MAK Water SEO Transition & Growth.
Protecting the organic search equity built for Baldwin Industrial Systems as it moves under MAK Water, then growing it, prepared by the team that did the original work.
An acquisition is the single riskiest moment in a website's search history.
MAK Water has taken over Baldwin Industrial Systems, a business whose organic search visibility we built and managed. That visibility is a commercial asset, and right now it sits in the balance.
Baldwin has years of accumulated search equity: ranking product and capability pages, earned links from industry directories, specifiers and suppliers, and a domain history Google has learned to trust for industrial water treatment terms.
When two businesses merge, that equity usually leaks. Pages are retired without redirects, duplicate content appears across two domains competing for the same terms, and the acquiring brand ends up ranking for less than either business did separately.
We're proposing a single ongoing SEO retainer. Its first twelve weeks are a defined transition campaign that maps, migrates and consolidates Baldwin's search equity into MAK Water without losing rankings or enquiries, no separate project fee. From there the same retainer turns the combined footprint into a growing lead channel.
The advantage here is simple: we already know the Baldwin site, its content, its link profile and the searches that generate enquiries. No discovery period, no relearning the category.
You've acquired a website we already know inside out.
Most agencies would spend the first three months of this engagement working out what Baldwin ranks for and why. We start on day one with the answers.
Keyword sets, ranking history, Search Console data, content maps and the backlink profile. That's the baseline any migration must be measured against, and no one else has it.
Water treatment buyers search by process, capacity and application: reverse osmosis, DAF, MBBR, oily water separators, containerised plants. We've already built and tested that vocabulary.
This isn't ecommerce. Volumes are lower, values are high and the buying cycle involves engineers, procurement and specifiers. We optimise for qualified enquiries, not traffic charts.
Baldwin's authority comes from a specific set of industry, supplier and directory links. We know which ones must be reclaimed and redirected, and which can be safely retired.
What typically goes wrong, and what we'll do instead.
These are the failure points we see repeatedly in acquisition migrations. Each one is preventable with work done before the switch, not after.
Search equity doesn't transfer with the business. It transfers with the URLs, and only if someone maps them properly before the old site comes down.
Every Baldwin URL that ranks or holds links needs a 1:1 redirect to its closest MAK Water equivalent.
Bulk-redirecting everything to the homepage is the most common mistake and Google treats it as a soft 404, the equity evaporates.
If both sites stay live with near-identical capability and product content, they split signals and cannibalise each other.
Google picks one, usually not the one you want, and the other decays.
Directory listings, supplier pages, association profiles and press mentions still point at Baldwin URLs.
Redirects preserve most of that value; the highest-value links should also be updated at source.
Existing customers, specifiers and returning buyers will search the Baldwin name for years.
That demand needs to land on a MAK Water page that explains the acquisition and routes the enquiry.
Without a merged pre-transition benchmark, there is no way to prove whether the migration held or leaked.
Analytics, Search Console and rank tracking need to be set up across both properties before anything moves.
MAK Water plus Baldwin covers more applications, capacities and industries than either did alone.
The site architecture needs to reflect that combined capability, or the extra range stays invisible.
The first twelve weeks of the retainer move the equity safely.
No separate project fee, the transition is built into every retainer tier. It's front-loaded before any Baldwin URLs are switched off, then the same retainer rolls straight into ongoing growth work.
- Stage 01Week 1Benchmark & inventory
- ·Full crawl of both makwater.com.au and the Baldwin site
- ·Record current rankings, organic traffic and enquiry volume for both
- ·Export Search Console query and page data as a permanent baseline
- ·Backlink audit across both domains, flagging must-keep links
- Stage 02Weeks 2-3Mapping & consolidation plan
- ·Page-level URL mapping: keep, merge, redirect or retire
- ·Identify duplicate and competing content across the two sites
- ·Recommend the combined site architecture and capability structure
- ·Decide the canonical home for each product, process and application page
- Stage 03Weeks 3-5Content migration & rewriting
- ·Migrate the Baldwin content worth keeping into MAK Water's structure
- ·Rewrite merged pages so they read as one brand, not two stitched together
- ·Create a Baldwin acquisition / legacy brand page to capture existing demand
- ·Metadata, headings and internal linking across all migrated pages
- Stage 04Week 6Technical execution
- ·Implement and test the full 301 redirect map
- ·Canonical tags, XML sitemaps and robots directives across both domains
- ·Structured data for organisation, products and services
- ·Search Console change-of-address and property configuration
- Stage 05Weeks 7-12Monitor, protect & recover
- ·Weekly crawl error, indexation and ranking monitoring
- ·Fix redirect chains, orphan pages and lost pages as they surface
- ·Outreach to update the highest-value external links at source
- ·Post-transition report against the pre-transition baseline
- Pre-transition performance baseline
- Complete URL redirect map
- Consolidated site architecture
- Migrated & rewritten content
- Link reclamation shortlist
- Search Console migration setup
- 12 weeks of protection monitoring
- Post-transition performance report
Once the equity is safe, the job is growth.
