Unlimit Health
Building organic search authority for Unlimit Health after a full rebrand
When Unlimit Health—formerly known as SCI Foundation—decided to rebrand, a successful site migration was crucial to preserve SEO efforts from the past three years, as well as to minimise risks in reduced web traffic and search engine visibility.
Our collaborative approach involved an SEO roadmap, encompassing a technical SEO review, URL redirects, page optimisation, content audit, and the optimisation of their Google Ad Grants account which included updating ad links to redirect to the new URLs. Our digital marketing team supported Unlimit Health’s design and web agency on the site build.
The new website and rebrand offered new opportunities for Unlimit Health, but also came with significant SEO risk and an expectation of a traffic drop, whilst the new brand was established. Since the new website launched, we have seen the new site go from strength to strength, both for brand and non-branded search queries.
Doors of opportunity with a brand refresh
Unlimit Health is an international organisation dedicated to ending parasitic diseases. They work closely with affected countries, sharing evidence and expertise to eliminate preventable infections.
During our three-year collaboration with Unlimit Health, we've worked to enhance their digital presence through SEO and Google Ad Grants, involving their team throughout the process.
Our approach has been to share our knowledge and tools, to enable the team to increase the reach of their work through digital marketing best practices. Together, we've fine-tuned their website, focusing on the creation of specialised sections for 'Neglected Tropical Diseases', demonstrating E-E-A-T and improving organisational language use on the site. This partnership has equipped Unlimit Health with the essential skills to manage and advance their online presence, ensuring it aligns with their impactful role in global health.
Unlimit Health’s decision to rebrand came with the following organisational objectives:
- Create a website that uses more targeted language that better reflects both their work and their mission
- Ensure they are a prominent organisation for anybody searching for topics related to parasitic diseases
- Optimise their website by removing outdated content and refining key pages for better organic search results
- Share their story more widely including their history, research and impact (in particular their research and findings in schistosomiasis and intestinal worms)
- Ensure the content on the website is more focused on their strategic organisational pillars, and focus on sharing how they aim to eliminate neglected tropical diseases
- Demystify schistosomiasis in a way that's educational and informative
- Encourage more regular donations, building on existing initiatives such as doubling the donations of long-term donors for the first six months
We decided to rebrand because our previous brand did not reflect our work or the ambitions and aspirations of our new strategy. Our new name and strategy have at their core the ambition to end preventable parasitic infections, like schistosomiasis (SCH), and to improve health equity. We wanted our new brand to speak to our strategy and this new direction fully aligns with the paradigm shifts and elimination targets outlined in the recent World Health Organization (WHO) neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) road map 2021-30.
Paula Plaza, Head of Communications
The prospect of launching the new brand and website was filled with exciting opportunities, but it also brought its fair share of challenges. The most significant consideration was an expected shift in traffic and user engagement during the name and domain change.
With searchers, and Google, already recognising SCI Foundation as a leader in their field, our primary focus was on smoothly handling their SEO transition. We aimed to establish the new brand, Unlimit Health, within Google, which was a critical step in preserving and elevating their online authority and search visibility.
A strategy for success
The project involved many moving parts including a name change, domain change, a CMS migration, content removal, and an update to the IA (information architecture) on the website, as well as SEO support ranging from technical to on-page, to mitigate as much risk as possible.
Our efforts concentrated on several key areas, all aimed at ensuring a smooth transition and strengthening Unlimit Health's new digital identity:
Technical SEO and authority review
Our authority and backlinks review aimed at reinforcing Unlimit Health's reputation as an authoritative source on Google, so we focused on showcasing E-E-A-T, outreach for updating existing links, updating key online sources such as Wikipedia and spreading awareness of their new logo and name across various web platforms to improve brand awareness.
In addition, we conducted a thorough examination of the site's technical structure. Our goal was to identify and resolve any technical SEO issues that could hinder the website’s performance. This involved an in-depth look at the foundations and set-up of the website, including broken links, redirects and page speed. We worked closely and collaboratively with Unlimit Health’s web agency, Ethical Digital, including ongoing discussions and a coordinated launch process.
URL restructuring & value of content audit
We also developed a comprehensive redirect plan which enabled us to seamlessly transition from the old web pages to the new ones while also removing any pages that were no longer needed.
