Elife Travel SEO case: from Ukrainian roots to global positions – how we built a digital foundation

We specialize in large-scale projects, so we understand the value of a solid foundation. With our expertise in working with financial aggregators and exchanges, we approach the preparatory stage of SEO with the utmost care.

The key challenge in this project was the need to develop the site’s architecture in the absence of a collected semantic core and analysis of user requests. Despite this, our team developed a preliminary layout of the structure.

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This layout became the basis for further iterative work, allowed us to systematize the approach to future SEO optimization, and served as an effective tool for solving related project tasks. This ensured quick adaptation to the specifics of the niche and laid the foundation for further development.

Elife Travel: a guide to the world of travel and ambition

Elife Travel is not just a tour aggregator. It is a virtual “portal” that collects offers from the world’s leading tour operators, opening the way for users to travel from snow-capped peaks to tropical beaches. The project has Ukrainian roots, but its ambitions are global.

Project team:

• CEO-visionary,
• SEO Team Lead-strategist
• Middle SEO specialist

The team decided to make a bold leap: to switch from the local Israeli market (where the previous version was already running on a well-known CMS) to the powerful Laravel framework for a global launch. Our task: to prepare this “machine” for global SEO promotion before its official launch in the search engine index.

“Navigating Uncharted Waters: Challenges at the Start

When we took on Elife Travel, the future “tourist Olympus” was only 30-40% complete. It’s like putting together a puzzle with only a third of the pieces.

The main challenges were as follows:

• A“skeleton” without “flesh”: a significant part of the pages existed only in ideas. We had to “draw” their future structure and logic in order to plan SEO properly.
• Lack of a “compass” – semantics: without a clear semantic core, “travelers” (users) would simply not find the right tours.

We were proactive: we created a flexible structure layout that became the starting point for the entire project. This approach allowed us not only to dive deeply into a new niche but also to effectively develop the project further, turning the initial uncertainty into our strategic advantage.

• “Iceberg of technical work”: we had to implement more than 30 complex technical tasks. Some were partially completed, but most remained hidden “underwater”.

To understand the rules of the game, we looked at the champion. We carefully analyzed the website of the market leader, TourRadar. As part of the competitive analysis, we conducted an in-depth study of its structure. It was used as a reference for analyzing the best market practices. It is important to note that only those architectural and content elements were implemented that, after a critical evaluation, met the strategic goals of our project.

The client understood that a self-written CMS requires strict compliance with SEO criteria both on the backend and frontend. Our mission was to ensure the best results and top positions after launch. This meant: indexing, speed, mobile adaptation, proper content structure, minimizing future costs, and setting up analytics.

“Plan to conquer the top”: a strategy for building an SEO foundation

To transform the Elife Travel “skeleton” into a full-fledged aggregator, we have developed a comprehensive plan:

• In-depth analysis and strategic planning:

1. analyzed TourRadar’s competitor, studying the site structure, URL construction, content optimization, and link mass;
2. visualized the architecture of the future site;
3. analyzed the existing test version(30-40% ready) to identify “pain points”.

• Jewelry work on technical specifications:

We prepared more than 30 detailed technical specifications:

1. Setting up multilingualism. Initially, we planned to launch 8 language versions of the site with a focus on the Czech Republic. However, when global reach became a strategic goal, we adapted our approach and offered the client a more powerful multi-regional strategy.

We were faced with a choice: to create one “universal” English version or to develop separate, targeted versions for the US, UK, Canada, and other key markets, and we chose the second option. As a result, we implemented a flexible hreflang structure, which became a reliable foundation for international promotion of the project without unnecessary costs at the start.

1. “Keep traffic at all costs”! Our goal was to “glue” the old and new websites together seamlessly. For the client, this meant keeping all the accumulated traffic on the existing site, and for its users, instant access to a much larger selection of tours, operators, and countries on the new platform.

To do this, we have done a lot of work for the future “gluing” of the current and new domains: we analyzed more than

35,000 pages of the existing site and set up a personal “navigator” (301 redirect) to the corresponding page of the new site for each of them.

After the grouping was completed, the URL groups on the old site were matched with the URLs of the new site.

It was also important to transfer images and content correctly, which was done.

At the same time, we cleaned up the basic architecture: we set up a single version of the domain and eliminated all technical duplicates.

