Introduction
In this digital age, it’s more than beneficial – it’s a requirement for a business to survive let alone grow.
This is especially the case when you realize that 53% of trackable website traffic comes from organic search (BrightEdge), so we’re not talking just a marketing tactic, but underlying business strategy.
For job search platforms such as JobStreet Express, the disparity is even more marked. Since Google has a stranglehold on 91.75% of the world’s search market (StatCounter), both job seekers and employers use search engines as their initial stage of hiring.
But the competition is fierce – 90.63% of all pages on Google get no organic search traffic (Ahrefs), and it’s getting more and more competitive to be seen in search results.
This was the problem the team working on JobStreet Express brought to Arfadia.
As a new entrant in Indonesia’s crowded recruitment industry, they wanted to have more than just a presence— they wanted to be seen as the leader of fast job-matching, and the most reliable one at that.
This was especially important as 90% of customers reported that they utilized the internet when looking for local businesses (BrightLocal), and 76% of them said that they trust online reviews almost to the same extent as they trust word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family.
This case details our experience with JobStreet Express and demonstrates how an all-encompassing SEO plan took this platform to another level.
Today, we'll share the exact challenges we faced, data-driven strategies we used and the outstanding results that blew everyone away – a jaw-dropping 1,764% increase in organic traffic within the first 6 months.
We're sharing this case study not only to show what we are capable of as an SEO agency, but also to highlight the transformational impact of doing solid SEO work.
This includes building on technical excellence, developing quality content strategy, and establishing authority while staying focused on search algorithms and user intent.
Client Background
JobStreet Express is the newcomer on the competitive recruitment market in Indonesia. So even though they helped people get hired to great jobs, they never looked very good online.
While their website was working, it wasn't getting the search engine traffic they were going to need to battle head-to-head with estabilshed industry giants.
As a niche job site built specifically for fast job-matching, both for job seekers looking to secure a job fast, as well as employers looking for quick hiring, JobStreet Express wanted to target that audience.
Their online positioning needed to be more than mere visibility; they needed to look like an authority—someone in the field that you could trust with the job search process.
The Challenge: Rankings Aren’t Everything
Multiple critical challenges affected JobStreet Express's digital presence initially when they first teamed up together in January 2024 with Arfadia:
Poor Organic Visibility and Traffic
The site was in turn only receiving approximately 5,000 monthly organic visitors, a fraction of what competitors were generating. The low traffic numbers also made it hard for them to match job seekers with jobs and make money from that process.
Poor Technical SEO Foundation
Upon the first technical audits, we detected several problems affecting the crawlability, indexationm and user experience:
- Page speed problems (especially mobile)
- Poor Site Structure and Internal Linking
- Any schema markup missing or not complete for job posting.
- Poor mobile responsiveness
- Crawl errors restricting full indexation
Weak Authority Metrics
The website’s trust indicators were VERY questionable in all big ways:
- Domain Authority (DA): 15/100
- Page Authority (PA): 27/100
- Domain Rating (DR): Low (not informed in the first measurement)
- URL Rating (UR): Not as good as the industry standards
- Trust Flow (TF): Zero
The values of these measures suggested that the search engines did not trust the site's authority or relevance and therefore interfered with its ranking potential.
Content Deficiencies
The current content strategy had the following deficiencies:
- Thinner content on vital landing pages
- Limited keyword targeting
- High duplicate content ratio
- Small on-site stores (low time-on-site)
- No strategic content plan based on the seasonal job market opportunities
Minimal Backlink Profile
A lack of quality backlinks was an issue as there were very few, most of them were from low authority sources. Without support from other authoritative sites, the site was scorched trying to build domain authority.
Poor Local Presence
Although Indonesia has a competitive job market, JobStreet Express was missing:
- Optimised Google My Business pages
- Uniform NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data on the web
- Local citations in niche Indonesian directories for businesses
- Geo-targeted content on various job markets in Indonesia
Non-Existent E-E-A-T Signals
Google E-E-A-T guidelines weren't being met:
- No author tags for content
- Lack of information on an about page about company’s expertise
- Limited trust signals (testimonials, certifications, etc.)
