17% Engagement rate improved
Rising from an average in the high fifties/low sixties before launch to consistently sitting around 70% since.
Growing organic search visibility by up to 800%
Founded in 1998 in the British Virgin Islands, Horizon Yacht Charters was built on a single ambition, to elevate the yacht charter experience for discerning sailors. Over more than two decades, Horizon has grown from a single-base operation into a globally recognised charter brand, with bases in St. Vincent & The Grenadines and charter partnerships worldwide. Despite that growth, the business has retained the personal, expert-led approach that defined it from the outset.
Horizon operates at the premium end of the market, where guest expectations are high and the margin for error is low. Their reputation rests on consistent delivery of what they call the Horizon Experience, a standard of service that travels with the brand wherever their fleet sails. Now successfully delivering four main services; yacht sales, yacht charters, bareback yacht hire and a sailing school, Horizon needed this reflected online.
Rising from an average in the high fifties/low sixties before launch to consistently sitting around 70% since.
Since launch in October 2025, moving to within the top 10.
Providing users with a quicker more responsive experience.
Horizon had a problem that many established businesses share: a strong reputation in their market, but a digital presence that no longer reflected the quality of what they offered. Their two existing websites; Horizon Yacht Charters and Horizon Yacht Sales, were outdated, underperforming and starting to work against them rather than for them.
The brief evolved into something more complex than a straightforward rebuild. Horizon had decided to divide their charter business into three distinct audiences, those wanting to sail themselves, those wanting a fully crewed luxury experience, and those wanting to learn, alongside their existing sales audience, and needed a digital infrastructure to match. That meant moving from two ageing WordPress sites to a portfolio of four websites, each with its own positioning, audience and purpose.
The challenge wasn't just about modernising what existed. It was about building something that could scale with the business, support a more sophisticated go-to-market approach and do so without dismantling the search authority and visibility they'd spent years building.
Strategy before build
A project of this scale required careful strategic planning, particularly around SEO. Splitting one established website into three and launching them at different times could be detrimental to SEO if not planned out carefully. Authority built over years on the Horizon Yacht Charters domain could easily be lost in a poorly managed migration and two brand-new domains would be starting from scratch with no history to lean on.
We began with an SEO retainer focused on two things: improving performance on the existing site ahead of the new builds and putting in place a migration strategy that would protect as much authority as possible when the time came. The approach to the new sites was to build strong technical foundations from the beginning.
Design and build
With the structural planning done, the team moved into website design and build. The new websites were built on Serenity Source, our bespoke content management system, giving Horizon a significant step up from the legacy WordPress site they'd been running on.
Expanding the charter business from one website to three brought its own challenges, and meeting them took a considered approach and close coordination across the whole technical team. The end result was four live websites, each built for a specific audience:
On page 1 of search results, such as 'luxury crewed yacht charter'.
Showing the site being surfaced for a much larger volume of relevant searches.
And an average search position improvement from 57 to 18 within eight months.
Systems integration
Alongside the website, we supported Horizon with the integration of third-party systems to improve how they manage yacht data, bookings and client communications. This was essential to bring operational efficiency to match the improved customer-facing experience.
Ongoing SEO
With all four websites live, Serenity now manages SEO campaigns across the entire portfolio.
The focus has shifted from protection and foundation-laying to sustained growth. We now focus on building visibility for each site against its own audience and keyword strategy, while also optimising for GEO, ensuring each site is structured and written in a way that AI tools like ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews can understand and reference when answering user queries.
Moving from the low twenties to just above position 11 within the first three months.
Between the launch month and June, showing rapid early traction in organic search specifically, not just overall site traffic.
Since launch, indicating the site is being surfaced for a fast growing number of searches very early in its life.
Driven by a refocused keyword strategy targeting high-intent searchers actively looking to buy rather than generic traffic.
Massive surge in direct phone calls from organic search, reflecting genuine buying interest and qualified leads.
Consistent growth in direct email contact, proving that smaller, intent-driven audiences yield significantly higher conversion rates.
What began as a website project became a question of business structure, digital strategy and long-term search performance. Getting all of that right - across multiple sites, staggered launches and a complex SEO migration, required the kind of joined-up thinking that only comes from treating a client's challenges as your own.
The project delivered a digital portfolio that is structurally sound, commercially coherent and significantly more capable than what came before. The business now has four distinct, well-positioned digital presences, each targeting a different customer, each built to perform, with a built-in infrastructure that enables efficient workflow and growth.
We continue to manage SEO across all four sites and the relationship is as active now as it was at the start.
If you're keen to learn more about this case study or have similar challenges, don't hesitate to reach out.
