A government website migration, with the SEO upside built in.
How we executed Study NSW's website migration without ranking disruption, then grew organic traffic 319% across the rebuilt government site.
Where Study NSW was when we walked in.
Study NSW is the NSW Government's initiative for promoting international education and supporting overseas students. With prospective students researching from 190+ countries and educational institutions counting on the site for visibility, the engagement carried two non-negotiables: zero disruption to live government services during a planned site rebuild, and measurable SEO improvement after launch.
Government website migrations are notoriously high-risk: rankings can be permanently lost if the migration isn't executed carefully, and stakeholder complexity multiplies the failure surface. The brief was to plan and execute the migration with zero ranking loss, then build a sustained SEO programme on top of the new architecture to grow international student visibility across the target source markets.
- Critical government service with zero downtime tolerance during migration
- Diverse international student markets with different search behaviours and languages
- Strict government compliance + communication standards constraining SEO tactics
- Multiple stakeholders (DEIT, government communications, dev teams) requiring coordination
- Rebuild + rebrand of the site happening in parallel with the migration
- Need to demonstrate sector-recovery ROI through formal measurement frameworks
Three moves that turned a high-risk migration into a sustained growth story.
- 01
Executed the migration with zero ranking loss
Plan, test, redirect, monitor.
Migration was the riskiest phase. We built a comprehensive URL mapping + 301 redirect plan, tested on staging before any production change, and monitored rankings hour-by-hour through the cutover. Government services stayed live, citation flow through redirects was preserved, and rankings survived the transition cleanly.
- 02
Built SEO into the new architecture from day one
Schema, internal linking, performance.
Rather than retrofitting SEO after launch, we built the technical foundations into the rebuild: government-organisation schema markup, hub-and-spoke internal linking, mobile-first performance optimisation, and Core Web Vitals discipline. The new site launched SEO-ready, not as a separate retrofit project.
- 03
Optimised for international student source markets
Multi-market, government-compliant.
The audience is 190+ countries with very different search behaviours. We mapped keyword opportunities across the highest-value source markets, optimised content within strict government communication standards, and built a measurement framework that tied SEO performance to the sector-recovery goals stakeholders needed to report against.
- Pre-migration URL mapping + redirect plan Phase 1
- Staging audit + production cutover monitoring Phase 1
- Government-org schema markup implementation Phase 2
- Internal linking architecture for new site Phase 2
- Core Web Vitals + mobile-first performance Phase 2
- Multi-market keyword + content optimisation Phase 3
- Monthly WIP + stakeholder reporting framework Ongoing
The full picture, by the numbers.
Quarterly average organic sessions. Engagement begins July 2022 with the migration cutover; the chart shows growth from a post-migration near-zero baseline to the Oct 2024 peak of 2,136 monthly sessions.
How a government migration delivered SEO upside.
Three phases of work: migration execution, post-launch SEO foundation, and ongoing optimisation across multi-market keyword opportunities.
Migration execution Zero ranking loss across the cutover
Government site migrations fail most often because URL changes lose link equity. We built a comprehensive 301 redirect plan that mapped every legacy URL to its closest equivalent on the new site, and tested every mapping on staging before any production change went live.
- URL mapping: every legacy page mapped 1:1 (or to the closest survivor), with no orphaned redirects
- Staging audit: full SEO + performance audit on the rebuilt site before cutover
- Cutover monitoring: hour-by-hour ranking monitoring through the transition window
- Stakeholder coordination: DEIT, government communications, and the dev team aligned on cutover sequence
The cutover landed without ranking disruption. That's the bar for a government site: anything less would have compromised essential information flow to international students. From there, the SEO programme could build on a clean foundation.
SEO foundation Built into the new architecture, not retrofitted
We integrated SEO into the rebuild itself rather than treating it as a separate post-launch project. The architecture, schema, internal linking, and performance were all built to be SEO-ready from the day the new site went live.
- Schema markup: GovernmentOrganization, EducationalOrganization, FAQPage across relevant pages
- Internal linking: hub-and-spoke structure routing authority into the primary student-facing content
- Performance: Core Web Vitals + mobile-first optimisation critical for international users on varied connections
- Indexation: clean URL structure with no parameter pollution or duplicate-content traps
Building SEO into the rebuild meant the post-launch growth was compounding from day one rather than starting from a deficit. Most government migrations spend their first six months recovering what they lost; this one spent its first six months growing.
Multi-market optimisation Optimising for 190+ countries within government communication standards
Study NSW's audience is global: prospective students researching from 190+ source markets, each with different search behaviours and language considerations. We optimised within strict government communication standards while still building real visibility in the highest-value source markets.
- Source-market keyword research across the priority international student markets
- Content optimisation maintained DEIT compliance with government communication guidelines
- Topic clusters built around the genuine questions prospective students ask
- Measurement framework tied SEO performance to sector-recovery goals for stakeholder reporting
The 319% organic growth, 181% keyword ranking growth, and 178% top-3 ranking growth came from this sustained multi-market work. International student traffic, exactly the audience the agency exists to reach, became more findable, more confident, and more likely to engage with NSW educational institutions.
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Want a similar result?
30 minutes with a senior Firewire lead. We'll diagnose where your migration risk sits or where your post-migration SEO is leaking authority, and tell you honestly whether we're the right partner for it.
- A migration-risk view of your search opportunity
- A first-pass diagnosis of your technical + multi-market blockers
- Honest view on fit. We'll tell you if we're not right
- No deck, no pitch, no commitment