CASE STUDIES
HOW WE HELPED PRINT CO BUILD A FASTER, SEARCH-READY WEBSITE FOUNDATION
PROJECT DETAILS:
- How We Helped Print Co Build a Faster, Search-Ready Website Foundation
- Print Co
- SEO
- 2026
Before starting the main on-page SEO and UX programme, we strengthened Print Co’s hosting and rebuilt its live website structure, creating a faster, clearer foundation for search visibility, GEO and future lead generation.
| TTFB IMPROVEMENT | FULL LOAD IMPROVEMENT | ORGANIC TRAFFIC | ORGANIC KEYWORDS |
| 98.8% faster | 84.9% faster | 698 (+23.76%) | 275 |
How we helped Print Co build a faster, search-ready website foundation before starting on-page SEO
SEO projects can easily begin with a list of keywords and a rush to rewrite pages. For Print Co, we deliberately chose a different order. The business already had a strong range of print, signage, vehicle graphics and branded merchandise services; what it needed first was a technical and structural foundation capable of presenting that breadth clearly and supporting the growth work that would follow.
Print Co is a Nottingham-based provider of business print, signage, vehicle graphics and branded merchandise. The breadth of the offer is one of its strengths, but the previous website did not make the relationships between those services, individual products and supporting content as clear as they needed to be.
We therefore started with the less visible work: improving the technical platform, understanding how customers should move through the offer, and rebuilding the architecture that every later SEO, GEO, UX and content improvement would depend on.
The hosting and performance migration took place on 3 June 2026. The following weeks were then used for website exploration, planning, restructuring, page creation, implementation and testing. The new website architecture, navigation, redirects and revised sitemap were moved into the live environment in approximately the first week of August, with around 6 August used as the launch benchmark for this case study.
By 18 August, the technical move had taken the website from a GTmetrix grade of C to A, reduced Time to First Byte from 3.4 seconds to 41 milliseconds and cut fully loaded time from 4.4 seconds to approximately 0.67 seconds. SEMrush was also showing estimated organic traffic of 698, up 23.76%, 275 organic keywords, 2.26% visibility and an 86% Site Health score. The main on-page SEO and UX programme had not yet been completed.
IMPORTANT INTERPRETATION
The first post-launch search signals are encouraging, but the measurement window is still short. We do not attribute the full SEMrush traffic or keyword movement to the restructure alone. This case study records the technical and structural baseline before the main page-level SEO, copy and UX phase begins.
THE CHALLENGE
Print Co does a lot, and that breadth is commercially valuable. The challenge was that the previous live website did not make it easy enough to see how the services, products and proof fitted together. Four core service areas existed, a broad Product List carried too much responsibility for discovery, and useful trust content such as articles and case studies sat outside the strongest decision-making routes.
The issue was not a lack of capability or useful content. It was that the website made visitors, search engines and AI-driven systems work too hard to understand the complete offer. Before optimising individual pages, we wanted the overall website to explain the business more clearly.
- Print, Signs, Vehicle Graphics and Merchandise needed clearer parent pages and relationships.
- Products needed to sit within relevant service contexts rather than depend on one broad list.
- Articles, case studies, FAQs and About content needed a stronger role in building trust and expertise.
- Internal links and navigation needed to create consistent routes between commercial, supporting and proof pages.
- Changed URLs needed careful mapping, tested 301 redirects and a revised live sitemap.
Phase 1: moving the site onto a faster technical platform
Website speed is rarely the reason somebody chooses a print partner, but a slow website can still create friction before a conversation has even begun. We moved the site to Thrive Online Group UK hosting on 3 June 2026 because there was little value in investing heavily in copy, UX or new landing pages while backend and server-response delays were holding the experience back.| MEASURE | BEFORE | AFTER | CHANGE |
| GTmetrix grade | C (72%) | A (94%) | Major improvement |
| Performance score | 59% | 96% | +37 points |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 4.1 sec | 0.468 sec | 88.6% faster |
| Time to First Byte | 3.4 sec | 0.041 sec | 98.8% faster |
| Fully loaded time | 4.4 sec | 0.666 sec | 84.9% faster |
| Page requests | 59 | 36 | 39.0% fewer |
The largest gain came from server response. Time to First Byte fell by 98.8%, while the site completed loading 84.9% faster. Requests also reduced from 59 to 36, producing a much stronger platform for crawling, usability and the page-level work still to come.
