Website:
nertis.agency
Job details:
Image from LinkedIn page of Visable
Following the acquisition of Visable by Alibaba Group, I participated in the SEO planning and risk assessment for the consolidation of Europages and WLW into a unified platform architecture.
Executive Summary
The Project Involved Multiple Simultaneous Migrations
- Information architecture migration
- Category taxonomy migration
- Platform migration
- Design migration
- Domain consolidation scenarios
Because organic search represented a primary acquisition channel for both marketplaces, preserving search visibility became a strategic requirement rather than a technical afterthought.
My Role Focused On
- migration risk modelling,
- traffic-loss forecasting,
- information architecture analysis,
- redirect strategy, and
- stakeholder alignment across product, engineering, UX and leadership teams.
Why this migration was unusually risky
Category pages change content, Internal links scheme upheaval
URL generation rules change
HTML structure and quality signals change
Authority transfer risk
This project involved all (four) layers simultaneously, instead of one (as many other migrations).
This Greatly Increased The Probability Of
- ranking loss
- crawl inefficiencies
- internal link disruption
- quality re-evaluation
- authority dilution
Related Service Areas
SEO
Google penalty recovery consultant
Key Terms
Website SEO migration
ASSIGNMENT 1
Category & CPV Migration
Or preserving search traffic during Taxonomy consolidation
The marketplace contained more than 22,000 category entities distributed across separate ontologies maintained by Europages and WLW. Yet, the acquisition introduced a third taxonomy originating from Alibaba's CPV framework.
So, the challenge was not merely database normalization because the category structure was directly exposed to search engines through:
- category pages
- internal linking on page templates
- breadcrumbs
- Internal link anchor texts
Therefore every taxonomy decision was simultaneously an SEO decision.
Photo from Visable SA website
The key SEO idea
Taxonomy Migration Is Internal Link Migration
The category hierarchy formed the backbone of the site's internal linking architecture.
Changes To Taxonomy Would Automatically Affect
- category relationships
- breadcrumb pathways
- company-to-category links
- product-to-category links
- crawl paths
- PageRank distribution
- text anchors of internal links
As a result, the project was not evaluated solely through taxonomy accuracy but also through its impact on search visibility and link equity flow.
Risk Model: Scenario Analysis
Several migration scenarios were modelled and compared before implementation.
Scenario 1 — Back-End Mapping Only
Legacy Categories remained unchanged from the user's perspective and were mapped to Alibaba's CPV structure exclusively in the back end.
Advantage: Minimal SEO risk.
Disadvantage: Limited progress toward a unified data model and One Platform objectives.
Scenario 2 — Hybrid Migration
The majority of legacy Categories were mapped to CPV Leaf Categories, while the remaining Categories were selectively replaced by Alibaba's CPV structure.
Advantage: Balanced SEO preservation with business and engineering requirements.
Disadvantage: Required additional work on internal linking and navigation elements.
Scenario 3 — Full CPV Replacement
All legacy Categories were replaced by Alibaba's CPV taxonomy.
Advantage: Maximum alignment with the future platform architecture.
Disadvantage: Significant risk to internal linking, category relevance, crawl paths, and search visibility.
Several additional sub-scenarios were evaluated based on differences in page templates, breadcrumb implementation, and internal linking structures.
The Analysis Focused On Five Evaluation Criteria
- Traffic preservation
- Category relevance
- Crawlability
- Internal link retention
- Search visibility
Following risk assessment and stakeholder discussions, the hybrid migration approach was selected as the preferred scenario. Additional safeguards were made, including enhancements to breadcrumb navigation, etc.
Scale of the Challenge
The Category segment represented one of the most important SEO assets across the platform.
- Approximately 17,500 active Category pages were indexed by Google.
- Category pages generated roughly 25% of all organic search traffic, making them the second-largest SEO traffic segment after Company Pages.
- More than 22,000 taxonomy entities required evaluation during migration planning.
However, The Analysis Also Revealed a Structural Opportunity. Only 10.5% Of All Category Pages Generated Meaningful Search Visibility, Impressions, Or Traffic. The Remaining Pages Suffered From
- Possibly insufficient content quality
- Weak search intent alignment
- Limited usefulness for users
- Low search demand
This finding suggested that migration could potentially be used not only to preserve traffic, but also to improve keyword-to-category alignment and even expand search coverage.
Outcome
The proposed migration strategy was approved by senior management following a risk-versus-reward assessment.
The migration was executed without measurable traffic loss.
SEO Results, Migration of Categories
Organic traffic to Category pages increased by 15%
BOHDAN LYTVYN
Founder, Nertis
Performance Of Category Pages Improved
- Organic keyword footprint increased by 5.4%
- Organic traffic to Category pages increased by 15%
- Category-to-keyword matching became more precise, reducing ambiguity and improving search relevance
Illustration 1: Trend of number of Organic Keywords (before and after CPV migration)
Illustration 2: Example of keywords expansion and more accurate attribution of Keywords to Category pages
ASSIGNMENT 2
Design Migration (a change of HTML template)
Challenge
As part of the One Platform initiative, Visable planned a complete redesign of core page templates across Europages and WLW. The redesign was intended to be deployed simultaneously with the platform migration itself through a "big bang" release strategy.
