Skip to content
SEM ROI
Plan a migration
Case study · Replatform & SEO migration

Two sites, one store. Half of online revenue from Google

A Romanian hotel supplier ran a WordPress site and a separate shop. We merged them into one Shopify store without losing traffic, then built the SEO that sells.

Client
Horeca Papatya (Selectron Invest)
Sector
Hospitality supply · B2B and retail
Market
Romania
Timeline
Mar – Oct 2026
Our roles
SEO strategy, migration planning, site architecture, custom B2B development and redirects
  • Site merge
  • Replatform
  • Custom development
  • SEO migration
  • B2B e-commerce
  • Site architecture
of online revenue started with a Google organic visit
53%
store conversion rate, August to October
3.5×
organic clicks since the old sites
+62%
traffic lost in the 30 days after the cutover
0%
more searches ranking on page one (14 → 60)
4×

Sources: Shopify, 40 orders 30 Jul – 22 Oct 2026, first-visit attribution, tests and refunds excluded. Search Console, 31 Mar – 29 Apr vs 20 Sep – 19 Oct.

The challenge

A trusted supplier split across two broken sites

Horeca Papatya supplies hundreds of hotels across Romania. Online, a WordPress site and a WooCommerce shop worked against each other, down to same-named categories competing for the same searches.

What we had to deliver
  • Merge both sites into one store without losing search traffic+1% clicks, month one
  • Sell retail products and show quote-only B2B products in one catalogue356 products at launch
  • Grow non-brand search for the core product categories+60% non-brand clicks

  • Two installs, one domain

    Two WordPress installs, two SEO plugins: conflicting schema, separate sitemaps, www and non-www duplicates.

  • A shop Google could not use

    The shop homepage, linked from every page, showed 'Page Not Found' and was set to noindex.

  • Crawl budget spent on junk

    Of 768 crawled pages, 299 were products. Google held about 1,400 cart and archive URLs as junk.

  • No on-page basics

    Placeholder text on the homepage, no H1 tags and one listing per size, so products competed with themselves.

What we did

Six workstreams, run as one migration

Search first, then a store built around it, redirects locked before launch, then optimisation. Every live change had an approval, a backup and a rollback.

Project timeline8 months
01Audit & discoveryMar – Apr 2026
  1. Audit & discoveryMar – Apr 2026

    A full picture of both sites

    • SEO, GEO, performance and schema audits of the corporate site and the shop, plus a 2,025-URL crawl.
    • Search Console coverage analysis to find what Google was actually spending its time on.
    1,400cart and archive URLs Google held as junk
  2. ArchitectureApr – Jun 2026

    One catalogue structure for two businesses

    • A category silo and keyword map for the merged store, built from the shop export and the crawl.
    • Same-named categories from the two sites merged into one, so each search has a single page to rank.
    • Sizes listed as separate products were grouped semantically into one product with variants, so each product has one URL.
    813variants under 356 products at launch
  3. Store & B2B buildJun – Jul 2026

    Retail store plus custom-built B2B quoting

    • B2B quoting built as custom software on a standard Shopify plan: no prices, a 'Request a quote' form, type filters and a variant and brand structure for tablecloths and curtains.
    • Collection pages with two content layers: a short banner line and a longer SEO text below the products.
    151quote-only B2B products at launch
  4. Redirects & cutoverJul 2026

    A migration run as a redirect project

    • Every old URL mapped and every target checked against the live store before launch. The check caught 48 outdated targets and 22 renamed products that would have returned 404.
    • Content freeze on 24 July, cutover on 30 July, sample checks across every redirect type on launch day.
    0%traffic lost in the first 30 days
  5. On-page SEOSep 2026

    Titles, content and headings for the pages that earn

    • New SEO titles and meta descriptions for nine collections and longer category content for eight, chosen from the queries already bringing impressions.
    • A real H1 on the homepage and 301s for the old English URLs.
    +61%clicks to the eight reworked collections within 33 days
  6. MeasurementSep 2026 – ongoing

    Segmented reporting and clean signals

    • 16 topic clusters and 16 page groups in our search reporting, set up before the changes so each result can be traced to its page.
    • Product price schema removed from quote-only products, which had told Google they cost 0.00, plus a canonical test to consolidate thin B2B pages.
    448quote-only products no longer sending a 0.00 price to Google
01Audit & discoveryMar – Apr 2026

A full picture of both sites

  • SEO, GEO, performance and schema audits of the corporate site and the shop, plus a 2,025-URL crawl.
  • Search Console coverage analysis to find what Google was actually spending its time on.
1,400cart and archive URLs Google held as junk
02ArchitectureApr – Jun 2026

