Case Study:
Migration, Replatforming & Taxonomy Refinement
This case study highlights how migration, replatforming, and taxonomy refinement transformed Audacy’s 365+ subdomains and domains into a scalable, SEO-optimized ecosystem. By streamlining site architecture, improving crawlability, and implementing a structured taxonomy for navigation, content categorization, and tagging, Audacy enhanced search visibility, user experience, and operational efficiency, driving organic growth and engagement.
Transforming a Fragmented Digital Landscape into a Unified, SEO-Optimized Ecosystem
Client:
AUDACY, INC (formerly Entercom)
Industry:
National network of radio stations with diverse content spanning news, sports, and entertainment. Audacy, Inc. (formerly Entercom) – One of the largest radio broadcasting companies in the U.S., operating 365+ stations across 47 media markets.
Challenge:
Audacy faced significant operational and SEO obstacles due to its highly fragmented online presence, spanning 365 individual subdomains and domains. The lack of a unified structure led to:
- Website Complexity & Scalability Issues: Maintaining multiple CMS platforms (Drupal & WordPress) created inefficiencies, making site management, content publishing, and user experience inconsistent.
- Performance & Crawlability Limitations: A distributed architecture hindered search engine indexing, slowing down crawl efficiency and diluting visibility.
- Redundant & Duplicate Content: Syndicated content between stations generated duplicate pages, impacting rankings and crawl budget.
- Taxonomy Challenges: The disjointed site structure, navigation, and tagging system made content difficult to discover, negatively affecting both user experience and SEO.
Solution:
To streamline Audacy’s digital footprint, a comprehensive migration strategy was executed, integrating technical SEO, site architecture refinement, and taxonomy optimization into a single scalable platform (Clay CMS). The project focused on:
1. Content Consolidation & Site Architecture Optimization
✅ Unified 365 subdomains and domains into a single domain with a structured directory-based URL strategy.
✅ Implemented SEO-friendly site architecture, improving internal linking and navigation.
2. Crawl & Indexation Enhancements
✅ Refined robots.txt directives and optimized sitemaps to ensure search engines efficiently crawled and indexed high-value content.
✅ Reduced low-quality content from 20M to 6M pages, improving crawl efficiency.
3. Taxonomy Refinement: Navigation, Site Structure & Tagging Optimization
✅ Designed a new site navigation system, enhancing user experience and discoverability.
✅ Established a structured taxonomy for content categorization, improving search relevance.
✅ Optimized tagging conventions to standardize metadata across stations and improve contextual connections.
4. CMS-Level SEO Enhancements
✅ Integrated schema markup, canonicalization, meta robots optimization, and dynamic page templates to support taxonomy-based discoverability.
✅ Simplified content management workflows by consolidating systems into a single Clay CMS.
Results:
The website migration and SEO efforts yielded significant benefits for Audacy.com:
- Streamlined Operations:
- Unified 365+ subdomains and domains into a single platform.
- Migrated from two CMS systems (Drupal & WordPress) to Clay, reducing maintenance overhead.
- Simplified content management workflows, improving efficiency in publishing and updates.
- Reduced engineering time spent on platform management and configuration.
- Taxonomy Refinement & User Experience Enhancement:
- Implemented a new site navigation system, making content easily accessible.
- Refined tagging conventions, standardizing metadata across stations for better categorization.
- Established a structured taxonomy, improving content classification and internal linking.
- Streamlined content discoverability, leading to higher engagement.
- Improved SEO Performance:
- Organic traffic increased by 7%, reflecting stronger search visibility.
- Crawl budget optimization reduced low-quality content from 20M to 6M pages, improving search engine efficiency.
- Resolved duplicate content issues caused by syndicated station pages, strengthening uniqueness.
- Enhanced indexing and discoverability, ensuring content reaches the right audience.
- News & Sports Visibility Boost: Every news and sports station was successfully included in Google News Publisher Center and Apple News Publisher as separate entities, increasing their visibility on these key news platforms.
- Improved Listening Experience: Average session duration, a key indicator of listening experience, increased by 13%, demonstrating a more engaging experience for station audiences.
Irina Yekaterinoslavskaya
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