DTC Newsletter web and SEO rebuild

DTC Newsletter had strong email engagement and a growing subscriber base. The website told a different story: bounce rate at 70%, organic traffic underperforming relative to content volume, and low signup conversion from organic visitors who were, by definition, high intent.

I looked at what was actually on the site. The information architecture had no coherent structure — content had been added over time with no taxonomy or hierarchy, and there was no clear path from a search result to a signup. The site had been built as a content container, not a conversion system.

The read: the bounce rate wasn’t an audience quality problem. The right people were landing and immediately leaving, because the page gave them no reason to stay.

Rebuild the architecture from the information model outward: taxonomy first, then URL structure, then page hierarchy, then layouts. Treat the site as a conversion system where every page had a job — capture a subscriber, build credibility with a sponsor, or rank for a term that brought in the next reader.

I owned all of it. No separate web team, no design handoff, no engineering queue. Three full rebuilds over the tenure.

Bounce rate, as the primary signal of whether the site was working for the reader who arrived. If the architecture and content hierarchy were right, it would fall.

Secondary: organic newsletter signup rate. The site’s job was ultimately to convert organic readers into subscribers. That number had to move or the rebuild hadn’t solved the right problem.

The first version shipped with a clean content taxonomy, consistent URL structure, schema markup across all content types, and metadata templates matched to search intent by page category.

The second rebuild expanded the system for growing content volume: new page types for sponsor content, resource sections, and topic cluster hubs, with internal linking built around keyword groupings.

The third rebuild was forced by an external contractor deleting the entire Webflow environment. I rebuilt the full site from memory and documentation — every component, CMS collection, automation, and content system — without data loss. Operations never stopped.