselined what the old site was doing.
"We rebuilt for brand, with zero SEO input."
A new site shipped to a brand brief: fewer pages, new URLs, new language. Every page that used to earn demand was consolidated, renamed, or deleted, and the redirects were an afterthought.
"Three acquisitions, one brand, four sitemaps."
Rollups inherit domains, duplicate content, and competing pages. Consolidation is the right call and it is also the single easiest way to lose the equity you just paid for.
Why it is still broken
The obvious precautions do not protect the pipeline.
The instinct is to trust the checklist. A redirect map, a staging QA pass, a launch-day crawl, a content freeze. Every one of them gets checked after the decisions that cause the loss.
Fix 01 · The redirect map
"We have a full redirect map."
A complete map is necessary and nowhere near sufficient. Most migration losses come from changed templates, thinned copy, and lost internal links, all of which redirect perfectly and still rank worse.
Fix 02 · Staging QA
"QA signed off on staging."
Staging QA checks that pages render. It does not check that the page still holds the content that earned the ranking, or that the schema and heading structure survived the rebuild.
Fix 03 · Crawl it after launch
"We will crawl it on launch day."
A crawl after the cutover finds errors, not regressions, because there is nothing to compare against. Without a pre-launch baseline you cannot prove what changed or what to restore.
Fix 04 · Freeze content
"We will pause publishing and deal with it after."
The freeze stops the one thing that would have offset the dip. Competitors publish through your quiet quarter and the models re-crawl to find you unchanged.
The diagnosis
You cannot protect what you never measured.
A migration does not usually break because of technical SEO. It breaks because nobody wrote down what the old site was doing before it disappeared. Which URLs earned demos, which pages AI assistants cited, which entities tied your brand to your category. We baseline all three first, then treat the redirect map as a pipeline document rather than an IT task, and grade the launch against the baseline weekly until the curve returns. If you are already post-launch, the same baseline gets reconstructed from historical data, which is slower but still works.
A Series B AI platform migrated CMS and pipeline went anemic. After diagnosis and recovery, +106% Google-influenced pipeline and +237% AI-search influenced pipeline, at 2.3× the prior daily lead pace.
What we actually ship
Everything that has to happen before, during, and after the cutover.
Three phases, one owner. The launch is the middle of the job, not the end of it.
Record what the old site earns
Every URL that produces demos, links, or citations, captured before anything moves.
- Demo-producing URL inventory
- Citation and AI-visibility baseline
- Backlink and entity map
- Ranking and traffic snapshot
Moves: A defensible before picture
Redirects as a pipeline document
One-to-one where value exists, deliberate consolidation where it does not, and no chains.
- URL-to-URL mapping
- Consolidation decisions documented
- Chain and loop elimination
- Deletion list signed off
Moves: Equity that survives
Templates that keep what converted
A prettier page that drops the proof, the internal links, or the CTA is a downgrade with better typography.
- Content parity checks
- Internal link preservation
- CTA and form parity
- Schema and metadata carryover
Moves: Conversion parity
Continuity for AI assistants
Rebrands break the association between your old name and your category. Models need to be re-taught deliberately.
- Name-change consistency across the web
- Citation source updates
- Structured data continuity
- Third-party profile updates
Moves: AI visibility held
Cutover day QA
A checked launch, not a hopeful one, with someone watching the numbers that matter in the first 72 hours.
- Pre-launch staging crawl
- Live redirect verification
- Index and render checks
- 72-hour monitoring window
Moves: Damage caught in hours
Hold the curve after launch
Recovery is expected, graded, and dated. Drift gets a named cause rather than a shrug.
- Weekly vs. baseline reporting
- Cause named per cluster
- Re-optimisation waves
- Pipeline vs. pre-launch
Moves: Pipeline back on plan
How the 90 days run
Baseline, cutover, recovery.
Same engine as every other use case. What changes is the order of operations and what we grade first.
Week 1 · Baseline
Everything the current site earns is recorded: demo-producing URLs, citations, links, entities, rankings. If you are already launched, we reconstruct it from historical data.
Cutover · Protect
Redirect map built and verified, template parity checked, then live monitoring through the first 72 hours with a rollback position on anything that breaks.
Weeks 2 to 12 · Recover
Weekly comparison against baseline with a named cause for every cluster still down, plus re-optimisation waves on the pages closest to a purchase.
The scoreboard
What we grade ourselves on.
Set before kickoff on your funnel data, graded monthly in writing. If the model cannot clear a 4× return, we tell you before you spend a dollar.
Counted in your CRM, not in analytics. Split by source so the channel stands on its own.
Graded monthly vs. forecast
For self-serve and sales-assist motions, tracked separately from demos so neither hides the other.
Graded monthly vs. forecast
Whether the demos are workable. Protects against a volume win that sales quietly ignores.
Reported with the raw count
Pipeline traced to a source under the Two-Witness Rule, with raw always shown next to corrected.
Reported to your board
Results · From the monthly reports
Named clients, published numbers.
The reference case: a migration that cost pipeline, then a recovery that beat the pre-migration baseline. Here it is next to the rest.
