How The SEO Works used Sitebulb to uncover technical issues and opportunities for huge traffic wins

The Client

The SEO Works is an award-winning integrated search agency based in Sheffield, London, and Leeds. Combining SEO, Digital PR and PPC to help their clients maximise their online potential. We spoke with Keiran Malcolm, one of their Senior SEO Account Managers, about his use of Sitebulb when tackling a web of complex technical SEO issues for an enterprise-level client.

The Results

• Traffic increased worldwide by 366%
• Increased keywords in position 4 to 10 by 464%
• Increased top 3 keyword rankings by 1930%
• Increased the number of pages indexed by 115.64%

The Challenge

The client we were dealing with was a sports streaming service that seamlessly marries video and news content. This website was initially built without factoring in the intricacies of SEO, setting the stage for a host of hurdles that demanded our attention from a technical point of view.

Our ongoing work has covered everything from the foundational URL structures to international SEO techniques, the integration of structured data for enhanced visibility, the handling of JavaScript intricacies and, of course, ensuring maximum indexation where possible.

Due to the nature of the site, we were often faced with tight deadlines and hard decisions around sporting tournaments. This forced us to prioritise where possible for maximum impact over the course of 12–16 months, with evolving client priorities, meaning we had to adapt, overcome and shift focus. Sitebulb enabled us to do that.

Our journey with Sitebulb and the client has spanned across a landscape teeming with technical intricacies and changing priorities. What was initially a sports streaming service built without SEO in mind has now been transformed into a well-oiled organic search machine blended with a corporate strategy targeting a wide range of countries.

The Solution

A full overhaul of the site focusing on 4 key areas:

• Crawlability
• Structured Data/Schema
• International SEO
• URL Structure

Crawlability

Sitebulb played a pivotal role in our quest to enhance the overall crawlability of the website, providing us with invaluable insights into the specific areas that required attention and improvement.

The crawl map visualisation mapped out the client’s website's internal linking structure. The visual representation helped us gain a clear and comprehensive view of the website's internal architecture.

What helped the most was the ability to pinpoint isolated areas within of the website that needed enhancement. The crawl map visualisation functioned like a spotlight, highlighting those corners of the client’s digital domain that were not adequately connected to the broader network of pages.

These isolated pockets represented potential bottlenecks for search engine crawlers and, in turn, areas where we managed to significantly improve crawlability.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

URL Structure

With a large organisation such as this client, things move very slowly, and prioritising the most pertinent issues first is key to great SEO results. On-page and URL structure changes have historically taken a lot longer to implement, however, with the use of Sitebulb we identified their current site structure and where to improve it.

We used Sitebulb to help identify the issues with the client's URL structure by using its Internal URL report, which provides a granular view of how the website is put together.

The report includes all URLs and is filterable, which is ideal for larger websites where you want to isolate any issues or sections of the website.

We used Sitebulb to identify keyword stuffing, a bug in the search bar of the site that created infinite URLs, and URLs that didn't have the correct or any canonical tags attached to them.

Sitebulb's HTTP Status Codes report was also used to identify any 500, 404, and 302 redirects to ensure maximum user and search engine experience/crawling.

Structured Data

The website is a relatively large one, with 1M+ URLs, and when we first started working with it, the website did not have any structured data. Leveraging Sitebulb’s crawl data, we could see the number of URLs with or without structured data and if it was validated against both Google and Schema.orgs guidelines and promptly fix any necessary.

Leveraging a tool like Sitebulb for structured data diagnostics is an absolute necessity for larger websites. Currently, Google Search Console only shows 1000 URLs at a time per type of structured data, but as you can see below, Sitebulb picks up multiple types of structured data, shows errors and gives SEOs a comprehensive dataset to work with.

We saw great results when implementing structured data, specifically around videos, with a huge increase in visibility and appearance in knowledge panels. You can see the estimated traffic and keyword increases immediately after the implementation of the video structured data below:

• No. of Top 3 organic keywords: 41,031, a 74.1% increase worldwide
• Estimated organic traffic: 23,053,541, a 1033.81% increase worldwide

This increase happened simultaneously in over 20 countries, which was a huge win for the client, all due to a combination of Sitebulb plus great and reactive web development. As you can imagine, the client was as happy as we were.

International SEO

International SEO is a key factor for a lot of businesses, particularly, when it comes to streaming services and sports. Each region presents its own issues, with licensing and translations being huge considerations.

We leveraged Sitebulb’s crawling capabilities to ensure hreflang tags are properly installed across the website. The correct tags ensure the website is sending the correct signals to Search Engines.

Using Sitebulb we were able to see the distribution of each language, for this specific website we knew, if implemented correctly each of the languages should be split almost equally, with a few extra English pages.

We implemented and tested Hreflang tags in August 2022, this showed a huge improvement in both clicks and overall keyword rankings for the client with an increase of 35.43% in organic traffic.

The Results

Our journey with Sitebulb in collaboration with the client has been a remarkable transformational for their website, and the journey has only just begun.

Worldwide traffic to the website experienced a staggering upswing, registering a remarkable increase of 366%. This substantial boost in traffic demonstrates the tangible impact of our SEO initiatives and Sitebulb's contribution to uncovering optimisation opportunities.

Another noteworthy improvement was observed in keyword positioning, specifically within the range of positions 4 – 10. The number of keywords in this range increased by 464%. This shift is indicative of our success in elevating the website's visibility for a wider spectrum of search queries.

The improvement in the top 3 keyword rankings has been one of our favourite achievements to date, having achieved a growth of +1930%. This increase underscores the profound transformation in the website's search engine performance. It highlights our ability to not only secure top positions for critical keywords, but to do so on an unprecedented scale.

These results are a testament to the synergy between our strategic expertise, Sitebulb's technical insights, and the dedication of our team and the client. Together, we have propelled the sports streaming service from obscurity in the search landscape to a prominent and impactful presence, achieving remarkable gains in organic traffic and keyword rankings.