Case Study: How Four “High-Risk” Changes Transformed Performance for UK Healthcare Job Boards

When a long‑established healthcare job board group migrated their niche sites to Jobiqo, it could have been a classic “traffic‑drop‑then‑rebuild” story. Instead, the Niche Jobs team doubled down on quality over volume, and the data showed something surprising: They emerged with better rankings, higher intent, and more relevant applications for their customers in just three months.

Niche Jobs operates specialized job boards serving the UK and Irish healthcare sectors. While traffic volumes were healthy, the business faced three persistent challenges:

• Irrelevant applications: A significant portion of traffic came from countries where employers couldn’t legally sponsor or process candidates, wasting recruiter time.
• SEO dilution: Duplicate job listings across multiple sites confused search engines and weakened domain authority for niche keywords.
• Application drop-offs: Mandatory CV uploads and registration steps created friction, reducing completed applications from qualified candidates.

The goal wasn’t just more traffic, it was better-matched candidates, higher conversion rates, and stronger organic visibility for the keywords that actually drive hires.

On October 23, 2025, Niche Jobs migrated all their sites to Jobiqo’s infrastructure. But the migration was just the foundation. Layered on top were four strategic decisions that challenged conventional growth playbooks:

🌏 Change #1: Geo-Blocking 100+ Countries

Problem: For healthcarejobs.ie, more than half of previous traffic came from countries where UK/Irish healthcare employers couldn’t practically hire due to visa or compliance constraints.
Action: Implemented strict geo-targeting to prioritise UK and Irish visitors.
Risk: Immediate traffic reduction; potential loss of “vanity metrics.”
Why it made sense: If employers can’t hire a candidate, that application has negative ROI. Quality over quantity.

✂️ Change #2: Removing 88% of Listings from Nurses.co.uk

Problem: Nurses.co.uk historically hosted non-nursing healthcare roles, creating content overlap with other sites in the network and triggering Google’s duplicate content filters.
Action: Purged all non-nursing jobs, sharpening the site’s topical focus.
Risk: Short-term traffic and ranking volatility; loss of long-tail keyword coverage.
Why it made sense: A focused site signals stronger relevance to Google and to candidates looking specifically for nursing roles.

🚫 Change #3: Eliminating the CV Registration Wall

Problem: Requiring candidates to upload a CV or create an account before applying created a significant drop-off point.
Action: Enabled “apply now” functionality without mandatory registration.
Risk: Reduced CV database growth; less candidate data for marketing.
Why it made sense: Completed applications drive client value. Unused profiles in a database do not.

⚡️ Change #4: Platform Migration + AI-Powered Taxonomy

Problem: Legacy infrastructure limited SEO flexibility and consistent job categorisation.
Action: Migrated to Jobiqo and integrated an AI job classifier (via Job Data Pipeline) to ensure consistent, granular role tagging.
Risk: Technical migration complexity; temporary indexing issues.
Why it made sense: Clean architecture and intelligent taxonomy are foundational for sustainable organic growth.

In the first few weeks, the results were mixed. Nurses.co.uk and healthcarejobs.ie saw immediate traffic drops, largely because:

• Nurses.co.uk lost around 5,000 non‑nursing jobs, which had been padding volume but confusing Google’s signals.
• Healthcarejobs.ie lost access from countries where employers couldn’t realistically hire candidates.

Meanwhile,  healthjobs.co.uk and socialcare.co.uk saw almost instant improvements in Google Search impressions, indicating that Google picked up the newly structured, cleaner content quickly:​ 

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By late December, a clear upward trend appeared across all four sites in Google Search appearances and revealed that the short‑term migration losses were fully recovered, and the trajectory turned decisively positive.

Keyword Ranking Improvements

Tracking core healthcare recruitment search phrases, the average Google Search positions were compared to those in January 2025 with those in January 2026 to see how the migration and strategy shifts had influenced rankings over the year:

These stats signal a structural improvement in how Google interprets the sites’ relevance and authority for high‑intent queries.

This wasn’t about tactical tweaks. It was a strategic realignment around three core beliefs:

• Relevance beats reach
  Google rewards sites that clearly serve a specific intent. By narrowing focus, geographically and topically, Niche Jobs strengthened their relevance signals.
• User experience is an SEO factor
  Faster load times, clearer navigation, and fewer application barriers don’t just help candidates, they also send positive engagement signals to search algorithms.
• Data discipline over vanity metrics
  Choosing to measure success by qualified applications rather than raw traffic or CV uploads forced strategic decisions.

✅ Audit your traffic quality, not just volume
If a significant portion of your audience can’t convert for your clients, you may want to consider reducing that traffic.

✅ Specialisation compounds SEO authority
Google increasingly favours sites with clear topical focus. Don’t dilute your domains trying to be everything to everyone.

✅ Friction leads to drop‑off
Evaluate every step in the candidate journey and ask: “Does this step help the candidate, or does it exist to help us collect data?” If it’s the latter, streamline or remove it. Reducing friction at key points drives more completed applications.

✅ Migration is an opportunity, not just a task
Platform changes are disruptive but they’re also rare chances to reset technical debt, taxonomy, and user flows.

✅ Relevant applications drive better feedback
When candidates match the role, recruiters spend less time filtering out irrelevant CVs and more time engaging with top talent. The difference quality makes is clear and everyone notices it.

🔗 Sources

Original blog post written by Matt Farrah & full data breakdown: We Made Four High-Risk Changes to Our Job Boards—Here’s What the Data Shows
Platform partner: Jobiqo
Job classification technology: Job Data Pipeline by Alex Chukovski

Data verification period: January 2025 – January 2026. All metrics sourced directly from client-provided Google Search Console exports and internal analytics dashboards.