Who is the client?
An online education company selling in many countries and languages. The client is anonymous and the revenue numbers are covered by an NDA, so there is no name, no logo and no revenue figure here.
The headline result covers 11 markets: Poland, Turkey, Arabic-speaking regions, Italy, Spain, Israel, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan and the Czech Republic. A follow-up write-up from the same project describes it as running across 14 countries, languages and domains. The 205% is the 11-market figure.
Why not push every market at once?
Because the budget was not infinite and the markets were not equal. The project picked its high-potential markets first and put them at the front of the queue: Poland, Turkey, the Arabic-speaking regions and Italy. The other seven markets ran alongside them. Budget was managed to get the most marketing revenue out of it, not to spread effort evenly across a map.
What was done?
- Core sections and selling pages restructured. The pages that sell came first, before any new content.
- Top-of-funnel content grown through a topical-authority framework. In plain terms: cover a subject thoroughly and in a logical structure, rather than publishing one-off pages to chase single keywords. This is where the +9,745% sits.
- One framework, many languages. The same topical framework was reused across every language rather than rebuilt per country.
- UX and UI improved, and a new blog module launched to carry the content.
- Free educational content plus seasonal content, so traffic did not collapse in the off-season.
- One consistent technical setup across the domains. Once it was in place, technical SEO dropped to roughly 10% of the SEO lead's time.
Did revenue follow the traffic?
Yes, and every month. Revenue is under NDA, so here is only the year-over-year change the client's report shows for each month.
January to September, as labelled "change" in the client's report:
Every month sits above 100%, the strongest in July. That is the "revenue doubled" in the headline. Absolute revenue stays under NDA.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 117.90% | 109.37% | 107.63% | 106.62% | 112.70% | 122.13% | 142.78% | 126.18% | 106.40% |
How did each market move?
Organic views per market domain, the latest three months of 2023 against the same months of 2022. All 11 grew. Not evenly.
Year over year, latest three months:
Growth rates, not volumes: the table below has the volumes. The two tallest bars (Arabic regions and Turkey) are priority markets; so is Italy, which grew less than most of the rest.
| Turkey | Poland | Arabic regions | Italy | Spain | Israel | Germany | France | South Korea | Japan | Czech Republic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| +561.57% | +109.06% | +674.39% | +81.41% | +120.83% | +41.30% | +100.71% | +114.15% | +132.09% | +110.34% | +88.31% |
| Market | Previous period | Current period | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turkey | 45,800 | 303,000 | +561.57% |
| Poland | 97,100 | 203,000 | +109.06% |
| Arabic regions | 16,400 | 127,000 | +674.39% |
| Italy | 42,500 | 77,100 | +81.41% |
| Spain | 19,200 | 42,400 | +120.83% |
| Israel | 24,700 | 34,900 | +41.30% |
| Germany | 14,000 | 28,100 | +100.71% |
| France | 10,600 | 22,700 | +114.15% |
| South Korea | 6,420 | 14,900 | +132.09% |
| Japan | 5,800 | 12,200 | +110.34% |
| Czech Republic | 2,480 | 4,670 | +88.31% |
| All 11 markets | 285,000 | 869,970 | +205.25% |
Turkey went from less than half of Poland's volume to the largest market on the list. The four priority markets account for most of the growth in absolute terms.
What did Search Console show in the priority markets?
Same window: the latest three months of 2023 against the same three months of 2022.
| Market | Clicks 2022 → 2023 | Impressions 2022 → 2023 | CTR 2022 → 2023 | Average position 2022 → 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turkey | 46.1K → 272K | 562K → 7.48M | 8.2% → 3.6% | 13.6 → 9.5 |
| Poland | 95.6K → 193K | 1.44M → 6.94M | 6.6% → 2.8% | 13.6 → 10.6 |
| Italy | 41.8K → 70.9K | 423K → 1.98M | 9.9% → 3.6% | 20.9 → 15 |
| Arabic regions | 16.2K → 120K | 621K → 3.59M | 2.6% → 3.3% | 13.5 → 9.4 |
The honest reading: click-through rate fell in three of the four markets (Turkey, Poland, Italy) while impressions grew several-fold. That is not a failure in itself. The site started appearing for far more searches, and the likely reason for the lower rate is that many of them were broader top-of-funnel queries, which get clicked less often. Clicks still grew in every market, and average position improved in all four. But if someone shows you a CTR chart from this project on its own, it looks like things got worse. Read it next to clicks.
Over the 90 days, daily clicks and impressions trended upwards in all four markets, and most steeply in the last weeks of the window.
What worked?
- A consistent technical setup. Solving the technical side once, and the same way everywhere, is what freed up the time for everything else.
- One topical framework across languages. The project's view was that search algorithms are language-agnostic: what makes a site a credible source on a subject in Polish does the same in Turkish. So the framework travelled, and the research did not have to be done from scratch per market.
- Free and seasonal content. Educational content that people actually want, plus seasonal pieces to hold traffic outside the main buying periods.
- An honest partnership with the client. Unglamorous, and on the list for a reason.
What did not work?
This is the useful part.
- Off-site activity. Called a waste of budget on this project. The advice that came with it: ignore Domain Rating-type metrics. They measure the site's link profile, not whether it sells anything.
- Keywords without the matching intent. Search volume is not the key metric. Pages that matched what the searcher actually wanted converted; pages chosen for volume alone did not earn their keep. Quality and relevance drive conversion.
- Handing the research to 14 country specialists. Unique research for every country turned out not to be needed: the shared framework above was built to travel.
- Direct translation. Translating content word for word produced errors and lower-quality pages. It looks like a shortcut. It was not one.
What does this mean for your brand?
If you are taking a brand into more countries, you do not need a separate SEO project per market. You need one system: one technical setup, one content framework, and a clear order of which markets come first. Then you adapt it to each language properly, rather than translating it.
Judge it on revenue and clicks, not on one ratio. Here, CTR fell in three priority markets over the same months that clicks rose in all four.
And be suspicious of anyone selling you link-building or authority scores as the main lever. On this project, the money that worked went into pages people were looking for, written for the search intent behind the query.
More on how we approach this on the SEO and AI visibility page.
Organic views per market domain and Search Console figures compare the latest three months of 2023 with the same months of 2022, as reported by the project. Revenue is shown only as the monthly year-over-year change from the client's report; absolute figures are under NDA. The client is anonymous.