- No meaningful content showcasing knowledge of the industry
For Arfadia, it was not about improving rankings. We wanted to do a complete 180° SEO-wise and turn it around a low value, low trust profile into a powerful search authority and brand for JobStreet Express to be a reliably company within six months.
"32%: The average organic click-through rate (CTR) the first Google desktop search result gets, 26.9%: The average organic CTR, the first Google mobile search result gets." (Advanced Web Ranking) - Source Search Engine Journal
The Solution: A Holistic SEO Strategy
Arfadia handled JobStreet Express's SEO challenges with a comprehensive SEO plan, covering both technical fundamentals and strategic growth initiatives. The solution we proposed was composed of several intertwined parts:
1. Rebuilding the Foundation on Technical SEO
We started by making technical fix to make sure the website can support everything else we do after optimization:
- Speed Optimization: Completed server level speed optimizations, image compression, browser caching and code minification to increase page load speed – even at the mobile level.
- Site Architecture Optimization: Reorganized the site information architecture to establish natural content structures and optimal internal link relationships.
- Responsiveness: Confirmed everything worked on mobile and nothing disrupted the experience of our site visitors, who are often job seekers browsing from mobile devices.
- Crawlability Enhancements: Cleared crawl errors and enhanced robots.txt file & XML sitemaps to offer full indexation.
- Implementation of Schema: Implemented schema markup for JobPosting on all the job listing to improve SERP visibility with rich results.
- Optimization of Core Web Vitals: User-centric performance measurements like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) to easily achieve a higher Google PageSpeed score.
"Websites that achieve 'good' Core Web Vitals scores see up to 70% lower bounce rates and 25% higher conversion rates." - Google Web.dev
2. Strategic Content Development
Content strategy was entirely reimagined to focus on user intent and E-A-T principles:
- Content Audit and Optimization: Cleaned-up thin and duplicate content, and found content gaps for further development.
- Full-Content Calendar: Created an intentional content schedule based on seasonal employability trends and high-value keywords.
- User-Intent Focused Articles – Developed 104 new articles that meet the intent of users. These articles speak to the needs of job seekers and employers with real questions and problems.
- E-E-A-T Improvement: Authorship was clarified, team credentials were added, industry expertise signals were woven throughout the content.
- Location Based Content: Created location specific content for key job markets in Indonesia.
- Formatted SEO Writing: Well structured content with heading,sub-headings, bullet points, videos, pictures, which enhance readability and time on page.
"SEO is no longer just about keywords. It's about intent. If you don't understand the intent of your searchers, you're not doing SEO." Rand Fishkin, Founder of SparkToro (previously Moz)
Aldi Arfadia
3. Authority Building Through Strategic Link Acquisition
It's all about quality, not quantity when it comes to our link building efforts and we only went after high quality, relevant sources:
- Top-tier Media Placements: 34 high authority (DA>50) placements from largest publication in Indonesia like detik.com, kompas.com, tribunnews.com, Pikiran Rakyat, Berita Satu and voi.id.
- Guest Posting Campaign Developed 840 guest posts distributed to thematically related websites in Suburb
- 20 Web 2.0 blogs: Created 20 Web 2.0 blogs as secondary content hubs and for back links.
- Social Bookmarking: 100 social bookmarks creation for increasing content visibility and creating more citation signals.
- Broken Link Reclamation: Found and reclaimed broken backlinks from other websites that linked to the site.
- Competitor Backlink Analysis: Links that have been strategically secured from site that links to competitors but not yet to JobStreet Express.
"Backlinks remain one of the top three ranking factors in Google's algorithm, with quality outweighing quantity by a significant margin." - Backlinko's SEO Study
4. Business Presence Optimization – Local SEO Services
A trusted local company should own JobStreet Express:
- Google My Business Optimization: Properly optimized their business profile with their correct information, relevant categories, and engaging posts.
- NAP Consistency: Secured consistency in the name, address, and phone information of all digital assets.
- Building local citation: Got 200 local citations from Indonesian high-quality business listing and web sites.
- Localized Content: Created targeted content on job markets in local Indonesian cities and areas.
5. Social Signal Amplification
We boosted SEO performance with the help of social platforms:
- Social Strategy and Distribution: - Generated 23,700 shares on social platforms including Facebook, X and Pinterest.
