IT outsourcing · mobile and web development
CodeTiburon: 4× organic traffic over three years
Lead: A project run by effectively one pair of hands: two specialists covered two thirds of all hours. On a long engagement that means context never got lost between stages.
- Traffic from ~500 to ~2,000 visits a month
- Two specialists covered 65% of the project
- Content and link building in equal measure
| June 2018 | Spring 2021 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly traffic | ~500 | ⟶ | ~2,000 |
Small print under the bar:
Ahrefs data. Ahrefs estimates traffic from its own index, so traffic figures are an estimate rather than a counter reading.
| Client | CodeTiburon |
|---|---|
| Industry | IT outsourcing: mobile and web development |
| Working period | 2018 – spring 2021 |
| Volume | 546 tasks, 1,764 hours |
| Team | two specialists covered 65% of the hours |
Directions were chosen through our WEDGE framework, which answers where a client’s limited resource should go.
W — Where the client can win
We opened with a competence map — the task “Build a competence map for the project” sits right at the start of the engagement.
The map is five tabs the client fills in: solutions, verticals, languages and frameworks, technologies, services. Each row carries three scores: how easy this is to sell, what the company earns on it, how the market is moving. The client scores the first two. We score the third.
We don’t audit anyone’s engineering and we don’t pretend we can. How strong the company is in mobile development is the company’s own judgement. What we bring is market movement and data on who already holds the results pages.
E — Evaluate whether we can get in
The second screen filtered out directions unreachable with the site as it stood: around 500 visits a month and a modest link profile.
The output wasn’t one direction but a queue of reachable ones, and the content was built around them for three years.
D — Decode who signs the contract
Custom mobile development gets bought by different roles, each with its own fears: a startup founder looks at speed and budget, a technical director at stack and support.
For the chosen directions we worked out who decides and what they need to see to take the next step. That fed into the briefs.
G — Guide them to a decision
How 546 tasks broke down shows where the resource went:
| Area | Tasks |
|---|---|
| Content | 106 |
| Link building | 99 |
| Analytics | 54 |
| Management | 42 |
| Strategy | 37 |
| Briefs | 23 |
| Technical optimization | 21 |
Content and links almost equal — 106 tasks and 99. That wasn’t an accident but a deliberate balance: across three years a tilt in either direction becomes structural, and correcting it later costs more than holding it from the start.
E — Expand the coverage
The link profile grew in step with the content, with no bursts and no one-off purchases. Across three years that produced 4× organic traffic.
Two specialists covered 65% of all hours. That’s the most concentrated team across our long-running projects.
On large teams context gets lost at the handovers: who decided what, when and why, eighteen months ago. That problem didn’t exist here — the people who started the project ran it to the end.
The flip side is worth naming too: a setup like this is exposed to holidays and illness, and only works when the workload is steady and predictable. On this project it was — around 36 hours a month at an even pace.
| Point | Traffic (Ahrefs estimate) |
|---|---|
| Mid-2018 — start | ~500 |
| Spring 2021 | ~2,000 |
4× across three years.
Caption:
Per Ahrefs, across the active working period. Traffic in Ahrefs is an estimate from its own index.
Work delivered: 546 tasks, 1,764 hours.
The direction came from the map, not from taste. The competence map and the second screen produced a queue of reachable directions, and content and links were built around them for three years — 106 tasks and 99, neither consuming the other.
A small team with no loss of context. Two thirds of the hours from two specialists, start to finish.
A steady pace. Around 36 hours a month for three years, with no bursts and no gaps.
Balance between disciplines has to be held from the start. Across three years, a tilt toward content or toward links becomes structural. Fixing it later costs more than not letting it happen.
A small team is an advantage while the workload is predictable. Two specialists on 65% of the hours means nobody has to re-ask why a decision was made eighteen months ago.
4× in a competitive niche takes three years, not three quarters. IT outsourcing has no fast multiples.
Sound familiar?
IT outsourcing, an English-speaking market, a need to grow in organic without inflating the budget.
Питання
How long does 4× take in IT outsourcing?
Here, three years of steady work at around 36 hours a month.
Can these numbers be verified?
The trend across the active working period is visible in Ahrefs for codetiburon.com.
How big a team does a project like this need?
Here two specialists covered two thirds of all hours. For a steady workload that’s enough, and context doesn’t get lost.