SEO Case Study
Whitehall Resources
Client
Whitehall Resources
Period Measured
August 2022 – June 2023
Data Sources
Google Analytics / GA, Google Search Console, SEMrush
Website
Designed & Built by Reach
Overview
Whitehall Resources operates in a competitive recruitment market where search visibility is often dominated by long-established brands and job platforms. The goal was to grow sustainable organic acquisition by improving rankings for high-intent SAP recruitment searches, increasing the share of traffic driven by non-brand discovery, and building a repeatable content system that could compound performance over time.
Key Stats
Organic traffic increased by 39.6%
Organic search accounts for 50.8% of all website traffic
Highest-ranking SAP recruitment agency for “SAP recruitment” (UK)
74% non-brand traffic share
Careers site organic traffic increased 345%
The challenge
Recruitment SERPs are competitive by default. For job-led searches, you’re often up against major job boards and aggregators with huge authority and constant publishing velocity, which makes it hard for a specialist recruiter’s site to earn and hold visibility.
On the Whitehall site itself, there were also practical execution constraints. Content publishing wasn’t straightforward without developer support, and there were technical issues caused by outdated plugins that affected key functionality.
On the careers side, visibility dropped after a new site launch when high-performing article content was removed, so part of the work became recovery as well as growth.
Our strategy
The objective was to make Whitehall the most visible SAP recruitment agency in Google search results, particularly for the category-defining term “SAP recruitment”.
To get there, we focused on five workstreams that reinforced each other.
Win the defining commercial queries first
In recruitment SEO, the highest-value searches are the ones people use when they are actively choosing a recruiter. We prioritised these terms, built and refined the right landing pages to target them, and strengthened relevance so Whitehall could compete at the top of the SERPs for SAP recruitment intent.
Grow non-brand discovery
We focused on increasing visibility for non-brand intent, so Whitehall could be discovered by users who hadn’t chosen a provider yet but were actively searching for SAP recruitment support.
Use content to expand reach and compound performance
Content was used to widen topical coverage, capture long-tail demand, and support core commercial rankings through relevance and internal linking. This included upgrading existing content to regain performance and maintain relevance, alongside consistent publishing so authority could compound over time.
Technical + SERP optimisation to protect performance and improve click-through
Rankings don’t compound if technical friction slows indexing, or if weak snippets reduce click-through. Alongside content and targeting, we improved technical foundations and optimised how key pages appeared in search through stronger titles, descriptions and indexation signals.
Careers SEO: recover visibility and compete in job-board SERPs
Careers searches are often dominated by major job boards and aggregators. We treated the careers area as its own visibility project: recovering lost search equity after a site change, strengthening crawl pathways, and implementing structured data so vacancies were eligible for enhanced visibility through Google Jobs surfaces.
SEO performance was led by non-brand discovery
74% non-brand vs 26% brand, with organic search contributing 50.8% of total traffic.
Competitor analysis and opportunity mapping
Before making changes, we benchmarked what “strong” looked like in the SAP recruitment SERP. The aim wasn’t to produce a generic competitor report — it was to understand what Google was already rewarding for the searches that matter commercially, and use that insight to prioritise actions that would move the needle.
We approached competitor analysis in two layers.
Visibility Benchmarking
We tracked Whitehall’s positioning against key competitors across priority SAP recruitment terms to understand where the gaps were smallest and the opportunity for improvement was most immediate. This helped focus effort on keywords where improving relevance, page quality, or supporting signals could translate into meaningful ranking movement, rather than spreading activity across terms that were unlikely to shift in the short term.
Page and content benchmarking
We analysed competitor pages that were already performing well and compared patterns across: semantic language usage, content depth and structure, and the credibility elements that tend to appear on pages users trust (for example testimonials, proof-led sections, and clear specialist positioning). That insight fed directly into how we rebuilt Whitehall’s SAP recruitment pages and refreshed supporting content, ensuring the site met the benchmark the SERP was already setting, then improving clarity and completeness to compete more effectively.
What we implemented
Commercial pages built to win category intent
We treated the SAP recruitment landing pages as core visibility assets. The objective was to make page purpose and relevance unambiguous, then build the depth and credibility required to compete in a SERP where higher-authority domains and aggregators often dominate.
To inform the build, we benchmarked the competitor pages already performing well for SAP recruitment searches. We analysed semantic usage, content length and depth, topic coverage, and the on-page elements that consistently support trust and engagement (for example, testimonials, case studies, and proof-led sections). That benchmarking shaped both the language and the structure of the page.
In practical terms, this resulted in a tighter page focus, broader and more complete coverage of SAP recruitment decision intent, and a clearer information hierarchy so users could quickly validate fit, understand specialism, and take the next step. The changes were designed to improve both ranking competitiveness and on-page behaviour — keeping users engaged and making conversion pathways clearer once they landed.
