Dovolena.cz: We increased organic traffic by more than 70% after redesign of the website

An integral part of a successful transition to a new website is working with a quality SEO consultant. Such a big change often comes with the risk of a drop in organic traffic. That’s exactly why our client Student Agency contacted us - to help them overcome the aches of redesigning and launching their new website Dovolena.cz.

I want that too!

The results we achieved for the client

• We stopped the drop in organic traffic after the redesign – after which the client lost 67% of their organic traffic.
• In the subsequent key summer season of 2023 we already had 72% more YoY organic traffic.
• In this year’s summer season (2024) we have 72% higher YoY organic traffic once again.

But first things first…

The starting point wasn’t exactly simple

During September 2022, the Student Agency team led by Ondřej Žiška approached us with a request for SEO consultation after the redesign of Dovolena.cz. We started working on an analysis of the initial state of the site in order to identify the main problems from a SEO perspective.

What did we address in the analysis?

1. First of all, we studied the available data in Google Analytics and Google Search Console in detail. We tried to understand as much as possible what happened on the website, as the initial information was spotty.
2. Web Archive became our best friend in trying to trace back all the changes made.
3. We did a basic keyword analysis to check the position of the client and competitors on each topic.
4. We conducted a full technical audit of the site to identify any gaps.
5. We also looked at the site from a content perspective and topped up our audit with recommendations for content development.

Minor and major glitches of the new website

The main challenges we identified and needed to be resolved as soon as possible were clearly the URL and page structure changes associated with the redesign. 

The subsequent replacement of pages – that did not completely follow the structure of the original site – led to further significant changes, which were only supported by the inconsistency of the deployed redirects.

We also addressed the rotation of site functionality within the www/non-www variant.

The final piece of the puzzle were the URLs containing dates. This meant that the search engine crawler was constantly indexing new content, getting lost in address loops and discarding outdated content. The chances of landing on a relevant holiday date from the organic search results were not very high.

The amount of untreated duplicates on the site was large and new errors were constantly being created in Google Search Console.

In the case of Seznam.cz, too, the indexing did not run smoothly due to the chosen JS solution.

Clean-up of the site and stabilizing the structure

The first step of our work was tidying up and stabilizing the site structure. We needed to sort out the URLs and establish a clear framework for the site to be displayed in search results.

We extensively discussed options with the client-side development team on how we could achieve this. Unfortunately, a fully automated solution was not achievable in a reasonable timeframe. So we had to choose the path of some compromises and look for an alternative solution. 

This was achieved partly by manually solving the structure of the landing pages. We then proceeded to modify the restrictions - whether in the form of indexing bans, crawling bans, or just treating duplicate sites using the canonical element.

Creating landing pages and content

We followed up on the initial cleanup of the biggest technical issues by working with the client’s marketing/​content team. In the case of such a strong domain as the domain dovolena.cz, we had a clear goal for the next steps → the key was to have quality landing pages created for each topic. Only then it was possible to work on further fine-tuning.

We introduced the client’s team to SEO and what to pay attention to during the process. Working with Kamila Hrdličková, who had a background in SEO as a copywriter, was very helpful.

The prepared keyword analysis was also helpful, as it was clear what we needed to focus on in the first phase - we needed landing pages for individual destinations that could help us to push through the search results instead of inappropriate dynamic results. Because unfortunately, these were not usable for our needs in a reasonable timeframe.

A simple keyword analysis tackling some of the destinations

Gradually, we started to create a new content section on the website https://dovolena.cz/destinace, which offered a signpost of where you could go on holiday.

Content section of the website

Thanks to the team on the client side for the dedication they put into creating the new landing pages and content. Thanks to this, the new section grew successfully and we gained a framework of where to guide our visitors.

Reversing the trend and transitioning into growth

By the turn of 2022/2023, we were already in positive YoY numbers - after three months, we were already at 10% organic traffic growth.  And we started thinking about how to move the site further towards YoY growth. We continued to work on the structure of the destination pages and fine-tuning them according to ongoing results. 

We also built on the destination pages by tuning the pages to more general topics. Whether it be first minute, last minute, family holidays, exotic holidays or seaside holidays.

