Case Study: 253 Keywords in 4 Weeks Without Breaking WordPress

Client came to me in early 2025 with a problem I hear constantly: "Our WordPress blog is killing us."

They ran a profitable industrial e-commerce site. £13k+/month revenue. Hundreds of products. Custom Klaviyo flows. Everything worked. Except the blog.

They wanted to scale content from 10 posts/month to 100+. WordPress couldn't handle it. Page builders (Elementor, Divi) crashed. Load times hit 6 seconds. Google stopped indexing posts.

"Can you migrate us to Next.js?" they asked.

I said no.

Why I Refused to Migrate Their WooCommerce Store

Migrating a profitable e-commerce store is expensive, risky, and usually unnecessary. Here's what they had:

• 400+ products with custom fields, variations, and pricing tiers
• Abandoned cart flows driving £3.5k/month in recovered revenue
• Product pages ranking page 1 for commercial keywords
• Customer accounts, order history, payment gateways all working

Migration cost estimate: £40k+ and 3-4 months. Plus the risk of breaking SEO, losing payment processor integrations, and retraining staff.

Not worth it.

The Solution: Headless Blog, Keep the Store

I proposed a hybrid architecture:

Why This Works

Next.js for the blog:

• Static generation = 1.2s load times (vs 6s on WordPress)
• Can publish 100+ posts/day without performance degradation
• Programmatic SEO: FAQ schema, breadcrumbs, meta tags generated at build
• Zero plugins, zero security vulnerabilities, zero maintenance

WooCommerce for the store:

• Store already profitable—don't fix what isn't broken
• Migration risk avoided entirely
• Klaviyo flows keep running
• Product rankings protected

The Numbers: 12 Months Post-Launch

Timeline: Launched March 2025. These numbers are from March 2025 → Feb 2026 (12 months of data).

Keyword Velocity: The Hockey Stick

Growth was steady for 10 months. Then in Jan-Feb 2026, something clicked. Keyword rankings exploded:

Average position: 24.5 (page 3). That's not great—yet. But the trajectory matters more than the snapshot. This is early-stage growth with clear acceleration.

Technical SEO: Zero Errors

What Worked

• Hybrid architecture let us move fast without risking revenue. Store stayed profitable while blog scaled.
• Programmatic SEO at scale. 53 FAQ schemas implemented in minutes, not days. Every post gets breadcrumbs, Article schema, and optimized meta tags automatically.
• Static generation = Google loves it. Posts indexed within 24-48 hours. WordPress took weeks or never indexed at all.
• Content velocity went from 10/month to 100+. Zero performance degradation. No crashes. No plugin conflicts.

What I'd Do Differently

This isn't a perfect case study. Here's what needs work:

• Average position 24.5 is misleading. They're tracking 253 keywords—many aren't relevant targets. The 47 keywords on page 1-2 are what actually matter. Need to clean up keyword tracking and focus on high-intent terms.
• 9.73k pages not indexed. Need to audit for thin content, duplicates, and indexing issues.
• Internal linking between blog and product pages could be stronger. Should've built more contextual links from blog posts to products to drive conversions.

The Takeaway for Your Business

You don't have to migrate your entire site to scale content. If your e-commerce store works, keep it. If your blog doesn't—split them.

This hybrid approach works for:

• E-commerce stores (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento) that need better content velocity
• B2B sites with lead gen forms but slow, bloated WordPress blogs
• SaaS companies with working product pages but terrible content performance

The numbers don't lie: 1.78k pages indexed, 253 keywords ranking, 9.26k monthly clicks. All while protecting a £13k+/month revenue stream.

If your blog is holding you back, this is how you fix it.