Marketplace Increases Conversion 3.4x in 121 Days

About The Happiest Hour

The Happiest Hour is a platform that connects its users with pub events and offers throughout Australia. This service is available via its website as well as an app.

They approached NUOPTIMA as they wished to improve their online performance. The global pandemic resulted in an initial loss of traffic as people were forced to stay home and pubs were closed. Furthermore, they witnessed a decline in traffic in the middle of last year (2023) due to a website rebuild.

The Happiest Hour wanted an external consultant to examine their website with a fresh pair of eyes. They were seeking expertise with multi-listing and marketplace SEO to help them appear in search engine results pages (SERPs) for thousands of pages with dynamic search entries.

Team

The Happiest Hour Team

Responsible NUOPTIMA Team

Website Performance Before Hiring NUOPTIMA

To give a clearer idea of the issues faced by The Happiest Hour, let’s consider their website performance before enlisting our services in December 2023.

As mentioned, the client had a website rebuild in the middle of 2023. The SEO migration resulted in a loss of pages, specifically pages that targeted the keyword “specials [locations],” such as “specials Melbourne” and “specials Sydney.” This stopped them from being able to rank for their target keywords. 

The screenshot below shows their lost pages (the gray URLs):

Due to these lost pages, they also lost all their keyword rankings, which is illustrated below:

Moreover, most of the client’s pages had been redirected, which also resulted in a substantial loss of pages:

The Happiest Hour was understandably concerned with these issues, so a few months after the website rebuild, they enlisted NUOPTIMA’s services in December 2023 for professional insight and assistance.

Action Plan & Implementation

After gaining a clear understanding of the client’s issues, our expert team at NUOPTIMA set out an action plan and carried out a wide variety of fixes, including technical SEO, on-page SEO, and content optimizations. Let’s break down the various steps we undertook, the aim behind each step, the actions involved, and their consequent effects:

Steps NUOPTIMA Conducted	Goal	Actions Involved	Impact
Redirect Issues	To ensure that all site traffic is directed to the most current and secure version of the website, i.e., “HTTPS,” not “www.”	We implemented 301 redirects across various old and unsecured versions of The Happiest Hour’s URLs to unify and secure the site’s URL structure.	The implemented redirects prevented split-page rank and secured all site entries. This boosts SEO integrity and increases user trust.
Sitemap Issues	To clean and optimize the sitemap for better crawling efficiency.	We reviewed and trimmed invalid URLs from the sitemap. We included valid orphan pages in the sitemap and established internal links to integrate them into the site structure. We removed or redirected non-indexable and outdated URLs.	This enhanced site crawling and indexing, which facilitated better content discovery by search engines, such as Google.
Site Architecture &  User Experience (UX)	To improve site navigation and UX.	We redesigned homepage sections to prominently feature “Trivia Nights” and “Events” with direct calls-to-action (CTAs). We modified the “/specials” page to prioritize list views over map views with toggle functionality. We enhanced overall navigation by making entire venue cards clickable.	These fixes improved user engagement and increased session durations, directly contributing to lower bounce rates and higher conversions.
In-Depth Keyword Research & Content Strategy	To gain rankings and improve visibility for the “Specials” page.	We conducted deep keyword research and carefully crafted a content strategy. Based on our keyword research and content strategy, we introduced a clean URL structure specifically tied to cities, specials types, and weekdays (instead of the client’s filtered URLs).	This increased organic traffic and improved rankings for the “Specials” pages, resulting in higher visibility and engagement from targeted audiences.
Page Titles & Meta Descriptions	To optimize meta tags to better target primary keywords and improve click-through rate (CTR).	We revised page titles and meta descriptions to meet the necessary length and relevance standards.	This resulted in increased visibility and CTR from SERPs.
H1 Heading Optimization	To strengthen on-page SEO by optimizing header tags.	We corrected and implemented unique and relevant H1 tags across all pages.	This improved content structure, which facilitated better UX and search engine comprehension.
Not Found (404) Errors	To address and minimize the impact of 404 errors.	We restored valuable missing content and implemented 301 redirects or 410 statuses where appropriate.	This step reduced user frustration and prevented ranking losses as a result of broken links.

By meticulously following these steps, the client’s website experienced significant improvements in both UX and overall SEO performance. 

Results

The Happiest Hour invested in NUOPTIMA’s services in December 2023 and still does as of the time of writing (June 2024). Since enlisting our help, we have managed to achieve impressive results for the client, which has helped improve their online performance.

Let’s break down some of the key results our agency has generated to date.

Conversions

First, let’s consider their key events (conversions). A key event is something that you would like a user to do. For instance, this could be making a purchase or clicking a button. For The Happiest Hour, this metric refers to “first opens,” an event triggered when a user launches their app for the first time after installation. The screenshot below shows key events from when the client first enlisted NUOPTIMA’s services compared to four months after collaboration began. We can see that there has been a staggering 324.31% increase from organic search:

Organic Traffic

Next, let’s assess organic traffic data. Organic traffic refers to visitors who land on the site from unpaid sources:

This screenshot above from Ahrefs illustrates how we have skyrocketed The Happiest Hour’s organic traffic. The first line on the left represents the start date of our collaboration, and the second line represents the start of our audit implementation. 

Let’s break down the numbers:

In December 2023, The Happiest Hour generated organic traffic of approximately 6.6K. Fast forward to April 2024, and this number has increased to almost 12K visitors. This represents an impressive increase of 78.54% in organic traffic over the four-month period. 

Also, there is a significant increase in engaged sessions. These are sessions that last longer than 10 seconds, have at least two screenviews or pageviews, or have a key event. Compared to the same period, engaged sessions from organic search on the client’s site are up by 109.4%!

This data indicates that NUOPTIMA’s SEO and UX enhancements have led to a more visible, engaging, and user-friendly site, driving substantial improvements in traffic and user engagement.

Total Clicks, Total Impressions, and Average SERPs Position

Now let’s analyze some other key results we garnered for The Happiest Hour between December 2023 and April 2024:

• Total Clicks: This represents the number of times users clicked on the site’s URL from SERPs. We can see that there has been an increase in total clicks from 6.61K to 12.3K, an 86% increase. This indicates that many more users are clicking through to the site from SERPs.
• Total Impressions: This metric refers to how many times a client’s web page appeared on users’ search results. This figure has almost doubled from 515K to 920K, representing an almost 80% increase. This result suggests that The Happiest Hour is appearing more frequently in search results or for a broader range of queries.
• Average Position: This illustrates the average ranking of your site across SERPs. The Happiest Hour’s average position in search results has improved from 17.6 to 14.9. This improvement in ranking positions indicates better visibility in search results, which typically leads to an increase in both clicks and traffic.

Keyword Rankings

Finally, let’s see how the client’s keyword rankings have changed from December 2023 versus April 2024:

The number of organic keywords has increased from 14,354 in December to 19,516 in April, an increase of over five thousand! Organic keywords are words used in SEO to attract free traffic.

There are also 175 keywords in the top three positions as of April, compared to 65 in December. That is a whopping 169% increase!

Furthermore, the number of keywords ranking in positions four-10, 11-20, 21-50, and 51-100 have nearly all increased, improving the site’s visibility across a broader range of search queries.

Conclusion

This case study has demonstrated how our expert team at NUOPTIMA has achieved impressive results for The Happiest Hour across a range of metrics, including conversions, organic traffic, and keyword rankings. Consequently, our client is now enjoying much better visibility online and improved site performance, helping them to increase their business’s reach and success. As our work with The Happiest Hour continues, we look forward to continuing to generate further results for them, supporting them in supercharging their business growth.