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The dynamic growth of nearly all current markets forces business owners to actively invest in reaching the top of search engine rankings. This creates an unprecedented level of competition, where the more successful organization is the one that spends more on advertising.

Yes, it’s difficult to generate clients when your website doesn’t appear in the top 10 results on Google for a specific keyword. And there are many reasons for this: from the lack of SEO to technical issues such as internal “dead” links, low site performance, and more. All of these are factors that affect the indexing and ranking of the portal.

Of course, there are alternative ways to promote, like purchasing ads on social media, mobile apps, and various platforms. However, the most effective approach, both now and in the future, is organic traffic. And that was exactly what the company was lacking, which is what we’ll discuss today.

About 70 pages in the TOP 1 of search results? It’s easy when the experts at Luxeo are involved. And right now, we’ll share some juicy details about the project!

Brief Overview of the Client

Our client is an expert company that provides IT consulting services to clients and independently develops digital products, including those at the enterprise level.

With over 20 years of experience and 50+ offices in 28 countries, the company’s brand speaks for itself, capable of handling any technological project.

Niche

Software Development, Solutions Implementation, Modernization, Digital Transformation, Consulting, Analytics, Testing

Target Regions

USA, Europe, India, Global South, Asia

Services

Technical and SEO audits. Creation of an optimization roadmap. Implementation of updates. Monitoring of changes and tracking position dynamics over time

Goals

Achieving MQL/SQL, focusing on banking/finance domains, increasing valuable traffic, and improving brand positions in Google’s search results

Timeline

July 2023 – September 2024

Corporate solutions and complex technological infrastructure are standard for them.

Key Project Results

In a year and three months of fruitful collaboration between Luxeo and our client, the following was achieved:
Nearly a sevenfold increase in the number of TOP 1 positions among the site’s pages.
Over 100 new and updated landing pages and SEO materials.
Increased traffic in priority areas, converted into MQL/SQL.
How was this achieved?
1. A comprehensive audit identifying critical issues.
2. Collaborative work on eliminating deficiencies and addressing the reasons for the site’s poor ranking.
3. A clear understanding of the business specifics and needs.

Client’s Problem

Even a fully optimized website can cease to rank effectively in search engines over time, often due to technical or SEO issues that are invisible to users. Therefore, it is essential to periodically update the site, refresh the semantics, and address new challenges.

A software development provider approached us with the task of auditing and modernizing their branded resource.

There were several main requirements:
1. Achieve MQL/SQL.
2. Focus on banking/finance domains.
3. Increase valuable traffic.
4. Improve brand visibility in Google’s search results.

And this marked the beginning of a long and close collaboration between our teams.

Our Approach

To start, we conducted a comprehensive audit of the website using Google Search Console and several third-party tools. This allowed us to identify a number of issues that directly or indirectly affected the site’s indexing by search engines and, consequently, its ranking.

After analyzing the audit results, we prepared a detailed report describing the problems and current challenges, and based on it, we created a series of recommendations for optimizing the resource.

To accomplish the task, we divided it into two parts:

  • Technical: Addressing a range of issues related to the sitemap, domain classification, tags, “invisible pages,” portal structure, broken links, navigation chains, “/robots.txt,” performance, and more.
  • SEO: The main focus was on the proper presentation of material, its formatting, and the semantic core of the content published on the pages.

It’s important to note that during the project, we made changes that led us to deviate significantly from the initial roadmap, but we covered many more issues than planned.

Technical Side of the Project

From the audit results, it became clear that the current state of the site would not allow us to proceed with minimal effort. We identified several serious issues that would hinder optimization through standard methods. Therefore, we initially focused on the technical challenges.

