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Direct Online Marketing (DOM) – Prerender Case Study

Award-Winning Podcast Studio Gets 621% Ranking Growth with Prerender.io and DOM

When an award-winning podcast studio’s website redesign turned into an SEO nightmare, they watched 73% of their page one rankings vanish overnight. Despite thousands of valuable episodes, their JavaScript-enhanced site had become invisible to search engines. Discover how DOM and Prerender.io partnered to not only recover what was lost but achieve a stunning 621% ranking growth—all without changing the site’s architecture.

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Prerender.io and Direct Online Marketing case study

The Challenge

When one of the world’s leading podcast studios approached Direct Online Marketing (DOM) for help, they needed to act quickly—the studio’s recent website redesign had devastated their traffic and rankings. 

This led to:

  • 73% loss of the client’s page 1 Google rankings
  • Estimated 67% drop in overall search traffic
  • Traffic levels falling to a four-year low in just one month

“Google was unable to index any content on the page. This caused a rapid decline in keyword rankings and traffic from organic search despite this studio’s archive of thousands of episodes.”

Justin Seibert

President, Direct Online Marketing

The Technical Problem

Why did this happen? 

The podcast studio’s site was built on WordPress with extensive JavaScript functionality. While this created a seamless user experience, for search engine crawlers, the JavaScript-heavy implementation became a huge challenge.

Following the redesign, DOM conducted a deep review of their Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and site error reports in Semrush to ensure the site was being crawled correctly. Their analysis revealed the core issue: search engines couldn’t properly render the JavaScript-dependent content anymore. Despite having thousands of valuable podcast episodes for users, Google was essentially seeing empty pages.

The Solution

After identifying the JavaScript rendering as the primary issue, DOM implemented Prerender.io as the solution of choice.

Together, with DOM’s SEO expertise, the two saw quick improvements:

  1. Seamless JavaScript rendering. Prerender.io transformed the JavaScript-heavy podcast pages into static HTML that search engines could easily crawl and index.

  2. No development overhaul. Instead of forcing the client’s developers to completely recode their site, Prerender.io integrated with their existing WordPress and JavaScript framework.

  3. Quick implementation. The solution was immediately deployed, allowing the recovery process to begin almost instantly without disrupting the user experience.

  4. Scalability. With thousands of podcast episodes to render, Prerender.io handled the volume efficiently, ensuring all content became visible to search engines.

The Results

Within five months of DOM implementing Prerender.io with their client, the podcast studio saw some serious growth: 

✅ 621% increase in page 1 Google rankings

✅ 125% increase in search traffic sessions

✅ 116% increase in click-throughs to podcast platforms (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn)

1.6 million additional impressions in Google search results

While these efforts aren’t from Prerender’s solution alone, this story reminds us of a few important lessons for brands considering a redesign. 

  1. JavaScript rendering is critical. Even premium content producers and award-winning studios can suffer massive visibility losses if search engines can’t render their JavaScript content.

     

  2. Prerendering works. If you plan to undergo a website migration or redesign, consider server-side rendering or pre-rendering to mitigate the potential repercussions.

     

  3. Recovery is possible! Even if you’re already undergoing a significant project like a redesign, you can stress less about potential ranking loss. With the right technical solution, severe ranking losses can be recovered.

Image provided by Direct Online Marketing

Long-Term Impact

Together, Prerender.io and Direct Online Marketing worked behind the scenes to provide a swift recovery for the studio, highlighting how the right technical SEO solution can transform a site’s performance during turbulent times.

By addressing the fundamental rendering issue, Prerender helped DOM not only recover their client’s lost rankings but exceed their previous performance benchmarks, proving that technical SEO solutions like Prerender.io are an invaluable tool—in times of need or not.

As for the future? Direct Online Marketing has even established a strategic partnership with Prerender.io. They have full confidence that Prerender.io can keep up with their clients’ needs—no matter the scope of the technical challenge.

Ready For Growth?

Try Prerender.io for free for the first 1,000 URLs and experience all the benefits our partners are already enjoying. Installing Prerender is simple, and its value is almost instant!