Verkeerschool Kennedy wasn't an optimisation job — it was a complete relaunch. I helped take a tired Amsterdam driving school off an ageing WordPress site, move it onto a custom-built (PHP) website, and bring the brand back to life with on-page SEO, paid search and linkbuilding — built around new service lines like motorcycle (motorrijles) and moped (brommer) lessons.
The old Verkeerschool Kennedy site was a dated WordPress build — slow, hard to crawl, and invisible on the searches that drive bookings. The brand needed a clean slate: a new technical foundation, real rankings on commercial terms, and paid search to capture demand for new services from day one.
Verkeerschool Kennedy is an Amsterdam driving school offering car, motorcycle (motorrijles) and moped/scooter (brommer) lessons in one of the most competitive local markets in the Netherlands.
Rebuild the foundation, then drive demand organically and through paid search at the same time. I led the SEO and SEA strategy and guided the platform migration so technical quality and search strategy reinforced each other from the first line of code.
It started with a platform move. Working alongside developer Anas (Compyla), the site went from an ageing WordPress install to a custom-built (PHP) website — fast, crawlable and structured for search from the ground up. I owned the SEO side of the build: URL structure, on-page architecture and a content layout designed to rank, not retrofitted afterwards.
Rather than fight head-on for broad, saturated terms, I went after the segments competitors underserved — motorrijles and brommer/scooter — and layered informational content to feed the commercial pages. The blog started ranking for queries like "vanaf hoe oud mag je rijles", feeding relevant traffic, while commercial and gift pages climbed: organic #1 for "motorcycle license nl", #2–3 for "motorrijles cadeau geven", top-5 for "motor rijbewijs halen", and page-one positions for "opfris rijles amsterdam" (#3) and "motorrijles amsterdam" (#8).
New service lines can't wait for organic to mature, so I ran Google Ads to capture demand for motorrijles and brommer lessons immediately. The campaigns scaled to roughly 664,000 impressions a month and — paired with WhatsApp lead capture on every high-intent page — delivered 137 leads in a single month at €7.61 per lead, 135% of the sales target.
No driving school in Amsterdam was selling lessons as gifts. I built a cadeaubon funnel — digital, printable vouchers styled to the brand, with dedicated gift and scooter-training pages and fresh hero imagery. It worked: the /rijles-cadeau/motor page reached page one (#8) with a 7% click-through rate, and "motorrijles cadeau geven" hit the #2–3 range — a commercial angle on near-zero-competition terms.
To push the new terms toward the top, I ran a focused linkbuilding campaign — a revised three-month plan of five placements targeting "brommer rijbewijs" and "motorrijles cadeau geven", delivered on a strict €650 budget including copy (final spend: €649.81). Efficient, on-topic authority — not spray-and-pray.
A new technical foundation, conversion-first SEO, paid search and a fresh gift-voucher stream turned a dormant brand into a lead engine: 137 leads in a month at €7.61 each (135% of target), ~664,000 monthly paid impressions, and page-one rankings across the commercial terms that matter. SEO and SEA stopped being separate channels and started compounding.
The foundation is set. Next is turning those page-one positions into Top 3 — starting with "motorrijles amsterdam" — scaling the gift-voucher funnel into seasonal pushes, and rolling the same SEO + SEA playbook across every service line.
Working on your organic and paid growth? Reach out at mo@sahardid.com.