This comprehensive approach to redirects ensured that the migration to the new platform went smoothly for the business and with maximum benefit for its potential customers.

2. Preparation of smart meta tags: we developed templates for auto-generation of title and description;

3. Preparation of the image optimization task: As part of the project, we conducted in-depth image optimization, focusing on alt and title attributes, which is an important component of effective SEO and user experience.

Why it matters:

• Alt: Provides visibility in search engines (Google indexes images by this attribute) and accessibility for users with disabilities. Without it, the images would be “invisible” to search engines and inaccessible to a large part of the audience. We overcame the difficulties with brevity, relevance, and uniqueness by developing clear instructions for creating semantically accurate descriptions.

There were also a lot of nuances with translations into other languages, and the main thing was to control the translation very carefully.

• Title: Although it does not affect rankings, it significantly improves UX by providing additional information on hover. This allows you to enrich the user’s interaction with the content. Our suggestion was to fill it with valuable context, avoiding duplication with alt.

Strategic approach: We analyzed competitors to identify best practices and develop unique image “masks” (templates) for each type of page. This allowed us to ensure consistency and readability, solving the problem of chaotic optimization.

Technical recommendations: We provided detailed recommendations for optimizing image names, choosing the best formats (e.g. WebP for speed), and reducing image size and weight. This was critical for page loading speed and overall site performance. The main difficulty was balancing quality and size, but our suggestions for using modern formats and compression tools allowed us to achieve optimal results.

1. Micro-markup is our everything! It helps search engines better understand the structure and content of pages, which improves their indexing. It also facilitates the display of extended snippets (star rating, price, FAQ, etc.), which can increase click-through rates in search results.

We took into account the most popular types of micro-markup, such as Organization, Breadcrumbs, FAQ, as well as special types that were suitable for the current niche, for example:

• Micro-markup of tour booking
• Micro-markup of travel
• Micro-marking of a tourist route

Recommendations on Open Graph and Twitter micro-markup were also provided.

4. In the process of working on the project, the stage of forming the site structure turned out to be one of the most difficult, requiring maximum flexibility and innovation from the team.

• Problem: At the time of the start of the preparation of the Terms of Reference (ToR), there was only a temporary, preliminary structure of the site, which was “raw” and in a state of constant change. This created significant difficulties, as it was extremely risky to build detailed ToRs for different areas, where the basis for work was the structure that could still change in the process.
• Why this was a problem: If we had focused solely on the internal, not yet established structure, it would have led to multiple revisions of the SoW, significant delays in the project, and potential errors in further development.
• Our solution: We decided to focus on the competitor’s established structure as the main “backbone” of the future website, with further expansion. This allowed us to get a stable and proven basis for further work.
• Implementation process: We had to conduct an in-depth analysis of both the competitor’s URL structures and the current temporary structure, and then integrate best practices and adapted solutions into the SoW.
• Difficulties: The main difficulties were identifying the most relevant aspects of the competitor’s structure, adapting them to the unique needs of our project, and ensuring that the ToR was flexible enough to allow for possible future changes.
• Our solution: We conducted a critical analysis, highlighting key patterns and suggesting modifications to optimize for our goals, and actively communicated with the development team to quickly agree on changes.

Intensive teamwork and communication

• Teamwork: team members, namely the CEO (Project Manager) and SEO Team Lead, worked in an intensive online mode to analyze website structures and fill in the SoW. This allowed them to quickly exchange information and make key decisions.
• What would have happened if this point had not been fulfilled: without such intensive and coordinated cooperation, the process would have been delayed indefinitely, the number of misunderstandings would have increased, and the quality of the ToR could have suffered significantly.

• Stakeholder communication: In parallel, we kept up constant correspondence and calls with the client and the development team to clarify the necessary data and agree on technical details for the SoW.
• Our suggestions for a solution: establishing clear communication channels, regular scheduled calls, and prompt documentation of all decisions made.