- Engagement Boosting: Used tactics to help boost engagement with content that was shared to improve social signal strength.
- Profile Optimization: Improved social media profiles which reinforce public perception of the business and generate additional opportunities for citations.
6. Video SEO, YouTube Optimization
Identifying a trend towards the increasing significance of video based content:
- YouTube Channel Setup Optimization: Better channel layout, descriptions and playlists.
- Video Content Strategy: Created video content on high ROI topics on job search and recruitment.
- Video Embedding Campaign: Skilfully embedded 200 relevant YouTube videos on websites to improve video SEO.
- Keyword-Optimized Metadata: Improved video titles, descriptions and tags to support the target search queries.
7. Google Drive Stacks Merge Approach
Using Google’s Authority (authority of the domain):
- Strategic Content Creation: Created informational branded content that lives on one of Google’s trusted domains.
- Integrated Link Structure: Established an interlinked document ecosystem which points to significant JobStreet Express data.
- Optimal Public Access: Guaranteed the correct indexing, and visibility, of all resources in Google Drive.
8. Continuous Performance Monitoring and Fine Tuning
To ensure strategic agility:
- Analytics & measurement setup: Set up tracking on different levels across all channels.
- Consistent Reporting: Gave monthly breakdown reports on overall progress of KPIs.
- Strategy Optimisation: Adjusted the strategy through data to improve results.
- Competitor Tracking:Managed tracking of competitors' activities to exploit new opportunities and watch for potential threats.
This all-encompassing solution guaranteed each of JobStreet Express's digital assets was maximized in terms of sound technicalities, content worth, trust signals and user-experience.
The Results: Transformative Growth
When we put it into place, our tactical execution outperformed across all KPI within a mere 6 months:
Dramatic Traffic Growth
- Organic Traffic: 5,000 to 93,200 monthly visitors — 1,764% growth
- Search Visibility: Increase in visibility for high-intent job search terms
- Session Length: 30% longer as users interacted with more relevant content
- Pages Per Session: 42% increase through improved navigation and internal linking lead users to more relevant content.
The Improvements in the Authority Metrics are Impressive
- Domain Authority (DA): Went from 15 to 42—that’s over 180% gain
- Domain Rating (DR): Increased to 58 (again, above average for this industry)
- URL Rating (UR): It reached 38 and almost twice of our target requirements
- Trust Flow (TF): Went from essentially 0 to 29 (search credibility made better)
- Page Authority (PA): Rose to 42—For planting stronger page-level authority.
"Our remarkable 1,764% growth in 6 months at JobStreet Express showcases the immense potential for rapid organic traffic gains in the recruitment sector. This aligns with industry insights on website authority: 'Domain Rating (DR) isn’t a Google ranking factor, but it's a strong predictor of a website's ability to rank and get organic traffic. Websites with higher DRs tend to rank higher and get more traffic, primarily because they have more high-quality backlinks pointing to them.'" — Ahrefs Blog, 'What is Domain Rating (DR) & How to Improve It?'
Keyword Ranking Breakthrough
Site ranked well on the first page of Google for competitive high volume keywords:
- "info loker"
- "info lowongan kerja"
- "loker driver"
- "loker part time"
- "loker barista"
These were target keyterms with high intent-relevant searches to JobStreet Express' core services.
Backlink Profile Metamorphosis
- High-Authority Placements: 34 high-quality media placements on DA>50 sites
- Guest Posts: 840 guest posts placed (successfully)
- Total Referring Domains: Went from some (nothing) referrer sites to a healthy profile of relative domains
- Quality Scores for Links: Dramatically higher site relevancy and authority scores for the backlink profile
Enhanced Social Presence
- Social Signals: Created 23,700 social signals from all of our different channels
- Social Bookmarks: Made 100 social bookmarks promoting the visibility of your content
- Engagement Results: Increased social rates of engagement by 200% +
Improving Technical Performance
- Page Speed: Instantly making your pages load much faster for mobile and desktop visitors
- Core Web Vitals: Every page scored at “Good” level for all lab-rat LCP, FID, and CLS metrics
- Crawlability: Fixed crawl errors and increased indexation rates
- Mobile Usability: Fixed: All mobile usability problems have been fixed in the Google Search Console
Content Performance
- Content Published: 104 high quality articles posted.
