Technical SEO · Holiday Taxis
Proving the canonical fix before scaling it
Diagnosed white-label subdomains displacing the main site in search.
A controlled canonical-tag test improved main-domain rankings and removed EasyJet and Jet2 duplicates for the tested phrases; the untagged control remained.
The challenge
Finding the real constraint.
White-label partner subdomains were competing with and displacing the main Holiday Taxis domain in organic search.
The approach
Evidence before assertion.
- Isolated a small group of affected phrases and partner pages.
- Applied canonical tags to the test group while retaining an untagged control.
- Monitored ranking and duplicate-domain behaviour.
- Used the contrast between test and control to justify wider implementation.
Decision-making
Turning diagnosis into delivery.
The important step was not producing a list of SEO observations. It was identifying the change most likely to affect the outcome, explaining that change in language the wider team could use and creating a route through the technical and organisational dependencies.
The work combined search evidence with the realities of the platform, content operation and customer journey. That kept recommendations proportionate: specific enough to implement, measurable enough to test and connected to a commercial reason for acting.
Measurement
What the evidence supports.
A controlled canonical-tag test improved main-domain rankings and removed EasyJet and Jet2 duplicates for the tested phrases; the untagged control remained.
This case study is supported by contemporary reports, correspondence and signed professional references. Confidential material and personal data are not published; the wording distinguishes directly measured outcomes from broader portfolio context.
What it demonstrates
The transferable lesson.
Good SEO work crosses disciplinary boundaries. It requires technical curiosity, editorial judgement, credible measurement and the ability to help other people act. The enduring value of this project is therefore not a single tactic—it is the method used to move from a complicated problem to a verified result.
That same method now informs technical audits, migrations, international programmes and search strategies: diagnose the constraint, isolate the useful change, implement with the owners of the system and verify what happened.