Case Study · Luxury Yachts · International SEO
IYC · International Yacht Co.

International SEO that delivered 400% organic growth.

+400%
organic traffic in under 12 months

Top-3 Google rankings for the most competitive yacht keywords worldwide, 400% organic growth, and the #2 position for "yachts for sale" (90,500 monthly searches).

The challenge.

After a 2015 website redesign, IYC.com — one of the world's largest international yacht brokers serving the luxury travel & hospitality market with 90+ professionals across 12 strategic offices — saw its SEO ranking deteriorate during the migration. The challenge was clear: regain rankings in a hyper-competitive niche (Luxury Yachts), recover organic traffic, and rebuild authority across an international audience.

Our approach

How we delivered.

01

Market Research & Keyword Analysis

Defined the niche of Luxury Yachts as a sub-segment of the larger Yachts market. Used full keyword research to map how potential clients query search engines across regions.

02

Migration Plan

Multiple legacy URL structures had accumulated over years. After thorough internal + external link analysis, we redirected old versions to the appropriate new URLs — preserving authority that would otherwise have been lost.

03

Backlink Profile Audit & Disavow

Implemented full backlink profile analysis. Identified bad links, removed where possible, disavowed where required — cleaning the site's authority signals.

04

Plagiarised Content Audit & Replacement

Double-checked the entire site for plagiarised content. Re-wrote every flagged section to deliver completely clean, original content site-wide.

05

Communicated SEO Guidelines

Effective enterprise SEO requires alignment across departments. We shared our framework with the IYC team, gathered feedback, and built shared ownership of the strategy.

06

Technical Audit & Optimisation

Optimised hundreds of pages: unique title tags + meta descriptions per page, image alt text across the catalog, internal linking restructured to spread PageRank to the most valuable pages.

07

Competitor Research

Estimated competitor strengths/weaknesses. Audited their backlink profiles, on-site SEO tactics, keyword targeting, internal linking, and page speed to identify opportunities and threats.

08

Content + Link Building

Created a network of blogs around "Luxury Yachts" that delivered keyword-rich content streams, generated authority links with natural anchor text variation, and drove repeat traffic.

Results

Outcomes that compounded.

+400%
Organic traffic growth in under 12 months
#2
Position for "yachts for sale" (90,500 monthly searches)
#2
Position for "yacht for sale" (74,000 monthly searches)
+396%
New visitors increase
−35%
Bounce rate reduction
+44%
Time on site increase

Top keyword positions

KeywordSearch volumePosition
Yachts for sale90,500/mo#2
Yacht for sale74,000/mo#2
Luxury yachts for sale8,100/mo#2
Mega yachts for sale5,400/mo#2

"As one of the leading companies in the yachting industry it is critical that IYC ranks highly in Google for all relevant search terms. Having changed our website in 2015 we were faced with the challenge of regaining our SEO ranking, which had deteriorated during the transition. On what was considered a very difficult task, Resocial has achieved outstanding SEO results for IYC over the period of just one year. The team, led by Christos, is diligent, organized, hard working and always up to date with the latest SEO trends. We have an excellent working relationship and Resocial is a true partner for IYC."

Irini Saranti, Global Marketing Director, IYC
Services used

How we put it together.

Engagement: Since February 2016
Duration: 12+ months

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