Technical SEO & Site Performance
Summary
VeryShake stepped in to rescue and rebuild HiBob’s website, with a clear mission: to break into the US market, the holy grail of Israeli startups. HiBob is an Israeli-born HR platform that gained unicorn-status by the end of 2021, but when we started working with them in 2017, they had a buggy UK-facing site that we transformedm into a high-perfrming US-optimized acquisition funnel. Within months of launch, organic traffic surged, SEO-driven MQLs outpaced cost-per-lead paid channels, and HiBob’s site became their most profitable acquisition engine.
1. Client & Context
Industry & Offering
HiBob (“bob”) provides modern human capital management software for mid-market and enterprise customers, backing features like payroll, onboarding, and employee engagement
Growth Stage
- Founded: 2015
- Series C: $150M at $1.65B valuation in Oct 2021
- Series D: $150M at $2.45B valuation in Aug 2022
- Customers: 3,500+ with $100M ARR by late 2023
2. Objectives & Challenges
- Goal: Replace a fragile, UK-centric site with a scalable, SEO-optimized, US-facing funnel, and generate targeted leads from the US.
- Challenges:
- Fragmented tech stack and slow page loads.
- No unified SEO strategy across blog and product pages. Proper SEO traffic (non-branded keywords) was effectivly non-existant.
- No brand recognition in the US (bob started with UK clients).
- High CPC on target keywords (e.g. “HR software”, “talent management”), highly competitive SEO space - we were on a mission to penetrate the US market through growth hacking via a tight budget (compared to the competitors - we were broke).
3. Strategy & Execution
3.1 Site Architecture & Performance
- Platform Rebuild: Migrated to a headless CMS + static-site generator for sub-500 ms loads.
- Core Web Vitals: Reduced LCP from 3.8 s to 1.2 s through image optimization and code splitting.
- Gated Content strategy: Building targeted funnels for HR execs to generate accurate leads and help SEO + PPC.
3.2 Holistic SEO Roll-out
- Keyword Mapping: Defined clusters around “HR cloud solutions” and “talent management” for US mid-market.
- Content Redesign: Overhauled blog template to surface related posts, author bios, and schema markup for FAQs.
3.3 Cross-Team Coordination
- Content Training: Educated writers on intent-driven copy, internal linking, and on-page best practices.
- PR & Backlinks: Aligned PR events with new content launches to capture high-authority links during funding announcements.
4. Results & Metrics
Performance within 1 year of site launch & funding:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Organic Sessions / Month | 35,000+ (up 300%) |
| MQLs from SEO / Month | 1,200+ |
| Meeting Conversion Rate | 5% |
| Qualified Leads / Month (SEO) | 60+ |
| Paid-Channel CPL vs. SEO CPL | 3x higher cost |
| Share of Pipeline from SEO | 33% (up from around 8%) |
“Our new site not only loads in under a second, it’s now our top-performing channel-driving more leads than LinkedIn and Google Ads combined.”
— Sharon Argov, VP Marketing, HiBob
5. Other Site-Building Engagements
- Obijoy (guided journals for children): Full redesign on WordPress, restructured IA and checkout flow to boost subscriptions by 80 %.
- Commbox (real-time customer chat): Migrated legacy CMS into Next.js, implemented SSR, and integrated with HubSpot, cutting page-load errors by 90 %.
- Numurus (data analytics platform): Built custom Rails front-end + React admin dash, optimized asset pipeline, and deployed via Kubernetes cluster for 99.9 % uptime.
6. Key Takeaways
- Technical Foundation Drives Growth: Given time, a fast, SEO-ready codebase can outperform even high-spend paid campaigns.
- Data-Led Content & Link Strategy: Training content teams and syncing with PR events multiplies SEO impact.
- Cross-Functional Ownership: Embedding developers, marketers, and writers in one sprint cycle shaves weeks off iteration time.
7. Ready to Grow a Unicorn?
Ready to build a digital engine that powers your growth?