The combined business covers more processes, applications and industries than either did alone. Ongoing SEO builds a page and a piece of authority for each of those, so MAK Water is found at the point the requirement is defined.
- One strong page per process, application and industry served
- Unique titles, headings, intro copy and technical specification detail
- Internal links between processes, products and case studies
- Merged Baldwin and MAK Water content consolidated into single authoritative pages
- Crawl, indexation and Core Web Vitals monitoring
- Redirect hygiene across the consolidated domain
- Structured data for organisation, products and services
- Ongoing fixes for duplication, thin pages and orphan content
- Project case studies written for search as well as sales
- Technical guides and specification content for engineers and specifiers
- Industry directory, association and supplier listings
- Reclaiming and consolidating the combined link profile
- Clear, factual capability and specification content AI systems can cite
- Strong entity signals for MAK Water and the acquired Baldwin brand
- Direct answers to process and compliance questions
- Monitoring visibility in AI assistants alongside traditional rankings
| Theme | Example searches | Commercial value |
|---|---|---|
| Process & technology | reverse osmosis plant, dissolved air flotation, MBBR wastewater treatment, oily water separator, ultrafiltration system | Highest-value commercial intent, buyers searching by the process they need. |
| Application & industry | mine site water treatment, food and beverage wastewater, potable water treatment plant, sewage treatment plant Australia | Maps directly to MAK Water's sector capability pages. |
| Product & format | containerised water treatment plant, modular wastewater plant, packaged sewage treatment plant, water treatment plant hire | Captures the specific delivery formats the combined business offers. |
| Location & compliance | water treatment WA, industrial wastewater treatment Perth, ADWG compliance, trade waste treatment | Regional and regulatory searches from specifiers and operators. |
| Legacy & brand | Baldwin Industrial Systems, Baldwin water treatment, MAK Water Baldwin | Protects and redirects existing demand for the acquired brand. |
Three levels of ongoing management.
Every tier is a 12-month engagement with no lock-in beyond the first three months. You can move up a tier at any point; we'd usually recommend reviewing at the six-month mark.
Holds the ground gained through the transition. Technical health, indexation monitoring, redirect hygiene and steady optimisation of the highest-value existing pages. Suited to the first months post-migration if budget needs to stay tight.
- 12-week Baldwin transition campaign included
- Monthly technical & indexation checks
- Redirect and crawl error monitoring
- Optimisation of priority existing pages
- Search Console management
- Monthly reporting & rank tracking
- Dedicated AI / generative search campaign
- Live reporting dashboard (usually $199 + GST /mo)
Our recommendation. Everything in Protect, plus active build-out of the combined capability, application and product pages, and a regular content campaign. This is the tier that turns the merged footprint into more enquiries rather than simply preserving the old ones.
- Everything in Protect
- New capability, application & product pages
- Content pieces & case studies each month
- Structured data & internal linking campaign
- Dedicated AI / generative search campaign
- Link reclamation & directory listings
- Quarterly strategy review
For making MAK Water the default name in Australian industrial water treatment search. Full national and regional coverage across every process and sector, a substantial content and authority campaign, and dedicated AI search visibility work.
- Everything in Consolidate
- Expanded content & case study output
- National & regional location coverage
- Digital PR & industry link acquisition
- Dedicated AI / generative search campaign
- Monthly strategy meeting
The Consolidate retainer. Its first twelve weeks protect what Baldwin built, and from there it converts the larger combined offering into visibility MAK Water didn't have before, at $5,500 per month + GST, with the transition campaign included.
Measured on enquiries, not impressions.
Industrial water treatment is a low-volume, high-value category. A ranking that produces three qualified enquiries a month can be worth more than one producing three thousand visits.
- Live reporting dashboard
- Included
Combines Search Console, GA4 and rank tracking in one always-on view. Normally $199 + GST per month, included at no cost on every MAK Water retainer tier.
Ongoing partnership, not a set-and-forget account.
A single point of contact who already knows the Baldwin site and the water treatment category.
Priorities, learnings and next steps, aligned to MAK Water's commercial focus by sector.
Focused on enquiries, qualified visibility and progress against the transition baseline.
Every report measured against the combined pre-transition position, permanently.
You'll always know what's being worked on this month and what's next.
The same team, the same historical data, no relearning your business.
What we need to get started.
- MAK Water website (CMS)Editor access, or a nominated developer contact for implementation
- Google Analytics 4Admin access to the MAK Water property
- Google Search ConsoleOwner access to the MAK Water property, we already hold the Baldwin data and access
- Baldwin domain & DNSConfirmation of how long the domain stays live and who controls the DNS records
- Commercial prioritiesWhich processes, industries and regions matter most to the combined business
- Enquiry dataHow leads are captured and tracked, so reporting ties to real outcomes
- 01Confirm retainer tier and transition start date
- 02Grant access to the properties listed above
- 03We record the combined pre-transition baseline within week one
- 04Mapping and consolidation plan delivered for sign-off before anything changes
The baseline and redirect map must be completed before any Baldwin pages are taken down or redirected. Once the old URLs are gone, the opportunity to map them properly goes with them.