One catalogue structure for two businesses

  • A category silo and keyword map for the merged store, built from the shop export and the crawl.
  • Same-named categories from the two sites merged into one, so each search has a single page to rank.
  • Sizes listed as separate products were grouped semantically into one product with variants, so each product has one URL.
813variants under 356 products at launch
03Store & B2B buildJun – Jul 2026

Retail store plus custom-built B2B quoting

  • B2B quoting built as custom software on a standard Shopify plan: no prices, a 'Request a quote' form, type filters and a variant and brand structure for tablecloths and curtains.
  • Collection pages with two content layers: a short banner line and a longer SEO text below the products.
151quote-only B2B products at launch
04Redirects & cutoverJul 2026

A migration run as a redirect project

  • Every old URL mapped and every target checked against the live store before launch. The check caught 48 outdated targets and 22 renamed products that would have returned 404.
  • Content freeze on 24 July, cutover on 30 July, sample checks across every redirect type on launch day.
0%traffic lost in the first 30 days
05On-page SEOSep 2026

Titles, content and headings for the pages that earn

  • New SEO titles and meta descriptions for nine collections and longer category content for eight, chosen from the queries already bringing impressions.
  • A real H1 on the homepage and 301s for the old English URLs.
+61%clicks to the eight reworked collections within 33 days
06MeasurementSep 2026 – ongoing

Segmented reporting and clean signals

  • 16 topic clusters and 16 page groups in our search reporting, set up before the changes so each result can be traced to its page.
  • Product price schema removed from quote-only products, which had told Google they cost 0.00, plus a canonical test to consolidate thin B2B pages.
448quote-only products no longer sending a 0.00 price to Google
Organic growth

Organic clicks, April to October 2026

Traffic held through the cutover. It climbed once the merged store settled and the on-page work went live in September.

167 · +67%

Line chart: organic clicks indexed to April 2026 = 100. Flat through May and June, 121 in the July cutover month, 125 in August, 162 in September and 167 in October.
  • Shopify live · no traffic loss
  • On-page SEO live

Google Search Console. Daily clicks per month, April 2026 = 100; Oct = 1–19 Oct.

Search to sales

Half of online revenue starts with Google

The store opened for orders on 30 July. Each month since, more visitors bought and spent more per order; organic visitors convert at twice the direct rate.

conversion of search visitors vs direct (1.5% vs 0.7%)
2×
average order value, August to October
+63%
orders that first landed on a collection reworked in September
8
Online orders and conversion rateSince launch
Bar chart: 10 orders in August at 0.44% conversion, 15 in September at 1.02%, 15 in 1–22 October at 1.52%.

Source: Shopify orders and sessions, 30 Jul – 22 Oct 2026. Bars: orders. Pills: store conversion rate. Attribution by first visit.

Rankings

Onto page one for the products hotels buy

Page-one appearances have grown more than fourfold. Category searches that sat on page two before the migration now rank on page one.

searches on page one, up from 14
60
searches in the top 3, up from 1
6
searches with 10+ impressions a month (67 → 134)
2×
non-brand clicks
+60%
Apr 2026Top 3: 1, 4–10: 13, 11–20: 30, 21+: 23
Oct 2026Top 3: 6, 4–10: 54, 11–20: 46, 21+: 28
Non-brand Romanian searches with 10+ impressions in 30 days, by average position. 31 Mar – 29 Apr vs 20 Sep – 19 Oct 2026.
Google.ro average positionApr → Sep–Oct 2026
carucior housekeeping hotel
hotel housekeeping trolley
was newnow #3
pilote horeca
HoReCa duvets
was #13now #4
prosoape hoteliere
hotel-grade towels
was #11now #7
papuci hotelieri
hotel slippers
was #11now #8
prosoape hotel
hotel towels
was #47now #8
mese restaurant
restaurant tables
was newnow #9
prosoape horeca
HoReCa towels
was #10now #9

What we learned

  1. A migration is a redirect project

    The store kept changing while it was built. Checking every redirect target against the live store just before launch caught 70 URLs that would otherwise have broken.

  2. B2B catalogues need their own SEO rules

    Quote-only products should not send price signals, and people search for the category, not the pattern name. We treat the collection as the page to rank and the product as supporting detail.

  3. Set up measurement before you change anything

    Topic clusters and page groups were in place before the on-page work went live, so we could show which pages moved and by how much, rather than pointing at a site-wide line.

Merging sites or moving platforms?

Tell us what you run today. We'll come back with a migration plan that protects the traffic you already have and the structure to grow it.

Plan my migrationAll case studies
The new Myra Dental homepage on Payload CMS
Next case study · Healthcare
Myra Dental: 1,000+ organic clicks a day