Illustrative case study

A fictional business. The figures are a modelled scenario, not a client result.

SEO case study · Technical SEO

Vezhdi Brow Bar

Brow and lash franchise · Plovdiv

Merging nine franchise microsites into one fast domain without losing a single ranking

+172%

organic bookings across nine studios

7 months · Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Ink-line brow map: start, arch and tail guidelines drawn from the nostril, with golden-ratio construction arcs1.0000.618STARTARCH · φTAIL
Fig. 1 — every guideline starts at one point. So should every URL.
Domains consolidated
9 → 1
Redirects mapped
1,460
Mobile LCP
5.8s → 1.8s
Organic sessions
+139%

01 — The challenge

reading 9 : 1

Nine brows, drawn by nine hands. None of them symmetrical.

Each franchisee ran its own slow microsite, splitting authority nine ways and confusing Google about which page to rank.

Vezhdi grew from one Plovdiv studio into a franchise of nine. Every franchisee was handed the brand and left to build their own website, so the business ended up with nine domains, four themes and nine slightly different spellings of its own name.

Links earned by one studio never helped another. Two Plovdiv sites fought each other for the same treatments, and on a phone the average home page took almost six seconds to show its hero photo — long enough for a client to tap back and book elsewhere.

Authority, split nine ways (share of legacy URLs)

  • vezhdi-kapana.bgLCP 6.4s
  • vezhdiplovdiv-trakia.comLCP 5.9s
  • browbar-lozenets.bgLCP 6.1s
  • vezhdi-mladost.euLCP 5.2s
  • vezhdivarna.bgLCP 5.7s
  • vezhdi-burgas.netLCP 6.3s
  • vezhdi-sz.bgLCP 5.4s
  • ruse-vezhdi.comLCP 5.6s
  • vezhdi-vt.bgLCP 5.6s

02 — Diagnosis

reading 10 findings

Measured before anything was moved.

Technical

  • T1

    Nine separate CMS installs, four different themes, no shared templates.

    9 stacks

  • T2

    Uncompressed 3–4 MB portfolio JPEGs above the fold on every home page.

    LCP 5.8s

  • T3

    Third-party booking iframe loaded synchronously, blocking first render.

    TBT 1,140ms

  • T4

    Mixed http/https and www/non-www variants indexed side by side.

    312 dupes

Local

  • L1

    Nine Business Profiles, each linking to a different domain with a different brand spelling.

    9 brands

  • L2

    Name, address and phone inconsistent across 140 directory citations.

    38% match

  • L3

    No LocalBusiness schema anywhere; opening hours only in images.

    0 / 9

Content

  • C1

    Identical service copy pasted across seven sites, so Google picked one at random.

    71% overlap

  • C2

    Two Plovdiv microsites competing for the same treatment keywords.

    cannibalised

  • C3

    Studio pages with under 120 words and no prices, team or reviews.

    thin

Before · two of our own sites, pages one and two

brow lamination plovdiv

  1. #1browstudio-plovdiv.bgBrow lamination in Plovdiv — book online
  2. #2beautyhub.bgTop 10 brow salons in Plovdiv
  3. #9vezhdi-kapana.bgVezhdi Kapana | Home
  4. #14vezhdiplovdiv-trakia.comBrows Lashes Trakia Plovdiv
After · one domain, one answer

brow lamination plovdiv

  1. #1browstudio-plovdiv.bgBrow lamination in Plovdiv — book online
  2. #2vezhdi.bg › studios › plovdivBrow Lamination in Plovdiv · Kapana & Trakia | VezhdiKapana · Trakia · Prices · Book a brow map
  3. #3beautyhub.bgTop 10 brow salons in Plovdiv

03 — The strategy

reading φ 1.618

Map the face first. Then draw every line from one origin.

A brow artist never starts drawing freehand: start, arch and tail are measured from fixed points so both sides match. We treated the franchise the same way, on our Signal technical SEO plan — four tactics, one domain as the origin point.

