The starting point
Sijoituskohteet.fi struggled to attract visitors. Its business model relied heavily on organic traffic, yet the site was not performing well in search engines.
The team turned to Ocillo because of their strong technical expertise. While the site’s content quality was good, it suffered from persistent technical problems.
Sometimes the site would crash, other times it loaded slowly. The user interface didn’t appeal to visitors, and many who clicked through left quickly – frustrated by the illogical layout or loading times.
“Our analytics showed that visitors weren’t sticking around, mainly because of slow performance. Google noticed this too, and our search rankings suffered as a result.”
– Sauli Immonen, Project Lead, Sijoituskohteet.fi
Ocillo began tackling these issues systematically, upgrading server performance, modernizing WordPress and its plugins, and completely rethinking the site’s structure and navigation.
Areas for improvement
A technical audit revealed a website stuck in the past. The server was running an outdated PHP version (7.4) with no WordPress-specific optimizations.
Hundreds of images were stored in inefficient PNG and JPG formats, creating unnecessary bloat. The WordPress theme and plugins were poorly optimized, compounding performance problems.
The site consistently failed Google’s Core Web Vitals tests for both speed and usability, a clear signal that Google would rank it below competitors.
The complete list of issues included:
- Server architecture not optimized for WordPress
- Outdated PHP version (7.4)
- No content delivery network implementation
- Inefficient image formats
- Outdated WordPress core
- Neglected plugin maintenance
- Overall poor WordPress optimization
- Failed Google performance tests
Development work
Ocillo approached the transformation methodically. First, they migrated the site to Cloudways Vultr servers specifically configured for WordPress performance. The PHP upgrade to version 8.3 provided an immediate boost.
All images were converted to the modern WEBP format while maintaining fallback support for browsers that couldn’t handle the newer format.
For WordPress optimization, they deployed the Perfmatters plugin. JavaScript files were set to load only when actually needed, and CSS file sizes were reduced by up to 80%.
Finally, Cloudflare’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) was implemented, not just for faster global content delivery but also for protection against malicious bots and DDoS attacks.
Results
The difference was immediate and dramatic. Pages that once crawled now loaded instantly, even on slower connections. The user interface became genuinely pleasant to use.
“After the changes, our analytics clearly showed visitors spending significantly more time engaging with our content.”
– Sauli Immonen, Project Lead, Sijoituskohteet.fi
Google Analytics revealed the full impact: bounce rates plummeted as visitors began exploring the site instead of abandoning it. Session duration increased substantially, with users viewing more pages per visit.
Google’s Core Web Vitals tests went from failing to passing with flying colors, a clear signal that the site was now worth recommending in search results:
The search performance transformation followed quickly. Over the course of a year:
- Search result impressions increased by 400%
- Clicks jumped by 460%
- Average ranking climbed to nearly top-10 across all pages
Most impressively, the site now ranks first for dozens of competitive financial search terms.
“Ocillo’s proactive approach delivered exactly what we needed. The speed and usability improvements were game-changing for our search rankings. Our investment paid for itself many times over.”
– Sauli Immonen, Project Lead, Sijoituskohteet.fi