Service

SEO during website migration

Project

The company specializes in selling car wheels and tires, and also provides wheel installation, replacement, and maintenance services through a network of service stations in different cities across Canada. The website combines the functionality of an eCommerce store and a service-based business, targeting car owners who are looking for both products and professional service. As part of the project’s development, the website was migrated from WordPress to an SPA architecture, which required adapting the SEO strategy to the new technical environment

Objective

– Preserve the website’s organic traffic and rankings during the migration from WordPress to SPA
– Ensure proper indexation of the SPA website by search engines
– Minimize the risk of losing visibility and traffic after the transition
– Adapt the SEO strategy to the new website architecture
– Create a foundation for further organic traffic growth

Niche

Sale of car wheels and tires, as well as wheel-related auto service

Period

May, 2024 - present day

Region

Canada

Challenges of the project

One of RegisTeam’s ongoing projects has been in active SEO work for a long time and has shown steady positive growth. You can learn more about the earlier stage of the project and our previous case study here.

It is important to note that this website is not a traditional online store. It functions as a product catalog where users can browse the range of car wheels and tires, but cannot complete a purchase online.

The site includes product pages with item descriptions, but it does not have full eCommerce functionality such as a shopping cart or checkout. This affects both user behavior signals and the site’s competitiveness in search results.

Previous traffic growth results:

Previous keyword growth trends:

What is an SPA and why does it create SEO challenges?

An SPA (Single Page Application) is a type of web application where the entire interface works within a single page, and content is loaded dynamically with JavaScript without a full page reload.

From the user’s perspective, this makes the website feel faster and navigation smoother. However, for search engines, this architecture creates a number of technical challenges.

The main issue is that search bots initially receive only the base HTML, which often does not contain the full content. A large part of the information appears only after JavaScript is executed, which makes crawling and indexation more difficult.

Some of the main reasons why SPA websites are more challenging for SEO include:

  • content is generated dynamically and may not be accessible to bots
  • search engines have limited JavaScript processing capabilities
  • bots do not interact with the page by clicking or scrolling
  • delays or incomplete page rendering may occur
  • it is harder to implement a full URL structure and internal linking

As a result, without additional technical optimization, SPA websites can lose part of their content from the index, which negatively affects visibility and search rankings.

The decision to move to an SPA

At a certain stage of the project’s development, the owners decided to fully switch to an SPA architecture as the foundation for the site’s further growth and scalability.

One of the key reasons was the limitation of the existing catalog structure. Previously, a single product page combined information about different sizes, variations, and product types, without allowing users to select a specific item or place an order. This approach made both the user experience and the site’s further development more difficult.

An example of the previous product page implementation on WordPress:

To solve this, it was necessary to separate products into individual pages — each model, size, and variation needed its own dedicated product page. In turn, this meant a major increase in the total number of pages and a much more complex site structure.

In this context, the SPA architecture was seen as a solution that would make it possible to:

  • work efficiently with a large number of dynamic pages
  • ensure fast loading and smooth interaction with the catalog
  • implement flexible filtering, sorting, and navigation
  • build a foundation for further functional scaling

In addition, SPA makes it possible to create a more modern and user-friendly interface, closer to the logic of mobile apps, which is an important factor for users in a competitive niche.

Although SPA architecture is traditionally considered more challenging for SEO due to rendering and indexation issues, in this case the priority was to build a scalable product with a better user experience. The SEO limitations were treated as a separate challenge that required technical solutions and an adapted promotion strategy.

An example of the current product page implementation in JavaScript:

Challenges after moving to an SPA

After the transition to an SPA architecture, the project faced a number of technical challenges that directly affected indexation, site visibility, and organic traffic.

The main difficulty was that SPA changes the way a website interacts with search engines: content is no longer generated on the server, but in the user’s browser through JavaScript. This creates limitations for proper crawling and indexation.

Indexation and rendering issues

– Search bots were receiving incomplete or empty HTML because the main content was loaded through JavaScript

– Some pages were not being indexed or were indexed incorrectly

– Rendering delays occurred, which meant the bot might not wait for the page to load fully

– If the JavaScript was complex or invalid, some of the content was not processed

Number of pages outside the index according to GSC:

Content issues

– Content was missing from the initial HTML

– Some important SEO elements, such as text blocks and meta tags, were loaded dynamically

– Incorrect content rendering for bots affected page relevance

Analytics issues

– Standard analytics systems did not track page-to-page navigation correctly

– The data was incomplete because pages were not fully reloaded

– Additional setup was required through the History API or Google Tag Manager

Traffic fluctuation trends across different channels according to GA4:

Performance issues

– A large amount of JavaScript slowed down page loading

– When rendering was slow, bots did not receive the full content

– This had a negative impact on both SEO and user behavior signals

Page performance analysis according to GSC:

Moving to an SPA made the website more flexible and user-friendly, but it also made its interaction with search engines much more complex. Without additional technical solutions, this leads to indexation issues, loss of visibility, and a decline in organic traffic.

