Channel Nine is a prominent player in the Australian media landscape, overseeing popular web properties such as Nine.com.au, Wide World Of Sports, 9News, and the streaming service 9Now.
As part of a major rebrand from Ninemsn to Nine, Digital Minds collaborated with Nine to navigate the complexities of domain migration for 10 distinct brands over a comprehensive 6-month period. This ambitious undertaking aimed to safeguard the brand’s digital presence while mitigating potential threats to search traffic across all Nine websites.
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Undertaking a domain migration is a formidable challenge, especially for an established site with a significant online footprint. The risk of losing traffic during such a transformation is a well-known concern.
In the case of Nine, the magnitude of the rebrand and migration underscored the potential impact on both short-term and long-term search traffic for the entire portfolio of Nine brands. The challenge was clear: execute a flawless migration strategy to minimize disruptions and secure the brand’s digital future.
Digital Minds initiated a meticulous planning phase to lay the groundwork for a successful domain migration.
Conducted a comprehensive analysis to identify potential risks to the various sites SEO during the migration process.
Collaborated with internal stakeholders to craft a detailed plan and schedule for the migration, ensuring alignment with Nine’s overall rebranding objectives, leveraging data to forecast SEO traffic and set measurable plans for the migration process.
The execution phase involved close collaboration with development teams to ensure a seamless transition. Our team worked closely with the Nine dev teams to execute on the migration of each domain, including continual reviews of each site to mitigate any risks around rolling over to new domains from a technical standpoint.
After the migration, Digital Minds monitored and evaluated the performance of all Nine properties. This included implementing robust tracking mechanisms to monitor the performance of all Nine properties across various metrics and conducting quarterly post-migration assessments.
The meticulous planning and seamless execution of the domain migration and rebranding efforts yielded impressive results for Nine:
• Audience Growth: In July 2016, Nine.com.au surged to 4th position in Nielsen’s digital news rankings, boasting an overall audience of 4.53 million.
• Audience Increase: The audience experienced remarkable growth, with a 64% increase (+2.75 million) from the previous month.
The key to this success lay in the establishment of a robust migration plan, effective process management, and strong collaboration across Product, Development, Operations, and Marketing teams.