International SEO for a Yacht Brokerage
Yacht brokerage international SEO case study: rebuilt a Wix yacht brokerage around country + vessel-class intent to grow international organic sessions across US, UK, EU, and Italian markets.
Meridian Yacht Partners
A Fort Lauderdale based yacht brokerage on Wix, listing pre-owned motor yachts and sailing vessels for buyers across the US, Mediterranean, and Northern Europe. Strong dealer network, weak international organic surface for the country + vessel-class queries buyers actually run.
Industry
Yacht Brokerage
Focus
B2B Services & Technology
The Challenge
The site had one English URL space, no hreflang, no country-scoped listing pages, and no supporting content for the vessel-class queries buyers ran before requesting a private viewing.
Meridian Yacht Partners
US-only surface, invisible in the exact European markets where the buyers were.
The Strategy
Split the site into EN-US, EN-UK, EN-EU, and IT versions
Rebuilt the Wix structure into country-scoped URL spaces with proper hreflang across US, UK, EU-English, and Italian markets so each region got its own crawl and ranking surface.
Built vessel-class landing pages per market
Shipped dedicated pages for motor yachts, sailing yachts, sport-fishers, and superyachts per region, with local pricing in USD, GBP, and EUR and locally-relevant marina context.
Rebuilt broker bios and viewing enquiry per region
Split broker profiles and private-viewing routing by market so each regional site surfaced the right broker and correct time-zone response window.
Wired schema and enquiry paths on every listing
Added Product and Vehicle schema to listings, replaced the generic contact form with a vessel-specific short form pinned to every detail page, and cut the private-viewing request to a single screen.
Old US-only site
Meridian Yacht Partners
- —English US-only content
- —No hreflang mapping
- —USD-only pricing
- —One global enquiry form
New multi-region structure
Meridian Yacht Partners
- ✓EN-US / EN-UK / EN-EU / IT
- ✓Full hreflang across markets
- ✓USD / GBP / EUR pricing
- ✓Region-specific broker routing
Region split - ILLUSTRATIVE Wix site split into EN-US, EN-UK, EN-EU, and IT versions with country-scoped URLs and hreflang.
Keyword Movement
| Keyword | Before |
|---|---|
| used motor yacht for sale mediterranean | not ranked |
| sport fisher yacht broker uk | #42 |
| yacht broker mallorca | not ranked |
| sailing yacht brokerage italy | #38 |
Representative results based on comparable engagements.
The Italian version was almost cannibalised by the English EU version.
The EN-EU pages started outranking the Italian ones inside Italy because Italian buyers were searching the English vessel names. I rebuilt hreflang so the Italian pages served language-first (not country-first) users, added Italian-first content to vessel-class pages, and the IT version reclaimed its rankings inside seven weeks.
For two decades our European buyers came from broker relationships. This is the first year the website has actually contributed to that pipeline.
Client name changed for privacy.
Ready to be the next case study?
Book a consultation with me on Upwork.
I'll personally scope your project before any engagement. No account managers, no hand-offs.
First audit call is free, no commitment.
What happens next
Typical engagement: 6-9 months. First deliverable in week 1: a full technical + content gap audit with a prioritised 90-day roadmap.