From a product perspective, this approach reduced implementation complexity. However, from an SEO perspective, it introduced a significant risk.
The proposed release would combine several major changes at once:
- Platform migration
- Design migration
- HTML markup overhaul
- Internal linking modifications
- Changes to content hierarchy and page templates
This would make it difficult to
isolate the root cause of any subsequent traffic loss and significantly increase the probability of search visibility decline.
Why Design Changes Matter for SEO
Many organisations view design as a purely visual exercise while search engines do not.
A Design Change Often Modifies
- HTML structure
- Content-to-code ratio
- Heading hierarchy
- Internal linking patterns
- Breadcrumb navigation
- Content prominence
- User interaction signals
As a result, a significant redesign effectively creates a new version of every page from Google's perspective. The challenge was particularly important because organic search represented one of the largest acquisition channels across Europages and WLW.
Analysis Framework
My role was to evaluate the proposed page templates through an SEO lens before deployment.
The Work Included
- Technical SEO audits of existing page templates
- Internal linking analysis
- PageRank distribution analysis
- Content quality evaluation
- Accessibility review
- Comparison of legacy and One Platform templates
- Validation of prototypes before release
The Analysis Covered All Major Page Types
- Company Profile Pages (CPP)
- Category Pages (SERPs)
- Product Detail Pages (PDP)
- Homepage templates, etc
Each proposed design iteration was reviewed before implementation and then re-tested in a controlled environment using crawler-based audits.
Recommendations
The primary recommendation was to avoid a simultaneous release of design and migration changes.
Instead, I Proposed a Staged Rollout Strategy
- Launch the new design on a medium-sized market first.
- Measure the SEO impact independently from migration effects.
- Allow time for corrections and hot fixes.
- Proceed with wider rollout only after validation.
Additional Recommendations Included
- Preserve and enhance breadcrumb navigation.
- Maintain critical internal linking pathways.
- Reduce template-driven content duplication.
- Rework related-product logic to improve content diversity.
- Restore visibility of category and showroom pages from homepage templates.
- Validate every template revision through crawler-based testing before deployment.
ASSIGNMENT 3
URL Migration Strategy and Redirecting
Challenge
After completion of the taxonomy migration work and the design migration analysis, the final major SEO challenge concerned URL migration.
The discussion therefore focused on whether the One Platform initiative should introduce a new URL structure across Europages and WLW or preserve existing URLs through routing and platform-level solutions.
From an engineering perspective, a unified URL structure was attractive. From an SEO perspective, however, URL migration represented the largest remaining source of avoidable risk.
The Core Question Became
Should the platform change URLs simply because the architecture changes underneath?
Strategic Principle
The first recommendation was simple: avoid URL migration whenever possible.
A common misconception during platform migrations is that a new platform requires a new URL structure. In fact, URL preservation is often a technical challenge rather than a business necessity.
I proposed that existing URLs should remain intact while the new platform generated content through routing rules and application-level logic. Only newly created pages would follow a unified URL structure.
This approach would preserve accumulated ranking signals, external links, historical performance data, and user familiarity while still allowing the business to move toward a unified platform architecture.
Redirect Strategy
Because the business continued to evaluate URL changes, I developed a fallback migration framework. The objective was not simply to implement redirects, but to minimise the shock experienced by search engines.
Traditional migrations typically rely on a single release date: old URLs are removed and redirected to new URLs immediately. I proposed a different approach.
Multi-Step Migration Framework
The framework separated design migration and URL migration into distinct phases.
Phase 1 — Design Validation
- New templates deployed on existing URLs.
- Impact measured independently.
- Corrective actions applied if necessary.
Phase 2 — URL Introduction
- New URLs deployed alongside existing URLs.
- New URLs exposed through sitemaps.
- Canonical relationships used to guide indexation.
- Search engines were allowed to discover new URLs before redirects occurred.
Phase 3 — Transition
- Internal linking gradually shifted toward new URLs.
- Canonical signals progressively reversed.
- Redirects introduced only after search engines had already discovered and processed the new URL structure.The objective was to reduce the risks associated with large-scale URL replacement and allow Google to build understanding of the new structure before redirects were enforced.
SEO results, Full migration
Number of Keywords (Search terms) and Pages shown in Google continue to rise (by 4% MoM).
Number of Clicks went up by 4.27% MoM.
+4.3% clicks
in SEO traffic
Screenshot from internal traffic reporting tool
About Bohdan Lytvyn
Full background and approach — bohdanlytvyn.com
Bohdan Lytvyn
"WASTELESS GROWTH" BOOK AUTHOR
17 years in SEO and growth strategy. Former Senior SEO Manager at Alibaba's European subsidiary. Worked with B2B marketplaces, SaaS platforms, eCommerce businesses, and digital-first companies across Europe.
Based in Paris. Working in English and French.
I don't run an agency that assigns you to a junior team. I'm the person who does the diagnostic, designs the strategy, and delivers the work.
Nertis is a trade name of Monsieur Bohdan LYTVYN.
Address: 2 La Basse Charmoie, Fontaine-Simon, 28240, France
SIRET: 94910495400019
TVA: FR57949104954
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