SEO for Educational Charity: How Svitlo School Scaled Its Mission Through Search

Svitlo, which means “light” in Ukrainian, is an online school offering free, extracurricular education to children affected by the war in Ukraine. With classes taught in English, the organization provides continuity, structure, and hope to students navigating uncertain circumstances.

In 2025, Svitlo School partnered with Jason Pittock Media to strengthen its digital presence and reach more of its key audiences: donors, prospective students, and educators eager to support the mission. The goal was to build a scalable SEO foundation that could increase discoverability, improve site performance, and grow organic traffic beyond branded search.

In this case study, we break down the SEO roadmap, outline the key objectives achieved, and share how our strategy helped Svitlo expand its organic visibility and digital reach.

Svitlo SEO Project At a Glance

Key SEO challenges included:

Duplicate hreflang tags and multiple redirect chains
Missing or duplicated meta descriptions and page titles
Inconsistent use of H1 and H2 headings across content
Missing alt text across image assets
Robots.txt was incorrectly open to major search engines
Poor site speed performance and low Core Web Vitals scores
A very thin backlink profile

Key Outcomes

Duplicate and redirect issues fully resolved
Core Web Vitals passed on both mobile and desktop
Domain Authority increased by over 35%
Optimized content structure implemented across 16 pages
Consistent improvement in organic impressions 38%
Action plan developed to grow the backlink profile and authority

About the Customer

Svitlo School svitloschool.com is an online educational platform providing Ukrainian students displaced by war with continuous access to education. Despite having a clear mission and a meaningful offering, the website lacked strong organic visibility.

Most of the website traffic was driven by branded searches, limiting the school’s ability to reach new audiences unfamiliar with the Svitlo name. In addition, technical issues were affecting site performance, credibility, and discoverability in search engines.

Svitlo Needed an SEO Foundation To Make It Discoverable to a Global Audience to Support The School Charity

Svitlo’s purpose is to serve children displaced by war in Ukraine through accessible, high-quality online education. The mission was clear, but the platform lacked organic visibility to match the scale and importance of its work.

Most of the site's traffic came from branded search, with little traction from new audiences. Their content lacked technical optimization, and the site structure didn’t align with best SEO practices. The result? The Svitlo mission remained underexposed to those actively searching for humanitarian or online schooling solutions.

At the same time, technical SEO issues, like missing H1 tags, duplicate hreflang tags, poorly optimized meta descriptions, and broken redirects, were limiting indexability and crawling efficiency.

In 2025, Svitlo engaged Jason Pittock Media to deliver clarity, structure, and long-term strategy.

Building the Roadmap for Sustainable SEO Growth

The first priority was to perform a full SEO audit and provide immediate remedies to fundamental technical SEO issues. But beyond the fixes, it was also essential to equip the Svitlo team with a content strategy and SEO governance model they could grow with.

Jason Pittock and team provided:

A complete analysis of the website’s infrastructure and content
Documentation and onboarding for the internal team to understand SEO best practices
Technical KPI tracking systems and automated traffic reporting
A content creation framework to reduce reliance on branded search terms

In parallel, we offered hands-on guidance through AI content training and content checklists, helping the Svitlo team build internal SEO capacity and autonomy.

The Solution

Jason Pittock Media delivered a full SEO audit and implementation plan covering both technical SEO and content structure improvements.

Technical SEO and Cleanup

Resolved duplicate hreflang tags
Cleaned up broken links and fixed multiple redirect chains
Optimized HTTP response codes and recommended header configurations
Adjusted open robots.txt signals that incorrectly communicated imminent site changes to search engines

On-Page SEO Improvements

Optimized all page titles and meta descriptions for keyword inclusion and length
Resolved missing H1 tags and restructured H2 headers for content clarity
Added keyword-relevant alt text across all image assets
Provided strategic SEO best practice training to Svitlo’s content team

Site Speed and Core Web Vitals

Improved both mobile and desktop speed scores
Achieved “Pass” across all Core Web Vitals assessment points including LCP, CLS, FID, and INP
Reduced load times and boosted user experience signals across devices

Keyword and Authority Strategy

Advised a pivot from branded keywords to high-intent transactional search terms
Suggested content clusters aligned with new audience discovery goals
Recommended E-A-T improvements by linking to trusted third-party mentions and interviews
Created a content checklist to guide internal writers on SEO formatting and structure

AI-Powered Content Creation

Enrolled a student from the Svitlo team in the AI Content Creation Training Program
Provided access to 11 modules and 4 workshops focused on safe and strategic AI-assisted SEO writing

The Result?

Within 90 days, the website passed all Core Web Vitals and improved technical health across the board. Organic impressions began to rise, domain authority increased by over 35%, and the internal team was equipped with the tools and processes to sustain content production in-house.

The site was no longer reliant solely on brand recognition. With a scalable content and SEO framework in place, Svitlo is now positioned to reach broader, more relevant audiences looking for humanitarian education solutions, without compromising speed, structure, or clarity.