Technical
42
Domains splitting one brand
Separate hosts, three CMSes and 1,140 redirect chains of three hops or more. Crawl budget went to duplicates, not new pages.
Coldwater Comfort HVAC franchise, 42 locations Toronto
Migrating 42 franchise sites into one without losing a single ranking
organic leads post-migration
Local Services · North America · 12-month engagement on the Signal plan
Drag the dial, or focus it and use the arrow keys.
Month 01 / 12 · Diagnose
Inventory 42 domains
Every franchise domain crawled side by side: 18,960 URLs, 6,800 near-duplicate service pages, three different CMSes and 3,120 crawl and redirect errors.
- Crawl errors
- 3,120
- Mobile INP
- 410ms
- Sessions idx
- 100
- Leads idx
- 100
Redirects mapped0 / 11,400
01The challenge
Forty-two thermostats, all set to compete with each other.
Every franchisee ran their own domain, splitting authority and creating duplicate service pages that cannibalised each other.
A homeowner in Mississauga searching for furnace repair saw three Coldwater franchises on page one, each with a thinner page than the last, and none in the top three. Links earned by head office never reached the franchises. Every new location launched with zero authority, and the plan to consolidate had stalled for two years on one fear: that moving 42 sites would wipe out the rankings the business ran on.
02Diagnosis
Reading the estate: where the heat was coming from.
Content
38
Sites chasing "furnace repair"
6,800 near-identical service pages. Franchises in the same metro outranked each other, so none held the top three.
Local
27%
Listings with mismatched NAP
Business Profiles pointed at retired domains or the wrong phone number; service areas overlapped between neighbouring franchises.
Performance
410ms
Mobile INP, poor
A chat widget, two booking scripts and 31 third-party tags blocked the main thread on every tap of "Book a technician".
03The strategy
Migrate once. Cool everything down.
Built on our Signal plan: technical foundations first, then templates that scale, with every change measured against a frozen pre-migration ranking baseline.
- 01
Site migration
One domain, /locations/<city>/ folders. A 11,400-row redirect ledger, page-level parity checks, staged DNS cutover and a 90-day log watch for stray 404s.
- 02
Location page templating
One template, 42 genuinely local pages: crew, service area, reviews, permits and rebates per city, with LocalBusiness and Service schema built in.
- 03
Core Web Vitals
Main-thread budget for every template: deferred chat, split booking bundle, tag audit. Mobile INP from 410ms to 140ms in field data.
- 04
Internal linking
Service hubs to locations, locations to nearest neighbours, breadcrumbs everywhere. Authority from the head office flows to every franchise.
04Month by month
Twelve months on the dial, from 3,120 errors to 18.
- Diagnose
Inventory 42 domains
Every franchise domain crawled side by side: 18,960 URLs, 6,800 near-duplicate service pages, three different CMSes and 3,120 crawl and redirect errors.
errors 3,120 · INP 410ms
- Map
The redirect ledger
Each legacy URL scored by links, traffic and leads, then paired 1:1 with its future home. 3,800 rows signed off by the first eleven franchisees.
errors 2,650 · INP 405ms
- Build
One location template
A single location-page template: local technicians, service-area map, LocalBusiness schema, reviews feed and booking module. Redirect ledger reaches 8,200 rows.
errors 1,900 · INP 330ms
- Cool down
INP on staging
Chat widget deferred, booking script split, third-party tags halved. Mobile INP on staging falls to 210ms. All 11,400 redirects mapped and tested.
errors 1,100 · INP 260ms
- Cutover
Forty-two become one
DNS switched over a single Sunday night in three waves. Tracked rankings dip just 1.8% in the first fortnight; 404s are caught and patched within hours.
errors 640 · INP 190ms
- Stabilise
Consolidation lands
Google merges the old domains' signals. Cannibalised "furnace repair" pages collapse into one canonical service page per city.
errors 310 · INP 175ms
- Connect
Internal linking mesh
Service hubs link to every location; each location links to its six nearest neighbours and its top four services. Orphan pages: zero.
errors 180 · INP 165ms
- Expand
Neighbourhood pages
Templated pages for 64 high-demand neighbourhoods, each with genuinely local copy, technician bios and heat-pump rebate notes.
errors 120 · INP 158ms
- Season
Pre-winter push
Furnace and boiler service pages refreshed ahead of heating season; FAQ schema and pricing guides added to the ten highest-volume services.
errors 80 · INP 150ms
- Tune
Field-data INP
Real-user INP passes on 96% of mobile visits. Booking form interaction rebuilt to respond in a single frame.
errors 50 · INP 145ms
- Compound
Authority pooled
Links once spread across 42 domains now point at one. Mid-sized suburbs start ranking on the strength of the whole network.
errors 30 · INP 142ms
- Steady state
Comfortably cool
Organic sessions up 61% and organic leads up 73% against the pre-migration baseline, from one fast domain the whole franchise shares.
errors 18 · INP 140ms
05Results
+73% organic leads post-migration, with the rankings carried across intact.
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
- Redirects mapped
- 11,400
- Ranking loss at cutover
- <2%
- INP (mobile)
- 410ms → 140ms
- Organic sessions
- +61%
Before
After
| 200ms good threshold
Tracked keywords · best position
| Keyword | Before | Cutover | M12 |
|---|---|---|---|
| furnace repair toronto 4.4k/mo | 7 | 8 | 2 |
| emergency hvac brampton 1.3k/mo | 9 | 10 | 1 |
| ac installation mississauga 1.9k/mo | 11 | 11 | 3 |
| heat pump rebate ontario 6.6k/mo | 18 | 17 | 4 |
| ductless mini split vaughan 880/mo | 14 | 15 | 3 |
| boiler service oakville 720/mo | 6 | 6 | 2 |
| furnace replacement cost 5.4k/mo | 23 | 22 | 6 |
| hvac maintenance plan 2.1k/mo | 31 | 29 | 8 |
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