HR Datahub is a salary benchmarking platform that publishes fresh insights on pay trends across the UK.
Earlier this year, we updated HR Datahub’s blog content on “Pay Trends in the UK” to reflect the latest data and match evolving search intent.
The result? It jumped from position 35 to 1, earned citations in AI Overviews and LLMs, and drove a 500% traffic surge.
⛰️ The Challenge
HR Datahub’s blog post on UK pay trends had been performing great, until rankings and traffic began to dip in November 2024. By January this year, the performance had hit an all-time low.
Stuck on page 4 for the primary keyword “pay trends UK”, the article was no longer delivering the visibility or value the client needed. That’s when we decided that it was time for a complete content overhaul.
💡 Our Strategy
To turn things around, we kicked off with a strategic content refresh brief. This wasn’t just about updating the year or tweaking a few paragraphs — it was a complete rethink of how the article could better serve users.
We dug into keyword trends, analysed high-performing competitors, and mapped out relevant queries from People Also Ask to ensure our version would meet intent more completely.
Based on our research, we then:
💡 Added fresh information: We completely rewrote the article to reflect the latest labour market forecasts and data. We also updated the publish date to signal the article’s relevance and freshness to Google, LLMs, and users.
💡 Improved UX and readability: We restructured the content with clear subheadings for each trend, shorter and punchier paragraphs, as well as more relevant internal links and calls-to-action (CTAs).
💡 Incorporated E-E-A-T principles: We included data and graphs from HR Datahub’s own survey, outbound links to authoritative sources, and an expert quote from Labour Market to establish credibility.
🚀 The Results
The impact was almost immediate. Within just 4 weeks after we updated the blog post, it successfully:
✅ Jumped from #35 to #1 for the term “pay trends UK”
✅ Secured the top 10 spot in Google for 12 different keywords
✅ Earned mentions in AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude
✅ Saw a 500% increase in organic traffic
✅ Generated 200% increase in webinar signups
