The Brief
World Cancer Research Fund planned to consolidate its UK and International websites into one unified domain to streamline content and amplify its global messaging. Our primary SEO goal in overseeing the project was to ensure a smooth migration while avoiding traffic loss, content duplication, or internal competition between pages.
The Charity
World Cancer Research Fund International is a not-for-profit organisation that leads and unifies a network of cancer prevention charities, one of which is World Cancer Research Fund in the UK. They champion the latest and most authoritative scientific research from around the world on cancer prevention and survival through diet, weight and physical activity to help people make informed lifestyle choices to reduce their cancer risk.
Our Approach
We led the SEO migration strategy from planning to post-launch, ensuring best practice implementation at every stage.
Pre-Migration Planning:
- Wireframe & Navigation Review. We collaborated with World Cancer Research Fund’s web team to evaluate new site structures, offering feedback on usability and SEO impact
- Keyword Mapping. We ensured that combined content would not cannibalise search rankings or confuse user intent
- Redirect Mapping. We audited and expanded their redirect strategy to retain link equity and preserve SEO value.
- Sitemap Review. We checked and refined XML sitemaps for accuracy and crawlability.
Data & Tracking Setup:
- GA4 Implementation. We advised setting up a new Google Analytics 4 property to simplify data collection across the newly merged site. Although not our default recommendation, in this case, a fresh setup reduced complexity and supported cleaner reporting.
- Event & Conversion Tracking. We worked with World Cancer Research Fund to ensure key user interactions were properly tracked from day one.
Migration Day Support:
- We conducted live performance monitoring and immediate post-launch checks, and delivered a same-day performance report highlighting any urgent technical issues or errors
Post-Migration Audit:
4–6 weeks after launch, we performed a comprehensive technical audit to assess:
- Crawlability and indexing
- Traffic retention and fluctuations
- GA4 data integrity and tracking accuracy
- Redirect performance and page-level SEO
Results
World Cancer Research Fund successfully launched a unified website that preserved the integrity and authority of both legacy domains. The careful planning and hands-on support meant no significant loss in search visibility or user engagement, crucial for a global health charity relying on education, donations, and impact.
Organic sessions to the international site increased by 126% in the three months post-migration.
Overall clicks to the international site increased by 77% in the three months post-migration.
Average ranking position for the international site improved by 6%, demonstrating that our strategy for optimising the new site to target priority keywords saw immediate success.
Since the initial post-migration uptick, organic traffic has been strong and steady, consistently around 13% higher YoY between June and September. Average position, meanwhile, has remained consistently 6-10 places higher. Both are healthy signs that World Cancer Research Fund’s brand awareness and technical optimisation are in a strong position post-migration, and that their goal of amplifying global messaging continues to be fulfilled.
“Uprise Up’s expertise ensured a smooth migration, from optimising site structure and preserving keywords to implementing GA4 tracking. The results speak for themselves, with sustained increases in our organic growth. Our contacts on their team were knowledgeable, proactive, and a pleasure to work with.”
Head of Digital at World Cancer Research Fund