Leads went up during migration launch week, not down
Bedrijfsfitness Nederland, the Dutch corporate fitness provider
weekly leads through the launch window
homepage weekly organic sessions one month after launch
organic sessions to the key commercial pages within a month
the short version
- The situation: a lead-generation site moving to HubSpot CMS, where the weekly lead flow could not be interrupted.
- The move: measure the migration on leads, check on a fixed cadence, and fix what breaks in days rather than discover it in months.
- The result: weekly leads rose 12% during migration week and finished the week after launch up 21%. The dip never came.
- The lesson: things still broke. A 404 spike hit in week one; the monitoring cadence caught it and a bulk redirect import closed it within days.
The situation
Bedrijfsfitness Nederland helps Dutch employers offer subsidized fitness to their employees. The website is the lead machine: every week it produces a steady stream of employer and employee signups, and that flow pays for everything else. In May 2025 the site moved to HubSpot CMS, same domain, new platform, new URL structure in places.
Everyone who googles website migration risks finds the same warning: expect a traffic dip, hope it recovers. For a business running on weekly lead flow, "expect a dip" is not a plan. The brief was to move platforms without the pipeline noticing.
What I did
| The move | Why it mattered |
|---|---|
| Leads as the KPI, not traffic | The migration was measured on the lead event week by week, with 41 focus keywords and a defined set of focus pages as leading indicators. A migration that holds traffic but loses leads is a failure. |
| Conversion analysis alongside the SEO work | The content mix shifted toward the B2B pages that actually produce leads, the employer side of the business, instead of the old spread across sports, employees, and employers. That analysis decided what got migrated, what got improved, and what got deleted. |
| Redirect mapping before launch | Every URL that earned leads or rankings got an explicit destination. The checklist work is boring, and it is the whole game. |
| A fixed review cadence, not vibes | A structured check in week one, again at one month. Week one is what caught the problem below while it was days old instead of months old. |
| Fix fast when the data says so | The week-one review found 404 errors had jumped from 26 to 130: folder-level redirects were sending real URLs to destinations that did not exist. The corrected mapping shipped as a bulk redirect import within days. |
What happened
The number the whole project existed to protect went up instead:
- +12% weekly leads during migration week itself
- +21% weekly leads by the week after launch, against the pre-migration baseline
- +10% organic sessions across the same launch window
A month in, the growth had compounded:
- 2.3× homepage weekly organic sessions
- 3-4× organic sessions on the commercial pages that feed the lead flow: the tax benefit, discounted gym membership, and sport locations pages
- Position 1 held on every branded term, with Core Web Vitals coming out of the migration better than they went in
What I'd tell you honestly
Something still broke, and publishing that matters more than the wins. The 404 spike was real: 26 to 130 in week one. No migration is clean. The difference between a blip and a disaster is whether anyone is looking in week one and whether the fix ships in days. Ours did.
We sacrificed keywords on purpose. Content that no longer fit the business was deleted, not migrated, and the rankings went with it. "Wat is bedrijfsfitness" slipped from 1 to 3, and two informational terms dropped out entirely. Those were choices, made consciously, because defending explainer rankings that never produced a lead was not worth the pages.
The timing nearly ruined the measurement. Google launched AI Overviews in the Netherlands five days after our launch, which muddied branded click data exactly when I needed it clean. Position data, not click data, became the trustworthy signal. If I ran it again I would set that expectation with the client on day one: during a migration, watch positions and leads, and treat click-through numbers as contaminated until proven otherwise.
I’m Baba, an independent SEO consultant helping B2B companies, SaaS startups, and e-commerce brands turn SEO into a real growth lever. With over a decade of experience, I work at the intersection of strategy, execution, and commercial impact — focusing on actions that drive revenue, not vanity metrics. I partner with growth-minded teams to solve complex SEO challenges, build internal buy-in, and create strategies that align SEO with business priorities. I also organize the Amsterdam SEO Meetup, where practitioners and leaders exchange insights that shape the future of search.
Published 06 July 2026.
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