AI search became a demand channel in one quarter
Organic sessions, AI referrals, category presence and attributed demand all moved together one quarter after launch.
Four months in, running ahead of forecast
Nearly half the demo pipeline was filed as Direct. The Two-Witness Rule recovered it, and the page program kept feeding it.
AI search and organic became the growth engine
A page set that did not exist twelve months ago now carries the growth and is the most-cited name in the category’s AI answers.
Fit · Before you fill anything in
Who this works for, and who it doesn't.
We say no often, and early. Migration work needs to start before the cutover, not after. Reading this saves us both a call.
Great fit
- B2B SaaS, Series A to Series D$2-3M to $50M+ ARR, subscription or usage-based, sales-led or self-serve plus sales-assist.
- A category with a real competitor setVertical or category-defining: healthtech, fintech infrastructure, compliance, HR tech, legal tech, specialty lending.
- Marketing leadership in placeA CMO, VP Marketing, or Head of Growth who owns the number, usually with one under-resourced content or SEO person.
- A replatform, redesign, or domain change is scheduledThere is a date, a staging environment, and time to baseline before anything ships.
- You can ship changesModern CMS and a willingness to make technical and on-page edits.
- Pipeline is the measureBudget $5,000+ for strategy, $7,500-$15,000+ for the full engine, and demos are how we're both graded.
Also a fit: a migration that already slipped once and now has room to be done properly.
Not a fit
- Pre-seed or pre-PMFNo audience, no category clarity, and no runway for a compounding channel.
- B2C apps, DTC ecommerce, or local servicesDifferent playbook, different channels. Not our specialty and not our pricing model.
- Enterprise consultingThose cycles are relationship-driven, not search-driven.
- You want content volume without strategyWrong expectation. We decline these even when the budget is there.
- You can't make on-page or technical changesThe methodology doesn't work without them.
- The site already launched and traffic is goneThat is a recovery engagement, not a protection one. Different page, different plan.
- Not willing to let us driveIf every decision needs a committee and a month, the program stalls. You approve the strategy, we run it.
- Under $5K a monthNot enough investment to make the channel compound. You'd be paying for activity, not an outcome.
If that's you, we'll say so on the first call and point you somewhere better. No sequence, no follow-up.
In their words
The people who signed off on it.
"Justin and his team have been phenomenal from Day 0, and the consistency in quality and the measurable results they have delivered have been a true transformation to our business. We are extremely happy and we have already recommended them to our friends."
"The partnership with Rock The Rankings contributed to clear improvements in organic performance across Canada and Australia, particularly for MoonPay's high-value transactional keywords and pages."
"Rock The Rankings delivered great work for us. We came in with a massive index bloat issue, and Justin and team quickly figured out what needed to be done and helped us implement his suggestions on the site."
"Rock The Rankings have really gone above and beyond, in terms of exceeding our expectations in both their communications and their strategies around marketing. They're very specific at what they do. They've been able to help us get to positions 1 and 2 for our most valuable keywords."
"They simply get SEO: which levers to pull and when. During my search for the right partner I already had a pretty clear idea about what was needed, and they shared a very similar vision."
"The workflow was seamless between our teams. Overall, their process was very close to ours, so it was a great fit from the get-go. Most importantly, we learned a ton from their approach."
"Justin and his team helped us strengthen our SEO strategy, enabling us to adopt a more in-depth and strategic approach, and to better anticipate and organize our content operations."
"We set out to get valuable backlinks and they have just been a fantastic partner in making that happen. It's been an amazing experience working with Rock The Rankings, and I highly recommend that you try them out."
Straight answers
Asked on every call.
If yours isn't here, bring it to the call. Same unpolished answer either way.
No, and this is the most common way we get pulled in. If the new site is not live we can still baseline the old one, which is the expensive part to lose. If it is live, we reconstruct the baseline from historical analytics, Search Console, and backlink data. Slower, but it still gives us a target to recover to.
Yes, and it is usually a mapping problem rather than an algorithm one. We separate the four causes: lost redirects, template changes that dropped conversion elements, consolidation that killed pages which were earning, and coincidental algorithm exposure. Each has a different fix and the first two are the fastest wins available in SEO.
For a clean redirect problem caught early, weeks. For a rebrand where the entity association has to be re-taught, a quarter or more, because third-party sources and AI citations update on their own schedule. The reference case was diagnosed and recovered inside a quarter, and beat the prior baseline.
Work with them. They own the build, we own the mapping, the parity checks, and the accountability for what happens to pipeline. We will give the redirect map as a file they can implement and then verify it ourselves on launch day.
If your site earns no meaningful organic demand today, there is nothing to protect and you should just build the better site. This is for teams with real inbound at stake, or one already lost.
Next step
Your GEO plan, built on your numbers.
Give us your domain and your pipeline goal. We map the prompts your buyers are asking, build your GEO marketing plan against them, and forecast the pipeline the next 90 days can realistically produce.
What we walk through
Next step
Your GEO plan, built on your numbers.
Give us your domain and your pipeline goal. We map the prompts your buyers are asking, build your GEO marketing plan against them, and forecast the pipeline the next 90 days can realistically produce.
What we walk through