An app-first platform, restructured for search.
How we restructured Fieldfolio's category architecture from 30 base categories into 1,200+ search-optimised pages, and won #1 for 'wholesale marketplace'.
Where Fieldfolio was when we walked in.
Fieldfolio approached Firewire with a technical SEO challenge that ran deeper than ranking tactics. They'd built their wholesale marketplace as an app-first platform, then moved to the web, but the category structure carried over from the app didn't map to how buyers actually searched for wholesale products. The result: a beautifully built marketplace nobody could find.
The brief was a six-month project to rebuild the foundation: restructure the entire category architecture for SEO, redesign the page types (category, brand, product, homepage) with their in-house UX designer, and produce technical specs the development team could implement against a custom Ruby-based CMS.
- App-based category structure inherited from the original platform: wrong shape for the way buyers search
- 30 base categories trying to cover a 200,000-product catalogue: far too few for organic visibility
- Custom Ruby CMS that made standard SEO tooling and plugins useless
- Page types (category, brand, product) all built for browsing, not for indexing
- Internal linking that reflected the app's navigation tree, not search-intent clusters
- Brand-led keyword strategy missing the long-tail product-category opportunity
Three moves that turned an app architecture into a search-first marketplace.
- 01
Expanded 30 categories into 1,200+
Match the way buyers actually search.
We rebuilt the entire category taxonomy. The original 30 base categories were broken down by sub-category, use-case, and buyer-intent modifier, yielding 1,200+ search-optimised pages, each targeting a specific cluster of buyer queries. Coverage went from broad-and-shallow to deep-and-defensible.
- 02
Redesigned every page type with the UX team
SEO and UX, briefed against the same spec.
Working directly with Fieldfolio's in-house UX designer, we co-developed optimised layouts for category, brand, product, and homepage templates. Each template carried the right schema, the right internal linking, and the right content scaffolding to support the new category structure at scale.
- 03
Built the technical spec for a custom Ruby CMS
Implementation-ready, not audit-only.
Most agencies hand over audits and wash their hands. We built the URL structure, internal linking pattern, metadata logic, and schema markup as a detailed technical specification, written for Fieldfolio's Ruby-based development team to implement directly into the CMS. Six months later, the new architecture went live as designed.
- Comprehensive category audit + strategy Mo 1
- Category expansion: 30 → 1,200+ taxonomy Mo 1–2
- UX page-type redesign (4 templates) Mo 2–3
- Technical spec for Ruby CMS implementation Mo 3–4
- URL structure + internal linking pattern Mo 4
- Schema + metadata implementation playbook Mo 4–5
- Launch monitoring + ranking validation Mo 5–6
The full picture, by the numbers.
Quarterly average organic sessions. Engagement begins September 2022 (6-month project); the March 2023 spike is the new category architecture going live.
How the restructure actually happened.
A six-month project across three workstreams: category architecture, UX page types, and technical implementation.
Category architecture From 30 base categories to 1,200+ buyer-intent pages
Fieldfolio's 200,000-product catalogue was originally organised under 30 base categories, a structure that made sense for the app's browsing UI but was nowhere near granular enough for search. We rebuilt the taxonomy from the buyer's perspective.
- Decomposed each base category by sub-type, use-case, and intent modifier
- Mapped query data + competitor visibility to validate every new category page deserved to exist
- Designed a 3-level hierarchy (base → sub-category → intent page) with clean URL inheritance
- Documented the entire taxonomy as a structured spec the dev team could implement against
The expanded structure went from 30 entry points to 1,200+, each one a specific search-intent landing page. The site went from 'browse around and hope' to 'enter exactly where the buyer's query lands'.
UX page-type redesign Co-designed templates with the in-house UX team
A bigger category tree only works if the page templates can carry it. We worked directly with Fieldfolio's UX designer to rebuild the four core templates so they performed for both search and humans.
- Category page: hierarchy clear, on-page filters indexable, internal linking deep
- Brand page: schema-rich, product roll-up logic that surfaces top SKUs
- Product page: full structured data, breadcrumb context, related-product clusters
- Homepage: hub-and-spoke structure routing authority into the new category tree
Each template was briefed against the same internal spec: UX, content scaffolding, schema, and metadata baked in from the design stage rather than retrofitted afterwards. The result was templates that worked in production without a separate SEO retrofit pass.
Technical implementation An implementation spec, not just an audit
Fieldfolio's CMS is a custom Ruby build: no plugins, no templates, no shortcuts. Our deliverable was a full technical specification the development team could implement against, covering everything from URL patterns to schema markup.
- URL structure: clean hierarchy that mirrored the new taxonomy with no parameter drift
- Internal linking: programmatic rules so every page automatically linked to its parents, siblings, and key children
- Schema markup: Product, Offer, ItemList, and BreadcrumbList for every relevant page type
- Metadata logic: title + description templates with variable substitution per category
When the launch went live in March 2023, traffic 3.5×'d in a single month. Mar 2023 jumped from ~2k to ~6.9k monthly organic sessions, peaking at 15.8k by May. The post-launch settle to ~7k/mo represents the new stable baseline, more than 10× the pre-project average.
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Want a similar result?
30 minutes with a senior Firewire lead. We'll diagnose where your site architecture is leaving organic visibility on the table, and tell you honestly whether we're the right partner to rebuild it.
- A category-architecture view of your search opportunity
- A first-pass diagnosis of your technical + UX blockers
- Honest view on fit: we'll tell you if we're not right
- No deck, no pitch, no commitment