A regional HVAC company serving three Arizona counties came to me six weeks after launching a new website. Their organic traffic had dropped 40% almost overnight and they were panicking heading into their busy summer season. The agency that built the site had no SEO expertise, and the client had no idea what had gone wrong.
The Challenge
The redesigned site had launched without redirects from the old URL structure, leaving hundreds of pages returning 404 errors. Their XML sitemap was pointing to the old domain. Key service pages had been consolidated and lost their individual keyword targeting. The robots.txt file was blocking Googlebot from crawling entire sections of the site. Every week that passed was compounding the damage.
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My Approach
I ran a full crawl audit within 48 hours of being engaged and delivered a prioritized remediation plan by end of week one. The fix list was sequenced by impact: first the robots.txt error, then the redirect mapping, then the sitemap, then the on-page rebuilds. I worked directly with their web developer to implement each fix and monitored crawl data in Search Console daily until recovery was confirmed.
Key Highlights
Identified and resolved robots.txt blocking Googlebot site-wide
Mapped and implemented 200+ 301 redirects from old URL structure
Rebuilt XML sitemap and resubmitted to Search Console
Restored individual service page keyword targeting
Full traffic recovery achieved within 90 days of engagement
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The Results
Traffic was back to pre-redesign baseline within 90 days. More importantly, with proper on-page structure now in place, organic traffic surpassed the old baseline by 22% within six months — meaning the recovery ultimately left them better off than before the problematic redesign. The client added an ongoing technical monitoring retainer to prevent future issues.
Let’s review your website together, uncover growth opportunities, and plan improvements—whether you work with me or not.