- Featured Snippets: Won featured snippets across multiple high-recruiting queries
- Content Engagement: Bounce rates lowered and time-on-page increased for important landing pages
Local Presence Strengthening
- Local Citations: Managed to build 200++ consistent local citations
- Google My Business: Profile enriched by accurate info, and Google Posts / Updates that have been posted regularly
Video SEO Success
- Video Embeds: Opt-in run of the show on target in 200++ sites
- Video Rankings: Increased exposure on YouTube search for targeted key terms
The Implementation Process: Strategic Phasing
We successfully carried out this operation, sticking with a well-thought-out schedule:
Phase 1: Exploration and Technical Development (Month 1)
- Performed thorough technical and competitive audits
- Baseline in place metrics and KPIs targets.
- Implemented critical technical optimizations
- Generated content strategy and editorial calendar
Phase 2: Content Creation and On-Page SEO (Months 1-3)
- Drove content audit and gap analysis
- Launched a strategic content campaign
- Delivered on-page optimizations on important landing pages
- Structured data & schema markup - it’s essential for Google to understand your business
Phase 3: Authority Building (Months 2-5)
- Initiated premium media outreach
- Authored and posted guest posts
- High DA/Web 2.0 -Properties
- Implemented social bookmarking strategy
Phase 4: Video + Local Optimization (Months 3-6)
- Established and optimized Google My Business profile
- Distributed local citations
- Implemented video SEO strategy
- Executed video embedding campaign
Phase 5: Monitoring and Revision (Continuing)
- Developed performance analysis on a regular basis
- Optimized based on insights provided by data
- Returned monthly reports on schedule
- Discovered new opportunities for growth
"SEO success isn't just about keywords and backlinks; it's about having a clear, long-term strategy that aligns with your business goals and user intent." - HubSpot Blog, The Ultimate Guide to SEO in 2024 (or similar comprehensive SEO guides).
Key Success Factors
The following factors were crucial for obtaining these excellent results:
1. E-E-A-T-Centric Approach
Every part of our approach was working within Google's E-E-A-T guidelines:
- Expertise: Industry contributors have clearly obtained and displayed their knowledge in the talent acquisition space with featured content pieces
- Experience: Integrated real-life experience and practical advice for jobseekers and businesses.
- Authoritativeness: Earned with solid backlinks from worthy Indonesian sources
- Trustworthiness: Built by reliable information, clear business operations and credibility signals
2. Balanced Optimizing Strategy
Instead of concentrating all resources on one area of SEO, we maintained a balanced approach across multiple dimensions including:
- Technical foundations
- Content quality and relevance
- Authority building
- User experience enhancement
- Local presence optimization
3. Indonesia-Specific Expertise
And they all knew that to succeed you had to have an intimate knowledge of:
- Indonesian job market dynamics
- Local search habits and preferences
- Indonesia's unique digital media landscape
- Regional competitive factors
4. Transparent Communication
Frequent communication and transparent reporting ensured that:
- Clear visibility into progress
- Strategically aligned with the business goals
- Capacity to adjust to priorities as they change
- Solid agency-client relationship
5. Data-Driven Decision Making
The only criteria for making any tactical modification were:
- Performance analytics
- User behavior data
- Competitive intelligence
- Industry trend analysis
FAQs
What does an SEO agency do?
An SEO Agency provides tailored services to enhance a website’s ranking in search engine listings. In the typical sense – technical on-page optimization, content strategy, keyword research, link building, local SEO and performance analysis. The top SEO agencies provide integrated strategies that match the search engines and the users concurrently and not just limited to individual techniques like keyword stuffing or mass link building.
How long does SEO take to work?
There are some changes you can see in a few weeks (especially with some technical tweaks), but the real exercise of search engine optimization takes between 3-6 month to bear fruits. That kind of timeline is evident in the JobStreet Express case, where there were drastic improvements in all the main metrics in the span of half a year. But SEO is an investment, and the results compound over time as your authority and relevancy (two words internet marketers can’t tire saying enough) increase.
How much do SEO agency services cost?