SAP Recruitment service landing page — rebuilt with stronger topical coverage, clearer structure, and trust signals to support both ranking performance and conversion.
Content upgrades designed to reclaim and compound value
Before increasing output, we focused on protecting and improving what Whitehall already had. We identified articles and guides that had previously performed strongly and confirmed there was still active search demand for those topics. In most cases, the drop-off wasn’t because the topic had stopped mattering — it was because the content had aged and no longer reflected what searchers (and Google) now expect.
Rather than adding more content on top of underperforming assets, we prioritised upgrading the content that already carried value. We revisited each high-potential article by rechecking the search landscape around it: related queries, the coverage depth competing pages were providing, and the gaps Whitehall could address more clearly.
The updates were substantive. We rewrote and expanded sections to improve topical coverage, restructured pages to make them easier to scan and better aligned to intent, refreshed imagery, and strengthened internal linking so these pages supported commercial SAP recruitment journeys rather than sitting in isolation.
Technical SEO and SERP optimisation
Technical work ran in parallel to support stability and ensure improvements could compound. We focused on reducing technical friction that can limit crawling and indexing, and on improving how priority pages performed in the SERP.
This included ongoing on-page optimisation and snippet improvements (titles and meta descriptions) to strengthen click-through from the visibility being earned, alongside broader technical hygiene to protect performance as new and updated content went live.
Careers SEO built for job-board SERPs
The careers site was hosted on a subdomain and had been rebuilt. As part of that rebuild, a significant amount of supporting content was stripped back. Some of the removed content had previously been valuable for organic visibility and topical authority — not just for driving visits, but for reinforcing brand positioning in search.
We treated careers as a separate visibility project. The first step was recovery: restoring crawl and indexing pathways and implementing redirects where required to regain lost equity. In parallel, we reintroduced the content themes that had historically driven organic traffic and supported topical authority, then re-optimised them to reflect current search behaviour. In practice, that meant updating structure, expanding coverage where needed, and improving relevance so these pages could perform again rather than continuing to age.
Once the foundations were back in place, we focused on job visibility in a SERP environment dominated by major job boards. We implemented job structured data to make vacancies eligible for Google’s job-focused search experiences, improving the likelihood that Whitehall’s roles could surface prominently and capture attention at the point candidates are actively looking.
The Results
Organic growth and engagement
Organic search accounted for 50.8% of total website traffic, with organic users increasing by 39.6%. The quality of that traffic was strong: organic users showed a 29% higher engagement rate than other channels, indicating growth was driven by relevant search intent rather than low-quality volume.
Non-brand discovery was the main driver of organic growth.
With branded search accounting for roughly 26%, most organic acquisition came from people who weren’t looking for Whitehall specifically. Usres were searching for SAP recruitment support and discovered Whitehall through those category terms. That’s the real value of SEO in recruitment: it places you in front of candidates and hiring decision-makers before they’ve chosen a provider, creating incremental job applications, additional client exposure, and sustained brand visibility in the searches that shape market perception.
Highest ranking recruitment agency for “SAP Recruitment”, demonstrating category-defining visibility for Whitehall’s core commercial term.
Source: Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
Category-defining visibility for “SAP recruitment”
The headline outcome of the campaign was competitive visibility for the core term that defines the space. Whitehall achieved top-of-page presence for “SAP recruitment”, placing the brand directly in front of high-intent users at the point they are choosing a provider.
Share of Voice increased from 0.18% to 0.81% (+0.63pp) across tracked SAP recruitment keywords (Aug 2022–Jun 2023), strengthening WhitehallResources.com’s organic visibility relative to key competitors.
Share of Voice increased relative to key competitors
To validate that progress wasn’t isolated to a single keyword, we tracked Share of Voice across a defined set of SAP recruitment terms. Over the campaign period, Whitehall’s Share of Voice increased from 0.18% to 0.81% (+0.63 percentage points), strengthening overall visibility relative to key competitor domains.
This is the compounding signal: not just “one ranking”, but a broader footprint improving over time.
Careers visibility and job engagement improved in job-board SERPs
Careers performance was treated as its own visibility project because job-related SERPs are dominated by major job boards and aggregators. Following a rebuild of the careers subdomain and the removal of valuable supporting content, we reintroduced and re-optimised high-value content themes to rebuild topical authority and recover lost organic visibility.
Alongside recovery work, we implemented job structured data so vacancies were eligible for Google’s job-focused search experiences. Over the compared periods, “users visiting live jobs” increased by 149%, supporting stronger engagement with live roles.
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