A content page about exotic holiday

The creation of content was going full steam ahead and the commitment of us and the team on the client side was enormous.

Gradually, more bugs were removed from the site. We adjusted internal linking, merged various historical subdomains from the client’s site, and addressed more and more technical fixes in collaboration with the developers.

As part of further development, we focused on missing landing pages for individual hotels, as it was not possible to get a dynamic version of them into the search results. The client’s project of individual hotel pages and their reviews helped us. 

In cooperation with Zuzana Glierova, who covers IT at the client, we were able to launch the first version of the hotel section available on https://dovolena.cz/recenze in April 2023. This allowed us to have landing pages on these topics and to start populating search results.

We also embarked on a solution for the site’s speed together - although this was not an easy challenge. This is because it’s an aggregation site that pulls in very fast changing external data, and the entire web solution is built on JavaScript.

Summer season of 2023 and fulfilled expectations

If we hadn’t already started landing page and content development in the fall, this success could not have happened. In SEO, planning with a six-month or even a year view into the future is absolutely necessary. Especially with such a seasonal area like this.

Even during the summer season, content creation didn’t stop - according to our plan. And we continued to identify further possible improvements.

No stopping – we keep going!

The summer has successfully ended and we continued to roll out and fine-tune the pages that are in demand during the winter season. Exotic holidays, advent-time tours and skiing became our go-to. Destinations that encouraged a trip to the warm weather destinations could not be missed.

With this in mind, we passed the turn of the year 2023/2024 and started thinking about where to take the site for the 2024 summer season.

New content section

As we approached the completion of the destination section of the site, we wanted to start preparing a more comprehensive content section of the website. 

The system did not support such a solution and it was necessary to consider whether it was worth creating a completely new section as part of the development. We decided to test it, and so the first draft of the blog section of the dovolena.cz website was created in a form of manually created landing pages.

It was clear from the first results that even articles published in this way were getting their clicks quite quickly. Therefore, the plan to develop a proper content section that would be based on our experiment proceeded.

The developers set about programming according to our specifications. In the meantime, we prepared plans for topics to be written, which the client’s copywriters prepared without publishing them right away due to the difficulty of manually inserting them into the test solution.

We didn’t stop looking for other possible improvements either - although the development capacity we had available was very limited due to work on other company projects. 

We continued to improve the content of the pages for specific topics and destinations according to the search results and also focused on increasing the click-through rate of interesting parts.

At the last minute, but still

Our plan to have the content section available before the summer season of 2024 was fulfilled in June 2024 and we were able to look at the https://dovolena.cz/blog section in its first sharp version.

The first version of the blog section

Already in the first version we are working with content structuring, author profiles and other features. However, this is not the final version and we want to keep working on further improvements. 

Start of the summer season 2024

We are currently in the summer season of 2024 and the site is once again growing at an average of 72% YoY in clicks from Google Search Console (June 2024 data).

The newly launched content section of the site is already starting to contribute to the site’s performance, which should help our continued progress.

We’re not slowing down, and we’re keeping a close eye on our position to tweak additional content topics as needed.

And how do these results look on publicly available data? In the Ahrefs tool, these are the changes in estimated traffic. The growth rate is significant despite all the updates Google has already prepared for the travel sector this year.

Within the keywords that show up on the first page of search results, we see a continuous growth trend. We are showing up for an increasing number of topics and we want to maintain this growth rate.

We are gradually shifting the topics from the second page of search results to the first one. t Often, it is the topics on the second page of results that can be a significant opportunity to gain additional traffic when they make it to the first page.

What was the key to success?

An earlier supervision of a SEO consultant - already during the redesign and especially during the launch - would have helped the project to run more smoothly. This way, at the beginning of our cooperation, we first had to fix the initial state of the website and only then could we move on to the development steps.

The final piece of the puzzle for the success of any SEO project is working with a client team that respects our advice, follows it and participates in its implementation. Fortunately, Student Agency is exactly one of those teams and it’s a pleasure to work with them.

The SEO development of dovolena.cz is far from over and there are still plenty of opportunities to develop further content and tweak the site. SEO is a continuous activity, but one that pays off in the long run.

Do you also want to fine-tune your website to the last detail?

Just contact us and we will be happy to discuss your specific needs.