Fragile technical foundation
Slow mobile site, redirect loops, hreflang errors across 6 languages and under-used schema.
Case Study — Growth System
BerlengaTur — from tourism website to digital growth engine
How I turned a tourism site with technical debt and scattered campaigns into an integrated growth system — WordPress, SEO, GEO, paid, tracking and CRO working as one engine.
- Website: berlengatur.com
- Sector: Tourism · E-commerce
- Disciplines: WordPress · SEO · GEO · Paid · Tracking · CRO · Core Web Vitals
The client
BerlengaTur runs boat tours from Peniche to the Berlengas Islands — a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Multilingual WordPress site (PT, EN, ES, FR, NL, DE) with online bookings integrated via FareHarbor.
The challenge
Website and campaigns without a unified system
Every layer — website, traffic and conversion — was running in a silo. Technical issues degraded the experience, content was uneven across markets and the booking journey lost intent along the way. Without reliable tracking signal, every optimisation was a guess.
Thin and uneven content
Prices displayed as “From $0”, inconsistent headings, missing alt text, thin pages in secondary languages.
Unclear booking journey
Friction between landing, tour and FareHarbor checkout; incomplete tracking with no GDPR compliance.
Integrated strategy
Five pillars, one engine
Each pillar solves one layer and enables the next. That linkage is what separates a good site from a commercial system.
Website & WordPress
Architecture, UX and Goodlayers/Tour Master components designed for booking, with WPML holding real parity across 6 markets.
Technical SEO & content
Clean technical base, “Berlenga Guide” editorial cluster, schema, hreflang and internal linking feeding topical authority.
GEO / AI Search
Curated FAQs, direct answers and TouristTrip/FAQ/LocalBusiness schema — content ready to be quoted by AI answer engines.
Google Ads
Search and Performance Max structured by intent, seasonality and geography — budget serving the funnel, not the other way around.
Measurement & CRO
GA4, GTM (web + server-side with Stape), Consent Mode v2 and iteration on the booking funnel with trustworthy data.
Execution
Strategy → execution → outcome
A clear sequence, no tool bloat — only what actually moves the business.
Technical base
Redirect loops removed, hreflang fixed, per-language sitemaps, internal linking and TouristTrip/LocalBusiness/FAQPage/BreadcrumbList/Organization schema on key pages.
Commercial content
Fixed “From $0” prices, coherent H1s and headings, descriptive alt text, tour pages rewritten for booking intent and “Berlenga Guide” editorial cluster across 5 languages.
Performance
LiteSpeed Cache + QUIC.cloud, WebP images with reserved space, preloaded fonts, minification and heavy-script review — explicit mobile focus.
Real multilingual
WPML tuned, menus and permalinks per language, editorial review in EN/ES/FR/NL/DE — parity over auto-translation.
Paid media
Search and PMax campaigns by intent and geography, clean feed and conversion signals, cannibalisation control against organic.
Tracking & consent
GA4 and GTM (web + server-side via Stape), Consent Mode v2, booking funnel events wired to FareHarbor.
Results
Metrics observed during the project period
Real numbers, with context. None is attributed to a single lever — they are the combined effect of the system.
vs initial benchmark
Early stage of curated Google Ads, structured by intent and geography.
YoY sales
Year-over-year comparison in the first full cycle after relaunch.
organic uplift
All-time high organic traffic for the domain, after technical and content work.
mobile load time
Mobile LCP improvement after the performance work.
Sources: SEMrush, Search Console, GA4 and PageSpeed Insights. Metrics recorded during the project period; not a guarantee of future results.
Want a system like this in your business?
If you recognise part of this picture — a site with technical debt, uneven content, scattered campaigns or unreliable tracking — let's talk about the next step.
Talk about a similar project