SEO Case Study: Domestic Staff Recruitment Agency (Anonymous)
From Invisible to Unmissable: How a Luxury Recruitment Firm Went from Nowhere in Google to Dominating High-Intent Searches in Just over 12 Months
Specialist agency placing private household staff in the UK and internationally
Industry:
Domestic Staff Recruitment
Platform:
WordPress (custom build)
Engagement Type:
SEO Strategy, Execution, and Ongoing Support
Start Date:
Nov 2023
The Challenge
Despite investing in a new website and several months of support from a different digital marketing agency, the site still had virtually no organic visibility.
Most priority keywords weren’t even ranking in the top 100, and the ones that did appear had no clear commercial value. Core services couldn’t be found, and the site was missing out on high-quality leads from people actively searching for exactly what they offered.
The real issue? There was no SEO strategy. No keyword mapping, no prioritisation, no structure. Just surface-level changes with no direction.
The Results
- 5 x #1 keyword rankings
- 34 keywords now ranking on page one (from 0)
- High-intent search terms dominating top 3
- Strong organic growth and improved lead quality
Our Strategic Approach
We began by doing what the previous agency hadn’t: building a clear, focused SEO strategy.
This meant:
- Understanding the commercial goals and user intent
- Prioritising the pages that mattered most
- Aligning the site’s structure and content with actual search demand
- Creating a plan that the client’s in-house team and developers could act on quickly and confidently
That strategy became the blueprint for every optimisation decision — from site structure to internal links to content.
What We Did
With the strategy in place, we executed methodically, always prioritising clarity, impact, and scalability.
- Conducted a full technical audit and resolved priority issues
- Created a keyword-led site structure that aligned with search intent
- Rewrote and optimised key landing pages
- Improved crawlability, metadata, and page hierarchy
- Advised on new content opportunities and internal linking
- Provided strategic oversight and ongoing SEO support
- Supplemented efforts with ethical, targeted authority-building activity
This wasn’t about shortcuts or quick wins it was about making the site structurally sound, semantically clear, and commercially visible.
Feedback from Client
“Since working with High Impact, we’re being found by the right people, for the right services and seeing a steady increase in high-quality leads.”
The Results
In just over 12 months, the site went from zero visibility to ranking at the top of Google for dozens of its most competitive keywords.
Ranking Improvements:
5 Keywords Now in Position #1, including:
- house manager recruitment
- private house manager recruitment
- live in house manager
34 Keywords Now on Page One, where there were previously none
- private household recruitment → #2
- butler recruitment → #2
- hire a housekeeper → #2
- hire an estate manager → #3
- hire a nanny → #6 (up from 101+)
Organic Growth YoY (Jan–Feb 2024 vs 2023):
- +593% increase in organic users
- +1,127% increase in sessions
- +3,750% increase in goal completions
Multiple high-intent keywords rose from beyond the top 100 into dominant top 3 positions, putting the client in front of the right audience at exactly the right time.
What Made It Work
Most SEO work fails because it starts with tactics. We started with strategy.
By first building a clear SEO plan, we were able to prioritise what mattered, make fast progress on the essentials, and build a search presence that’s now delivering meaningful leads, not just rankings.
This project proves what happens when strategy and execution work together and why even the best-looking website is only as strong as the plan behind it.