Site Scanning

As a result of a superficial check, we found that the site generates approximately 314,000 URLs:

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Results of the superficial check

However, a deeper check was surprising, as it revealed over 1.17 million URLs, of which only 893 were indexed:

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Results of the deep site check

As a result of this analysis, it turned out that too many pages have a “canonical” tag:

Comprehensive Website Promotion: From Technical Audit to SEO. Increasing MQL/SQL Metrics for Our Client - 3

Root of the problem

As a result, we found an effective solution to the current challenge:

  • remove page generation based on filters;
  • pages generated based on filters should return a 410 response code;
  • filter results should be displayed without reloading the page and generating new pages (implemented via a script).

Thus, one of the most critical problems was resolved.

Site Structure

Do you know what an unoptimized site structure looks like? It resembles a web with a chaotic grid pattern, like this:

Comprehensive Website Promotion: From Technical Audit to SEO. Increasing MQL/SQL Metrics for Our Client - 4

Red dots can represent: non-canonical, disallowed for indexing, and pages with a response code other than 200 OK.

However, there is another issue here, namely the routing of site visitors, especially if they arrive at the resource via an external link.

Comprehensive Website Promotion: From Technical Audit to SEO. Increasing MQL/SQL Metrics for Our Client - 5

And here is an optimized structure (more precisely, its schema).

At the same time, we see that in this case, the site’s URLs are overly complicated, for example, containing many parameters, so different URLs can point to pages with identical or similar content. Accordingly, Googlebot may overload the site’s server or simply fail to crawl it completely, resulting in some pages being excluded from indexing and not ranking by the search aggregator.

Overcoming this turned out to be quite a challenging but entirely feasible task: it was necessary to simplify the site structure as much as possible and change the parameters of some pages with questionable value in terms of ROI.

The “rel=’canonical'” Tag

The “rel=’canonical'” tag is needed to indicate the main URL of a page among several similar options. However, this tag was not generated on the site. 

This confused the search robot and created a significant load, leading to erroneous indexing and ranking of the target page.

The solution was clear: set up the generation of the “rel=’canonical'” tag as follows:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”{URL}” />

This step allowed us to avoid outputting the canonical value for pages that were closed to indexing (those containing the tag <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow”/>).

Creating a Site Map

The absence or errors in the site maps lead to problems with its indexing by search robots, as well as basic navigation challenges for direct visitors to the site. Therefore, we checked this aspect and found several issues.

HTML

Since this type of map was missing, we provided recommendations for its creation, such as:

  • links to all relevant pages for site promotion are needed;
  • pages must be open for indexing;
  • the overall HTML map should not contain more than 3,000 links;
  • there should be no links to page sections (/blog?page=3, etc.);
  • a link to the map should be placed in the site’s footer;
  • pagination of the map is allowed if necessary.

As a result, a corresponding map appeared on the site.

XML 

This type of map was present but contained several errors (including links with a 404 response code). Here are some points we advised focusing on:

  • UTF-8 encoding should be used;
  • no more than 50,000 URLs are allowed;
  • all URLs must return a 200 response code;
  • there should be no links to page sections (/blog?page=3, etc.);
  • the size in uncompressed form should not exceed 50 MB;
  • if the file size or the number of specified addresses exceeds these limits, the file should be split into several parts;
  • a link to the XML Sitemap should be added to the robots.txt file.

Thus, we optimized this map as well.

Removal of Broken Links

Some pages of the site returned a 404 or 410 code when attempted to load. We scanned all available resources, identified non-working links, and provided the client with a comprehensive list.

As a result of the work done, we ensured that each page of the site returned a 200 code. In other words, they loaded successfully.

  • Note that this is only a part of the examples of technical problems and the actions taken to resolve them. Periodically, new challenges arose, which were promptly addressed due to effective collaboration between the teams.

Comprehensive SEO

Alongside technical optimization, our specialists also conducted search engine optimization for the site and its individual pages. We utilized tools such as Serpstat, SEO Ahrefs, and others. Ultimately, we analyzed both the technical and content aspects of the resource, identified some problems, and successfully resolved them.

Search Engine Optimization of Pages

Target pages often generate content based on search queries. This creates a risk that pages may get indexed but at the same time “pull in” unnecessary content, which can ultimately lead to poorer rankings or even the exclusion of URLs from the index.