As a result, after the transition, the website began to lose search rankings quickly, which directly affected the drop in organic traffic.

Organic traffic trends according to Ahrefs:

Keyword ranking trends according to SE Ranking:

Trends in the number of keywords in organic search according to Ahrefs:

What did we do to solve the SPA website issues?

The key task was to ensure proper indexation of the SPA website’s content and restore visibility in search engines. The main focus was on changing the rendering approach and improving content accessibility for search bots.

Implementing server-side rendering (SSR)

The main solution was to implement server-side rendering (SSR), which made it possible to generate the HTML version of the page on the server side before it was delivered to the user.

This made it possible to:

  • provide search bots with full HTML pages containing the actual content
  • ensure proper crawling and indexation of pages
  • reduce dependence on JavaScript execution
  • speed up the initial page load

As a result, search engines started receiving not an “empty” template, but a fully prepared page with all the necessary SEO elements.

Generating content in HTML

It was critical to move the key page elements into the server-generated HTML:

  • page text and main content
  • headings (H1–Hn)
  • meta tags (Title, Description)
  • internal links

This made it possible to:

– ensure content accessibility without JavaScript execution

– help search engines determine page relevance correctly

– improve the indexation of new pages

JavaScript optimization

  • reduced the amount of JavaScript
  • improved script execution speed
  • fixed errors that were interfering with rendering

This reduced the risk of content being lost while pages were being processed by bots.

Analytics setup

  • implemented tracking through the History API
  • configured Google Analytics correctly through Tag Manager

This made it possible to receive accurate user behavior data after the transition to SPA.

Organic traffic growth trends according to GA4:

Results after implementation

Organic traffic

The recovery of the organic channel is especially important here:

  • Users from organic search: 30,708 (+9.92%)
  • New users: +8.82%
  • Average engagement time: +36.58%
  • Number of events: +389%

The growth in organic traffic after the decline confirms that the technical solutions implemented allowed search engines to index the website correctly and return it to the search results.

Click trends according to GSC over the last 3 months:

Behavioral signals

  • Users started spending more time on the website
  • Depth of interaction increased, including sessions and events
  • The quality of organic traffic improved

This indicates not only a recovery in visibility, but also an improvement in user experience.

Keyword growth trends:

The distribution of keywords by ranking positions shows a positive trend in the website’s visibility growth.

The number of TOP 1 rankings increased to 19 (+13), which indicates stronger leading positions for priority keywords. Growth was also recorded in the TOP 2–3 and TOP 6–10 ranges, showing that more queries are gradually moving into the upper part of the search results.

Especially important is the increase in the number of keywords ranking in positions 11–30 (+24) and 31–100 (+44), which creates strong potential for further growth and for these queries to move into the TOP 10.

Overall, this trend confirms the recovery of rankings after the technical changes and creates a solid foundation for further organic traffic growth:

Summary

After the changes were implemented, the website showed growth across its main traffic metrics: the number of sessions reached 1 million, users totaled 946.7K, and page views grew to 1.9 million.

The number of engaged sessions (162.4K) and conversions (27.6K) also increased significantly, which points to improved website performance.

At the same time, engagement metrics such as engagement rate and average engagement time declined, which may be related to changes in the traffic structure and the higher share of new users (99.47%).

Overall, the trend confirms traffic growth at scale and stronger business performance after the implementation of the technical solutions.

Trends in the website’s key metrics according to Ahrefs:

Ahrefs data shows a sharp increase across all key SEO metrics, pointing to active recovery and scaling of the project after the technical improvements.

The website also started receiving mentions in AI systems such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot. This creates a new visibility channel and confirms the growing authority of the resource.

The backlink profile strengthened significantly: the number of backlinks grew to 594 (+571), while the number of referring domains reached 148 (+142). This had a positive impact on the site’s authority (DR +4, UR +9) and overall trust from search engines.

Search performance also showed strong growth: the site now ranks for more than 1,000 organic keywords, with 223 of them already in the Top 3, which is a strong signal of ranking recovery. Organic traffic reached 4K, with an estimated traffic value of $1.3K.

Overall, the trend confirms that technical SEO optimization, content work, and link building delivered a combined effect: the site not only recovered after the decline, but also started actively building authority, visibility, and traffic entry points.

The project is currently still in the active recovery stage. Despite the results achieved so far, there are still some remaining issues with indexation, site speed, and search rankings.

At the same time, the current trend shows that the work is moving in the right direction: the site is gradually regaining visibility, increasing traffic, and building a solid foundation for further growth.

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