  1. Start

    Site migration

    • One domain, one CMS, one template set for all nine studios.
    • Staging crawled and diffed against production before launch.
    • Launched in a single window so no studio sat half-migrated.

  2. Arch

    Location architecture

    • /studios/{city}/{studio} hierarchy with city hubs above.
    • Service pages hold the shared copy once; studio pages hold the local proof.
    • Breadcrumb and LocalBusiness schema nested under one Organization.

  3. Tail

    Core Web Vitals

    • AVIF image pipeline with explicit sizes; hero preloaded.
    • Booking widget replaced by a click-to-load facade.
    • Fonts subset to Cyrillic and Latin; CSS cut by 64%.

  4. Line

    Redirect mapping

    • 1,460 legacy URLs mapped one-to-one, never to the home page.
    • Single-hop 301s only; chains flattened at the edge.
    • Daily 404 and ranking watch for twelve weeks after launch.

The redirect map · select a former microsite (arrow keys move)

Redirect · 301 · single hop

Before

vezhdi-kapana.bg

After

vezhdi.bg/studios/plovdiv/kapana

URLs mapped
248
Top keyword
brow lamination plovdiv
Position
#14→#2

04 — Timeline

reading 7 months

Seven measured strokes.

  1. M01 · Measure

    Crawl every microsite

    Full crawl of nine domains, 1,460 indexable legacy URLs inventoried with traffic, backlinks and ranking keywords attached to each.

    4,180 sessions · 214 bookings

  2. M02 · Map

    Draw the new architecture

    City → studio → service hierarchy designed on one domain; every legacy URL paired with its nearest equivalent in a one-to-one redirect sheet.

    4,240 sessions · 220 bookings

  3. M03 · Migrate

    Launch day, all at once

    Single-hop 301s live for all nine domains, Search Console change-of-address filed nine times, nine Business Profiles repointed the same morning.

    3,960 sessions · 205 bookings

  4. M04 · Refine

    Core Web Vitals sprint

    Responsive AVIF portfolio images, booking widget loaded on interaction, critical CSS inlined. Mobile LCP falls from 5.8s to 1.8s.

    5,100 sessions · 290 bookings

  5. M05 · Fill

    Studio pages earn depth

    Each studio page gets its own team, price list, before/after gallery, opening hours and LocalBusiness schema nested under the brand.

    6,600 sessions · 385 bookings

  6. M06 · Link

    Internal links and citations

    Service hubs link down to every studio; 140 directory citations corrected to the new URLs so the local signal is consistent.

    8,200 sessions · 480 bookings

  7. M07 · Settle

    Authority consolidates

    Legacy domains held on redirect for the long term; link equity from nine sites now flows to one, and bookings keep climbing.

    9,800 sessions · 571 bookings

05 — Results

reading symmetrical

+172% organic bookings across nine studios

Domains consolidated
9 → 1
Redirects mapped
1,460
Mobile LCP
5.8s → 1.8s
Organic sessions
+139%

Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.

Organic sessions (line) and organic bookings (bars) per month
Organic sessions rise from 4,100 to 9,800 a month and bookings from 210 to 571, with a brief dip in the launch month.0k02.5k1505k3007.5k45010k600baseM1M2M3M4M5M6M7migration live

0 of 412 tracked keywords left the top 100 after launch. Launch-month dip recovered within four weeks.

Rankings · best microsite position vs. one domain

KeywordVol/moBeforeAfter
brow lamination plovdiv880#14#2
оформяне на вежди пловдив1,300#11#1
brow bar sofia1,900#31#6
lash lift mladost390#19#3
henna brows varna720#18#4
lash extensions burgas590#27#5
brow tint stara zagora260#9#2
вежди русе320#12#2
microblading veliko tarnovo480#35#7
vezhdi brow bar1,600#3#1

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