About
Direct Online Marketing (DOM) is a full-service digital marketing agency founded in 2006 and headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA. As a top 3% Premier Google Partner, DOM has spent nearly two decades helping businesses across industries grow through SEO, paid media, conversion rate optimization, and digital strategy, serving clients across every populated continent and into more than 150 countries.
What sets DOM apart is a performance-first, no long-term-contracts model built on transparency and measurable results. For DOM, technical SEO is a core part of that work, which is what led them to Prerender.io and ultimately to a strategic partnership that gives their clients a reliable path through even the most complex rendering challenges.
The client at the center of this case study is one of the world’s largest podcast studios, with an award-winning catalogue spanning thousands of episodes across multiple genres and platforms. At that scale, organic search visibility is a significant revenue driver, making the stakes of any SEO disruption exceptionally high.
The Challenge
When this leading podcast studio approached 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
This was because 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.
This is one of the world’s largest podcast studios, and due to a redesign, Google was unable to index any content on the page. It caused a rapid decline in keyword rankings and organic traffic, despite the archive of thousands of episodes.
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:
- Seamless JavaScript rendering. Prerender.io transformed the JavaScript-heavy podcast pages into static HTML that search engines could easily crawl and index.
- 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.
- Quick implementation. The solution was immediately deployed, allowing the recovery process to begin almost instantly without disrupting the user experience.
- 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.
- 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.
- Prerendering works. If you plan to undergo a website migration or redesign, consider server-side rendering or pre-rendering to mitigate the potential repercussions.
- 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
Looking Forward
The podcast studio’s recovery is now complete, but the work doesn’t stop there. With Prerender.io in place, the studio has a stable rendering foundation that ensures its growing catalogue of content remains fully visible to search engines as the site continues to evolve.
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 also 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 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.
Looking to become a Prerender.io partner yourself? Join DOM, Netlify, and dozens of other brands. Explore our Partner program to get started.