Phase 2: rebuilding and launching the website structure
The restructure was not a menu tidy-up. It was a full architecture project that moved from exploratory review through planning, page creation, implementation, testing and live launch.This is the kind of work that becomes largely invisible once a site launches, but it shapes how easily every page can be found, understood and acted on. We worked through the website page by page, looking at the immediate user journey and the wider relationships between services, products, evidence, information and future content.| STAGE | WORK COMPLETED | WHY IT MATTERED |
| 1. Exploration and discovery | Reviewed the live site page by page, including navigation, service and product groupings, content routes, links and technical limitations. | Identified buried content, duplicated routes, unclear parent-child relationships and dead-end journeys. |
| 2. Planning and remapping | Planned a new sitemap, page hierarchy, navigation model and the relationships between service, product, evidence and information pages. | Created a commercial structure around Print, Signs, Vehicle Graphics and Merchandise. |
| 3. Page creation | Built or rebuilt the required hub, parent and supporting pages in staging, with reusable layouts and components for the new hierarchy. | Established the framework for page-by-page SEO, GEO, UX, design and content implementation. |
| 4. Implementation | Reorganised content, changed global navigation, linked pages throughout the site, remapped URLs and configured the required 301 redirects. | Created clearer user journeys and crawl paths while protecting value from URLs that changed. |
| 5. Testing, QA and launch | Tested desktop and mobile journeys, navigation, redirects, hierarchy and indexing controls, then moved the new structure and revised sitemap live in early August. | Reduced launch risk and created a clean live baseline before the main on-page optimisation phase. |
The new website structure
The aim was simple: help somebody understand what Print Co does, find the most relevant route quickly and see the evidence needed to take the next step. The live site now has a dedicated Products / Services hub and clearer parent pages for Print, Signs, Vehicle Graphics and Merchandise. Relevant products are surfaced within those service areas using clearer category relationships and contextual routes.
About, Articles and Case Studies now play a stronger role within the site architecture, while FAQs provide an answer-led resource for specific user questions. Navigation and internal links are also more consistent, giving people and crawlers clearer routes between services, products, evidence and contact points. This structural layer went live before the main copy and UX changes.
The first post-launch signals
By 18 August 2026, approximately twelve days after the revised structure and sitemap went live, SEMrush was showing estimated organic traffic of 698, a reported increase of 23.76%, together with 275 organic keywords, 2.26% visibility, 86% Site Health and 592 backlinks. The six-month traffic trend also showed a noticeable step upwards during early August, around the period the new architecture moved into the live environment.
We are deliberately cautious about how this movement is presented. SEMrush traffic is a third-party estimate rather than Print Co’s actual GA4 organic sessions, and a twelve-day post-launch window is too short to prove causation. Seasonality, competitor activity and individual ranking changes can all affect the figures. What we can say is that the first measurable signals after launch are positive and provide a clear baseline for the next phase.
Why the restructure matters for SEO
For us, this is where the real value of the restructure sits. The new architecture gives every later SEO input a clearer destination. Instead of optimising disconnected pages, keyword research, copy, metadata, internal links and future location content can now be mapped to a defined service hierarchy. The objective is not simply to increase the total keyword count, but to move the right commercial searches into stronger positions.
- Clearer crawl paths between the homepage, service hubs, products, proof and contact pages.
- More precise targeting at service and product level without overloading one broad Product List page.
- Stronger internal distribution of relevance and authority through descriptive, contextual links.
- A better base for Nottingham, East Midlands and future location-led landing pages.