We conducted a thorough content audit to determine which pages were lower risk to remove. Each page on Unlimit Health's website underwent a prioritisation process to identify which pages could be redirected, such as older blogs and press releases. We then checked the priority of existing content and weaved it into the content strategy. From this, we were able to create a final URL list, with all the old URLs redirecting to the new URL structure. This makes it easier for visitors to find and engage with Unlimit Health's updated content.
Optimisation of pages
Our main content objective was to maintain all of the previous content optimisation work that we had done on the SCI Foundation site, which had been created to reach their key audiences, for example, explainer pages for neglected tropical diseases.
To maintain previous optimisations, we collaborated closely with Unlimit Health, to ensure that all valuable content, links, images, and visuals were preserved and effectively transitioned during the site migration, as well as aligning their new branded content.
To do this, we liaised regularly with the Unlimit Health team and carried out manual content checks to ensure that all of the valuable content from the SCI Foundation site was uploaded to the new Unlimit Health site. To gauge the value of all the different pages on the site, we conducted a digital value of content audit, which allowed us to have a birds-eye-view of the website as a whole to identify which pages were the most important, and which pages, if any, could be removed or consolidated. From here, we were able to ensure that all of the important, evergreen content, we had previously optimised, was carried over to the Unlimit Health site.
Competitor analysis
Analysing content from an agreed list of organic search competitors, we gained an understanding of what content they produce and the keywords they’re visible for. This was a big focus for us both before the rebrand and after, which gave us new areas of growth to work on once the new website had gone live. This enabled us to expand the content offering to include more about treatment and research, looking at high search volume areas that they may not have content for yet.
Recommendations for new pages
Based on recommendations, new pages were created to highlight Unlimit Health’s organisation pillars, including ‘Health Systems Strengthening’, ‘Mass Deworming’ and others. These pages were not only important to demonstrate the amazing work they do in these areas, but also to help improve the organic visibility of Unlimit Health for people searching around these topics.
Establishing the new brand
We were encouraged that following the launch of the new website, search engines adapted more quickly than expected to the new brand and domain. Both teams worked to ensure that we mitigated as much risk as possible throughout the process and we have since been supporting Unlimit Health to reestablish their full organic visibility.
We've been establishing the new brand, Unlimit Health, within Google as an authoritative and trustworthy organisation. The site has began ranking on page 1 of Google search results for highly relevant keywords including Bilharzia Symptoms, Female Genital Schistosomiasis, Soil-Transmitted Helminths, and Schistosomiasis Symptoms. WASH content on the site has also seen a 31% increase in clicks. Whilst the organic visibility has been building, we’ve supported the Unlimit Health team to leverage their Google Ad Grants budget to support the site.
Torchbox ensured that the impact of the domain name change, and overall brand change, was minimised and that Google traffic was re-routed efficiently. They created extensive redirect grids, focusing on content that was of relevance to the new brand, as well as maintaining the presence of the old brand. For on-page optimisation, they ensured consistency across all of the new content and that best practices were maintained throughout.
Anna Georgeson, Associate Communications Advisor
Looking ahead
With their new website and brand identity, we are focusing on strategy pillars related to country ownership and treatment programs. Our goal is to ensure that Unlimit Health's content not only discusses treatment but also highlights other key drivers of parasitic diseases, such as unsafe water contact and transmission between animals and humans.
We are also focusing on evergreen content on the site to ensure this aligns with Unlimit Health’s new organisational strategy pillars, as well as working on technical SEO enhancements alongside their web agency.
Additionally, the team at Unlimit Health are currently developing story maps to enrich the user experience on their site. These maps will showcase the impact of Unlimit Health's work, including quotes and videos to enhance trust and authority.
Finally, we continue to support Unlimit Health in their mission to increase regular donations, primarily through Google Grants and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Torchbox provided valuable advice throughout and was open to telling us that we would have to work hard to reach the statistics and level of visibility we had with our previous website. However, we are very happy that eight months after the launch, we are recovering our rankings. A big part of this has been the enthusiasm of the Torchbox team. They have always been on board, helping us out and being patient to answer all our questions. They know that as a small charity working in a niche sector, it can be challenging, but they are very encouraging.
Paula Plaza, Head of Communications