Maya Deluxe
Maya Deluxe is a Manchester-based, family-run British fashion brand specialising in whimsical bridesmaid and occasion dresses, known for ethereal tulle silhouettes and signature sequin embellishment. Preparing to replatform from Magento to Shopify, their in‑house team designed and built the new ecommerce storefront but needed specialist support to safeguard SEO and organic revenue during the migration. Emrise was appointed to lead the SEO migration strategy, protect existing keyword rankings and traffic, and ensure that the new Shopify site could keep performing for key bridesmaid and occasionwear searches.
The challenge
Maya Deluxe had invested in a new Shopify site built internally, but the initial structure significantly reduced the number of collections compared to Magento, risking the loss of many high‑intent, colour and style‑based bridesmaid dress landing pages. These missing collections, such as black bridesmaid dresses and orange bridesmaid dresses, previously captured unique keyword demand and organic traffic that would disappear if not properly replicated and mapped.
Beyond collections, several technical SEO issues were present out of the box:
- inconsistent H1 usage between the HTML and visible page headings
- internal linking pointing to child canonical products rather than parent canonicals
- a site search and robots.txt configuration that were not fully optimised for crawlability and indexation.
With a large legacy footprint and strong bridesmaid‑related visibility to preserve, any mis‑step in URL mapping or internal architecture could have resulted in sharp drops in organic sessions and revenue after launch.
The strategy
Emrise developed a structured SEO migration plan focused on three core pillars: rebuilding high‑value collection coverage, restoring a logical internal navigation, and resolving critical technical SEO issues before and immediately after launch. The goal was not only to create a robust 301 redirect map from Magento to Shopify, but also to ensure that every important bridesmaid and occasionwear query still had a relevant, crawlable and well‑linked landing page on the new platform.
The team prioritised URLs that drove meaningful organic traffic and revenue, including collection pages for specific colours, styles and silhouettes, and ensured these were retained in the information architecture and redirect plan. At the same time, Emrise planned a post‑migration QA workflow that included redirect testing, new sitemap submission, and renewed technical audits to spot any residual gaps in tracking, indexing or internal linking.
Strategy implementation
- To rebuild topical coverage, Emrise recreated missing Magento collections in Shopify for key bridesmaid and occasionwear terms (for example, colour‑based bridesmaid dress categories), ensuring continuity for users and search engines.
- The main navigation and sub‑navigation were then re‑engineered to mirror the successful Magento menu structure, keeping important collections within 1–2 clicks from the homepage to avoid orphaned pages and reinforce their importance to Google.
- On the technical SEO side, Emrise corrected discrepancies between HTML H1 tags and visible page headings
- Updated product recommendation widgets and collection templates to link to parent canonical products rather than child variants
- Refined robots.txt to allow appropriate crawling while excluding low‑value URLs
- Fixed on‑site search behaviour
- Implemented robust GA4 tracking via the Google & YouTube app
- Built and implemented a comprehensive 301 redirect map of over 12,700 URLs
- Performed pre‑ and post‑launch crawls
- Sitemap submissions in Google Search Console to validate that legacy Magento URLs resolved correctly and that key pages remained indexed
Results
The migration protected Maya Deluxe’s organic visibility for high‑intent bridesmaid and occasionwear keywords, with core rankings, traffic and sessions from Google maintained after the move from Magento to Shopify. The client reported being very happy with the thoroughness of the redirect mapping, the recreation of strategic collections, and the proactive identification and resolution of technical SEO issues that went beyond the original brief of “just doing redirects”.
Benefits
- Preserved organic rankings and traffic for key bridesmaid and occasion wear collection pages across the Magento to Shopify migration.
- Maintained and strengthened the site’s internal link architecture, ensuring high‑value collections are easily discoverable for users and search engines.
- Resolved multiple technical SEO issues (headings, canonical internal links, robots.txt, site search) to create a more stable, scalable foundation for future growth.
- Delivered a comprehensive 301 redirect framework covering 12,700+ URLs, reducing the risk of lost equity, 404s and user friction during and after launch.
- Improved data quality and measurement via GA4 integration and tracking checks, enabling Maya Deluxe to accurately monitor post‑migration performance and revenue from organic search.
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