One possible solution was to indicate <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”/> for all pages such as /search?q=. The same applies to pagination for this type of page. Thus, this allowed for more accurate indexing of pages and generated the correct URL mass to improve the site’s ranking by the search aggregator.

Optimization of H1-H6 Headings

Surprisingly, the content structure is also a critical parameter for search bots during the indexing of a page. Some parts of the site exhibited significant deviations from standard patterns. For example:

Comprehensive Website Promotion: From Technical Audit to SEO. Increasing MQL/SQL Metrics for Our Client - 6

Note how the mix of H2 and H4 appears inorganic in this example.

To resolve the issue, we reformatted the structure pattern to the following layout:

<H1> Media
<H2> How we help
<H3> Platform transformation
<H3> Greater efficiency
<H3> Engineering at pace and scale
<H2> Our solutions
<H3> Media content delivery services
<H3> Interactive media experience
<H2> Why (name of the company)
<H2> Case studies
<H3> Customer behavior insights deliver highly individualized content
<H3> Addressable TV ad monitoring
<H3> 5G Access Gateway Function for wireless-wireline convergence networks and high-tech

For other highlights that needed to be emphasized in the content, we recommended wrapping them in a <span> tag and assigning a class that meets design requirements.

CTA Buttons

The more often you hint to site visitors about starting a collaboration, the greater the likelihood that it will happen. Typically, this is done using Call-To-Action (CTA) blocks with buttons that open a contact form, move the user to the appropriate screen, etc.

We reviewed all the content, both landing pages and blog articles, resolved similar illogical points, and provided recommendations for redesigning with the addition of CTA blocks and corresponding buttons.

Semantics

And finally, let’s talk about the most interesting aspect. No matter how effective the previous steps were, without additional optimization, including enriching the content with relevant semantics, they will not yield significant results. Therefore, we conducted a competitor analysis and calculated the number of backlinks, relevant keywords, and other elements necessary to propel the site to the top of search results.

Moreover, we explored all the clusters (niches, types of services, trends) related to the company’s business profile and prepared a detailed brief for copywriters. This allowed us to optimize the content on the site’s pages and improve the resource’s ranking metrics on Google.

Results

Do you know how difficult it can be to properly set up processes, take nuances into account, and identify potential problems with a site? Despite all the challenges mentioned (and not just those), we successfully tackled the task. Nearly a year and a half of collaboration resulted in completion… SUCCESS!!

From July 2023 to September 2024, we achieved:

  • 300+ search results in the TOP 10, over 200 in the TOP 5, 160 in the TOP 3, and almost 70 in the TOP 1.
  • An increase in organic traffic by nearly 3 times.
  • 500+ organic pages with high MQL/SQL metrics.
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Almost a year and a half of close cooperation allowed the latter to achieve the desired results and increase profitability through more effective promotion of the site online.

Summary

Coverage of target clusters, increased visibility of the client’s site on Google, technical optimization. It sounds simple, but behind it lie thousands of operations carried out over a year and three months.

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Tens of thousands of site visits, daily appearances in the top of search results, and increased conversion metrics. It’s impressive, but we believe this is just the beginning of a close collaboration between. By addressing technical issues, optimizing SEO, and enriching content, Luxeo successfully transformed the client’s website into a high-performing digital asset. This led to tens of thousands of site visits, daily appearances in the top search results, and a significant boost in conversion metrics.

Do you want to achieve similar results? Find out how our team can assist in promoting your site. Contact a Luxeo manager for a consultation!!

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Author
Dmytro Kovshun

Dmytro Kovshun is the founder of Luxeo Team – an SEO Outsourcing Company. As a leading specialist in the industry, he is recognized as an expert in SEO promotion of websites. With years of experience and a deep understanding of the field, Dmytro continues to drive success and innovation in SEO strategies, helping businesses achieve their online goals.

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