SEO service costs can range from very cheap to a few thousand per month, depending on your goals, competition, and overall strategy. The vast majority of professional SEO companies have customized packages instead of one size fits all." The average investment is between $1,000 and $5,000 / month for small to medium businesses, but enterprise SEO campaigns could be much larger. The best way is to set out clear KPI than cost is measure ROI.
How do I select an SEO agency for my business?
When hiring an SEO agency, consider their past performance and how they work with similar businesses to yours, examine their case studies to see results for yourself, make sure to ask about their stance on ethical “white hat” tactics, check their means of measuring and reporting on results, keep an eye on whether or not they specialise in all areas of SEO (technical, on-site and off-site). Also, the right agency should be transparent, mold their process to your particular business’s needs, and describe what they’re doing in the context of business results (rather than strictly technical ones).
Local SEO vs. regular SEO – What’s the difference?
Local SEO is the act of optimizing a business's online presence to bring in customers from relevant local searches. It focuses on Google Business Profile management, local citation development, location-specific content creation and review generation from nearby customers. Regular SEO aims for more general visibility beyond that. On the other hand, for companies targeting a local demographic area (such as many recruitment agencies with offices in multiple cities), a combination of regular and local SEO usually works best.
How does content marketing relate to SEO?
Content marketing is the right and left hand of SEO. Great content is the backbone of good SEO, as it allows you to target the right keywords, earn quality backlinks, show off your industry expertise and engage with your audience – all things that can positively impact your search rankings. And with 104 articles strategically published as in the example below (JobStreet Express), a rock-solid content marketing strategy has been the foundation behind their SEO achievement. The best way is to combine content planning with keyword research and intent mapping initially.
What is the significance of backlinks to SEO in 2025?
Though things have changed regarding Google's algorithms, backlinks are still a major ranking factor in 2025. There is now, however, a firmly established focus on quality and relevance over quantity. As mentioned on the JobStreet Express case study, planning how to acquire high-authority backlinks from relevant publications (for example detik.com and kompas.com) played a big part in their recovery in authority metrics. Current link building revolves around natural link acquisition (click worthy content & outreach) and not artificial link generation.
How do I determine what KPIs to monitor to gauge SEO success?
More than just ranking, thorough SEO measurement must also involve organic traffic growth and conversion rates from organic search visitors, the visibility of keywords for different search intents, engagement metrics (bounce rate, time on site, pages per session), authority metrics (domain authority, domain rating, etc) and even business outcomes; such as leads or sales. The JobStreet Express case demonstrates the importance of tracking multiple KPIs to evaluate overall SEO effectiveness, with clear targets established at the outset of the campaign.
Conclusion: The Transformative Power of Strategic SEO
The JobStreet Express case study showed just how an effective, strategic SEO campaign can impact a website's digital performance over a reasonably short period.
By growing organic traffic over 1,700% and increasing domain authority metrics through the roof, Arfadia helped JobStreet Express to become the authority in the recruitment industry in Indonesia and achieve sustained growth across a very competitive market.
Some of the most important insights from this case study are:
- Technical foundations matter: more so than we realize - handicap your SEO before you even get started and you're not making any of it work as hard as it could have.
- Quality is key to results: The 104 crafty cornerstone pages gave the muscle to show you’re relevant and a pro.
- Authority building is a game of precision: The targeted strategy for engaging new, high-quality backlinks from the right sites drove remarkable authority growth.
- Local and Social signals augment core SEO: The local optimization + social signals combination helped to not only back-up but also propel the core SEO activities.
- E-E-A-T fundamentals are key: All the hard work was done in line with Google’s best-practice quality guidelines, delivering value that can stand the test of time, not something that will disappear in a few months.
- Measurement means refinement: Ongoing measurement and reporting facilitated strategic refinement at every step of the program.
For companies that are experiencing similar struggles with online visibility, this case serves as an illustration that with a proper strategy, execution and measurement, SEO still serves as one of the most impactful and cost-efficient digital marketing investments.
When done holistically like this, SEO doesn’t just raise rankings — it translates directly into business growth.
Are you ready to unleash your website’s potential? Talk to Arfadia now and let us show you how our best SEO services can achieve the same results for your business too.