FIRECASK

Case study

Ready Steady Cut

Media & Publishing

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Overview

How FireCask rebuilt Ready Steady Cut and ran its SEO for three years: organic traffic up 30 times, top-three keywords up from 1,044 to 13,200.

Industry
Media & Publishing
Services
SEOContent MarketingDevelopmentDesign

Ready Steady Cut is an independent entertainment site covering film, TV and streaming. We worked with the team for more than three years, from a redesign and a move to new hosting through to monthly SEO, as it grew from a hobby project into a business.

The brief

Ready Steady Cut came to us through an introduction from Taboola, looking to upgrade its website. That became one design and development project: a custom reskin, a brand overhaul and a move to a dedicated server.

What we did

  • Design and build: We gave the site a new look and brand, built it on WordPress and moved it onto a dedicated server.
  • Monthly SEO: We reported every month on organic traffic, site health and how the site held up through each Google algorithm update.
  • Technical support: We handled hosting upgrades, reconfigured Jetpack when image hosting caused problems, and added third-party modules such as OpenWeb for comments and ad units.
  • Strategy: We advised on SEO best practice and schema, and on recovery when Google’s Helpful Content Update made rankings volatile.

Results

Every figure below runs from the month the work began to the site’s high point in year 3, before Ready Steady Cut moved on.

  • Organic traffic rose to 30 times its month 1 level (Ahrefs estimate).
  • Keywords ranking in the top three grew from 1,044 to 13,200.
  • Referring domains grew from 569 to 2,678.
  • Domain Rating rose from 40 to 52.
READY STEADY CUT · OVER 35 MONTHSOrganic visits grew 30× in 35 months010×20×30×40×Year 1Year 2Year 330×1×Source: Ahrefs organic traffic estimate, all countries, month 1 = 1× · month 1 to month 35
READY STEADY CUT30×estimated organic visits a monthCompared with month 1 · over 35 monthsSource: Ahrefs organic traffic estimate, all countries, month 1 = 1× · month 1 to month 35

Ready Steady Cut. Source: Ahrefs organic traffic estimate, all countries, as a multiple of month 1, over 35 months of the engagement.

READY STEADY CUTTop-three keywords rose every year, from 1,044to 13,2001,044Start2,885Year 19,253Year 213,200Year 3Source: Ahrefs, keywords in positions 1 to 3, all countries · start and end of each engagement year · column heights to scale
READY STEADY CUT13×keywords ranking in the top three1,044 → 13,200 · over 33 monthsSource: Ahrefs, keywords in positions 1 to 3, all countries · month 1 to month 33

Ready Steady Cut. Source: Ahrefs, keywords ranking 1st to 3rd, all countries, over 33 months of the engagement.

READY STEADY CUT4.7×referring domains569 → 2,678Over 34 monthsSource: Ahrefs, referring domains · month 1 to month 34
READY STEADY CUT4.7×referring domains569 → 2,678 · over 34 monthsSource: Ahrefs, referring domains · month 1 to month 34

Ready Steady Cut. Source: Ahrefs, referring domains, over 34 months of the engagement.

READY STEADY CUT · OVER 35 MONTHSDomain Rating rose from 40 to 5230405060Year 1Year 2Year 35240Source: Ahrefs Domain Rating · month 1 to month 35
READY STEADY CUT+12DRAhrefs Domain Rating40 → 52 · over 35 months30405060Source: Ahrefs Domain Rating · month 1 to month 35

Ready Steady Cut. Source: Ahrefs Domain Rating, over 35 months of the engagement.

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