Mad Fish Digital has been working with the US Foods, CHEF’STORE digital marketing team as an SEO partner since 2019. In 2020, Smart Foodservice was acquired by US Foods and rebranded to CHEF’STORE. In addition managing the SEO strategy and execution, Mad Fish Digital partnered with the Smart Foodservice brand to help successfully migrate their website and assist with their digital side of the rebrand. Our goal for this four-month migration project was to establish the CHEF’STORE brand, maintain their established client base, and mitigate any traffic loss or domain authority slip because of all the changes.
The Challenge
A significant question of the initial migration conversation was whether CHEF’STORE should exist as a sub-folder of the usfoods.com website or live on its own domain. Following the decision for CHEF’STORE to become its own website, our challenge was to preserve the domain authority during the migration process and work to improve domain authority post migration. Retaining domain authority would underscore that our work successfully established the CHEF’STORE brand and maintained their loyal client base.
Our Approach
The Mad Fish Digital team developed a strategic migration plan to help guide and facilitate the many moving parts of the website rebrand process. We provided all of the site structuring, URL mapping, and in-depth SEO content assessments needed for CHEF’STORE’s development team to implement and execute a successful transition. Additionally, we performed comprehensive content and design audits to align with existing and new keyword opportunities and determine which assets needed rebranding. This collaborative partnership with client, agency, and developers was key to the success of the project.
The Results
Through planning, experience, and collaboration, Smart Foodservice rebranded and migrated to a new website and domain with no loss in organic traffic.
- No loss in organic sessions post-launch
- 7.64% increase in organic users
- 7.61% increase in organic transactions
- 16.51% increase in organic revenue
- 21-point increase in domain authority
After the Website Migration, Content Refresh & Location Page Optimization
Mad Fish Digital has continued to partner with CHEF’STORE to grow its online presence and increase the brand’s organic reach. Over the last 18 months, we’ve continued to elevate the organic reach of the CHEF’STORE brand.
We have done this through
- A highly SEO-focused on- and off-page content strategy
- Social media analysis and support
- Industry and audience evaluations and trend reports
498%
Increase in Sessions Starting from Location Pages
29.6%
Avg. Increase Each YearAnnual Organic Users
346%
Increase In Organic Transactions
33.8%
Increase In Organic Revenue
The SEO Results
Avg. Increase in Overall Organic Sessions Each Year: +27%
Avg. Increase in Direct Traffic Each Year: +13%
Social Traffic: +329%
Location Page Results
With an ever-growing number of locations, traffic to individual CHEF’STORE location pages was essential to their overall strategy. Our strategy included a very robust location page optimization strategy that resulted in:
- +169% increase in Location page pageviews
- +498% increase in sessions starting from location pages
Blog Results
Blog performance was key to bringing awareness to CHEF’STORE’s rebrand and establishing industry authority.
- 145 new keywords for the CHEF’STORE blog pages on page 1 of the SERPs
- Top 5 SERP Features
- 68 Top Stories
- 51 Featured Snippets
Services Implemented
- Website Migration Strategy
- Website SEO Audit
- Post-Launch Monitoring
- SEO Strategy and Implementation
- Customer and Industry Trend Reports
- Site User Testing and Heatmapping
- SEO Monitoring
- Monthly Reporting
- Design
- Custom Analytics Reporting
