Blast Analytics and Marketing

GigaOM: Increased Traffic Value 197% & Eliminated Site Migration Risk

Supporting Leaders to EVOLVE

Overview

As one of the most influential and highly visited sites on the web, GigaOM
was looking into consolidating their network of sites from separate domains into the main GigaOM.com domain.

Challenge

GigaOM engaged with Blast Analytics & Marketing to benchmark the sites, establish the business case, and develop a detailed strategy for consolidating their multiple sites. Together we identified and assessed the many risks and opportunities for this project. The main concern was the risk of possibly losing visitors/revenue due to the impact on search engine visibility as a result of the platform/domain consolidation. However, the biggest opportunity, which outweighed that risk, was a substantial increase in advertising revenue (RPM), based on increasing the average RPM for all GigaOM blog properties when all blogs are combined to one domain and each benefit from sharing the aggregate traffic volume for ad monetization calculations.

Solution

Blast developed a phased plan for transitioning each site to GigaOM.com starting with the lowest risk site first. This allowed for us to minimize the impact of any implementation mistakes or unforeseen issues. This plan included working closely with GigaOM’s engineering team on technical SEO items that would prove to be critical. There were periods of intense monitoring during, immediately following, and ongoing weekly and monthly checks. the migrations so that issues could be immediately resolved.

Execution of the transition plan involved the following strategies and tactics:

  • A phased approach to allow for proper monitoring and adjustments as the lowest risk sites were transitioned first
  • Active monitoring at the point of transition and immediately following
  • Rapid execution to resolve issues that would negatively impact search engine performance (resolving issues in hours that would have typically taken weeks to notice)

Results

The planning and execution paid off with results included the following:

  • Overall traffic was up 12% immediately following the migration, and grew to a 30% increase quickly (despite traffic loss being the biggest risk)
  • Video traffic was up 30% due to a greater than 50% increase in non-branded search traffic
  • Non-branded search traffic to TheAppleBlog site (which transitioned from TheAppleBlog.com to GigaOM.com/apple) quickly increased by 25%
  • Ad Monetization increased on TheAppleBlog from $10/RPM to $25/RPM and traffic value increased by 197%

We have engaged with Blast Analytics & Marketing on three fronts and have been impressed with their knowledge, speed of response, and follow through.

Dan Burke, Director of Project Management
GigaOM