3. An innovative solution: Decomposition of the /location/ entity

• Innovation: One of the most innovative solutions we proposed and implemented was to split the /location/ entity, which traditionally contained a number of URL groups (parts of the world, countries, regions of the country, city, city district), into separate sub-entities.
• Why wasthis done: This was done to make it much easier to collect and analyze statistics by geography in the future.
• What would happen if this point was not fulfilled: in the event of any traffic drops or other problems, the monolithic /location/ structure would make it difficult to identify the root cause. It would take much longer to find the problem, as there would be no way to narrow the data sample to a specific region or city.
• Solution benefits: this distinction allows you to quickly narrow down the data sample and identify the cause of the problem more quickly, and therefore fix it faster, minimizing potential traffic and revenue losses.
• Challenges: The initial complexity of implementing such a detailed structure and the need to ensure that all existing and future geographic data is correctly mapped.
• Our solution: We proposed a clear migration and implementation plan, and developed logic to automatically generate these summaries to minimize manual work and the risk of errors.

It was suggested to use entity shortening to reduce the overall length of the URL.

5. “traffic management console” – GTM + GA4: Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics were configured in detail 4;

6. Setting up internal linking. We have drawn diagrams of current and future links on the site pages.

To effectively implement linking on a website, especially given the complex structure discussed above, it is crucial to have a clear visualization of the hierarchical scheme.

This linking scheme is chosen for SEO because it provides:

1. Deep page coveragePolylang

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2. Strengthening important pagesPolylang

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3. Convenience for usersPolylang

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4. Balanced distribution of PageRankPolylang

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At the same time, we analyzed competitors and their linking blocks.

7. Implementation of canonical: recommendations for setting up canonical tags and correct pagination to optimize page indexing and prevent duplicate content.

• Creating a “golden core” of content:

Collected and clustered more than 79,000 key queries (including 156 manually verified for the main cluster) for European countries.

We developed content and meta-tag templates for top countries and cities.

We tested the OpenAI API for text generation, but the client chose to manually write the main sections by an experienced content manager with partial generation of other pages using templates. This approach produced fairly high-quality and interesting texts of 3000-5000 characters.

Continuous communication and implementation: constant interaction between the SEO team, the client, and the developer in Telegram, recording progress in a table.

“Battles on the digital front”: challenges and solutions

• Even with the use of well-known online translators, we encountered errors and cases where certain English words and graphic symbols were left untranslated into other languages.

Solution: We quickly checked and made changes, identified the online translator that made the fewest mistakes and optimized keyword embedding for all 8 languages.

• Complexity of filter pages: long and inconvenient GET parameters in the URL.

Solution: we proposed a new /sr/ (Search results) entity, replacing cumbersome URL parameters with shorter ones.

• Technical URLs: the programmer had problems with some of the technical URLs because it was impossible to implement their closure through meta robots, since they did not have a <head></head> block in the html. We have proposed several ways to solve this problem, one of which is to implement closure through X-Robots-Tag.

Solution: We implemented this through X-Robots-Tag, providing full control over indexing.

Each “battle” was won thanks to well-coordinated work and innovative solutions.

User journey testing: identifying and fixing conversion issues

We went through the entire user journey from choosing a voucher to booking and purchasing it to check the convenience and correctness of the checkout process. During the testing process, we found problems with the form submission, which could negatively affect the conversion rate. All the details were recorded and passed on to the client for further troubleshooting.

Goal map: detailing the ToR for programmers and debugging GTM

We completed our part of the work on the SEO TOR, divided the tasks of the goal map by performers: “SEO” and “Programmer/SEO”. This approach was necessary because some items required the addition of additional code on the website side for correct tracking and further customization of events in Google Tag Manager (GTM).

For each of these items, a separate technical task was drawn up for the programmer, which allowed us to correctly implement these elements and then debug them in GTM. A list of page types was compiled with a list of all the elements that need to be tracked.

“Future Shine”: first fruits and the foundation laid

Elife Travel is still preparing for its grand launch into the search engine index.

This shows that ElifeTravel is not waiting for the launch to become a leader. It is already laying the groundwork for future leadership. It’s not just SEO, it’s a growth strategy built into the project’s DNA.

ElifeTravel – a lesson for future SEO champions

The story of ElifeTravel shows a fundamental truth: successful promotion begins long before a website goes live on the Internet – when its digital bricks are laid, its logic is built, and a content strategy is created.

Thanks to the well-coordinated work and the client’s trust, ElifeTravel received a scalable, technically advanced, and internationally ready website before it even appeared in the index. This gave it an unrivaled starting position in the global tourism arena.

The ElifeTravel project is ongoing, and we expect its official launch in August 2025 to see the foundation we have laid turn into brilliant positions in the top of search results.

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