- Cleaner measurement of indexing, rankings, organic landing-page engagement and conversions as the on-page phase rolls out.
How the structure supports GEO and AI visibility
At Thrive Online Group UK, we do not treat Generative Engine Optimisation as a separate layer of “AI copy”. We see it as part of building a website that explains the business clearly, connects related information properly and backs up claims with useful evidence.
The new structure gives Print Co a stronger base for content that is useful to people and easier for AI-driven search systems to retrieve, summarise and reference. It creates clearer relationships between the business, its core services, individual products, FAQs, articles and case-study evidence. At the 18 August baseline, SEMrush was still reporting AI Visibility of 0 and AI Mentions of 0, which gives us an honest starting point for measuring later GEO work.
WHAT GEO-READY MEANS HERE
The aim is not to guarantee a citation. It is to publish clear, original and verifiable information within a structure that gives search and AI systems a stronger reason to understand and reference Print Co accurately. The current zero AI baseline will be retained for comparison with later phases.
What happens next
With the technical and structural foundation live, the more visible part of the project can now begin. The next stage moves page by page through keyword mapping, H1/H2/H3 structures, commercial copy, UX and design, metadata, imagery, FAQs, internal linking and conversion pathways.
The homepage and principal commercial pages will be the first major focus. Planned changes include a clearer keyword-led homepage H1, stronger service introductions, redesigned content sections and more explicit journeys into the Products / Services hub and individual service areas. These changes sit outside the measurement window for Case Study 01.
The next benchmark will assess indexing, keyword movement, Google Search Console impressions and clicks, organic landing-page traffic, engagement, conversion actions and measurable appearances within AI-generated search results. Those results belong in Case Study 02 rather than being retrospectively mixed into this foundation-phase benchmark.
What this says about the way we work
For us, this first phase is a good example of why SEO should not automatically begin with writing more content. Sometimes the problem sits underneath the content: the technical platform needs attention, the architecture needs to change and existing information needs to be connected properly before individual pages are strengthened.
We would rather be clear about what has and has not been achieved than dress early movement up as a finished result. By 18 August, the site was dramatically faster, the new commercial structure was live, Site Health was 86%, 275 organic keywords were being detected and estimated organic traffic was 698. Those are encouraging foundations, not the final outcome.
This is the first case study in the Print Co Website Transformation series. Case Study 02 will follow the page-level SEO, GEO, UX and content implementation and will assess whether the stronger foundation translates into higher-value rankings, traffic, AI visibility and commercial outcomes.
CONSIDERING A SIMILAR PROJECT?
A website can look perfectly serviceable while its speed, structure and content relationships quietly limit growth. Our starting point is to understand what the business needs people and search systems to understand, fix the foundation, and then apply page-level optimisation where it can create the greatest value.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
We migrated the website to a faster hosting environment, reviewed and remapped the site architecture, built the required hub and supporting pages in staging, updated navigation and internal linking, remapped URLs, implemented and tested 301 redirects, completed QA and moved the revised structure and sitemap into the live environment in early August 2026.
Time to First Byte reduced from 3.4 seconds to 41 milliseconds, Largest Contentful Paint reduced from 4.1 seconds to 0.468 seconds, and fully loaded time reduced from 4.4 seconds to 0.666 seconds.
At 18 August 2026, SEMrush showed estimated organic traffic of 698, up 23.76%, together with 275 organic keywords and 2.26% visibility. Because the structure had only been live for around twelve days, we report these as encouraging early signals rather than proof that the restructure caused the full movement.
Restructuring first prevented new content from being optimised into an architecture that would later need to change. It also gave every future keyword, page section, internal link and call to action a clearer commercial destination.
The new structure makes Print Co’s services, products, evidence and expertise easier to interpret as connected information. This supports clearer retrieval and more accurate representation by search and AI-driven systems. At the 18 August baseline, SEMrush AI Visibility and Mentions were both still at zero, giving future GEO work a transparent starting point.
