Case Study
/
Study NSW
How Firewire Increased Study NSW Organic Traffic By 319% Through SEO
Study NSW is the NSW Government’s initiative for promoting international education and supporting overseas students. Connecting students from over 190 countries with educational institutions throughout the state.
Industry: Government
Location: Sydney, NSW
Services provided: Technical SEO, Content Marketing, Content Strategy, Website Migration
OUR CHALLENGE
The project presented a complex challenge of maintaining critical government information accessibility while completely rebuilding and rebranding Study NSW’s digital presence. Our team was tasked with ensuring seamless technical migration while significantly improving search visibility across primary international student markets. The project timeline spanned several months, requiring careful coordination with multiple government stakeholders and development teams.
Key Challenges:
- Technical Migration Complexity: Ensuring zero disruption to essential government services during website transition
- Multi-Market Optimisation: Targeting diverse international student markets with varying search behaviors
- Government Compliance: Maintaining strict governmental guidelines while implementing SEO best practices
- Stakeholder Management: Coordinating with multiple DEIT stakeholders and development teams
The Results
Growth Summary
Our comprehensive SEO strategy began with extensive keyword research and URL mapping, ensuring optimal site architecture for both user experience and search engine crawlability. We conducted detailed technical audits of both staging and live environments, identifying and resolving potential issues before they could impact performance.
The content optimisation phase involved careful alignment with our keyword research findings while maintaining compliance with government communication standards. We implemented sophisticated measurement frameworks to track sector recovery goals, providing stakeholders with clear visibility of progress and ROI.
Working closely with developers, we refined the site architecture to better serve international student needs while maintaining strong SEO foundations. Regular monthly WIP meetings ensured all stakeholders remained aligned and allowed for agile adjustments to our strategy based on performance data.
The technical implementation included advanced schema markup for government organiaations, enhanced internal linking structures, and optimization for mobile-first indexing. We paid particular attention to page load speeds and Core Web Vitals, crucial factors for international users accessing the site from various locations.
Our efforts yielded exceptional results across all key metrics. The 319% increase in organic traffic demonstrated the effectiveness of our technical and content optimizations. The 181% growth in keyword rankings showed significantly improved visibility across target markets, while the 178% increase in top 3 SERP positions highlighted our success in securing premium search visibility for critical educational content.
These improvements directly supported Study NSW’s mission of attracting international students to New South Wales, making essential information more accessible to prospective students worldwide while maintaining the highest standards of government website functionality and compliance.
Related case studies
