We were approached by the Morpost service for seafarers, which assists with the processing of documents: seafarer’s passport, service record book, and certificates. The company already had a website, but only a Russian-language version, as well as social media accounts. Most of their traffic came through recommendations. To scale up, they needed a modern website that would comply with Ukrainian legislation, be user-friendly, and allow them to receive organic traffic from Google.
During our analysis, we found that the website was built on a custom content management system, which made updating the site, implementing multilingual features, SEO, and security more complicated. Therefore, it was easier and more effective to create a new website on the WordPress platform rather than improve the old one.
Why we chose WordPress for the website
This is a very popular and widespread content management system, and here’s why:
- Multilingual support: several languages are supported “out of the box”;
- Flexibility and scalability: it’s easy to add new features;
- SEO and content management: the client can update materials independently;
- Security: regular updates and community support;
- Cost: lower than maintaining and modifying custom code.
We excluded the option of improving a custom CMS due to its complexity, high cost, limited flexibility, and difficulties with SEO optimization.
What brought the result
- Created a website from scratch on WordPress with a responsive design.
- Implemented SEO already at the development stage, taking semantics into account.
- Analyzed all website pages using Ahrefs, GA4, and Google Search Console to preserve traffic. This is important because websites usually lose users when changing their management system and design.
- Analyzed the backlink profile and prepared detailed technical tasks for the web department.
- Developed an extended structure: a separate landing page for each popular service so that clients could find the information they need and the website would receive more targeted traffic.
- Implemented the Ukrainian version of the website.
- Set up redirects from old pages to retain traffic and positions in Google.
- Ensured mobile device adaptation.
Functional features: sea service calculator
We have implemented a convenient interactive calculator that allows users to independently calculate their sea service. The calculator has brought additional search traffic.
Results
- A few weeks after the launch, the website started receiving organic traffic from Google.
- The relevance of the pages, clear structure, and technical SEO optimization made it possible to avoid a drop in rankings after the site migration.
- Search queries with the calculator attracted new users.
- More than 300 queries reached Google’s top 3, and over 500 were ranked in the top 10.
- The number of inquiries through the website increased, and users received a convenient tool for calculating work experience independently.
