How Beacon Turned Its Website Into Its Main Business Driver.
Hatch built the digital foundations for a new recruitment brand, then expanded the website, search strategy and lead-generation system as Beacon grew into a nationwide recruitment and hospitality consulting partner.
The brief
Build The Foundation, Then Keep Expanding What The Website Can Do For The Business.
Beacon needed to launch with a credible identity and a website that could win work. As the business added markets and consulting services, the same platform had to reach more decision-makers, generate demand and turn organic discovery into a dependable commercial channel.
- Client
- Beacon Recruitment
- Industry
- Recruitment & Hospitality Consulting
- Services
- Web Design & Development, SEO & Content Strategy, AI Search & Lead Generation
- Timeline
- Two-year ongoing partnership
- Status
- Live & ongoing
Client testimonial
Hear It Directly From Kieran McDermott.
Kieran McDermott, Director of Business Development at Beacon Recruitment, shares their experience of working with Hatch and what the partnership delivered.
Beacon Recruitment · Web design, development & SEO
A new business needed more than a new look
Beacon Recruitment came to us at an early stage. The immediate requirement was a name, identity and website, but the commercial need ran deeper: the business had to earn trust quickly and give prospective clients a clear reason to choose a new entrant.
We began with brand discovery and positioning, then designed and built the first website around the people Beacon needed to reach. That discovery phase gave the website a credible foundation and a clear commercial direction for everything that followed.
From the start, the site had two different jobs. It needed to help employers understand Beacon’s recruitment offer and start a useful commercial conversation. It also needed to give candidates a clear route into relevant roles without allowing the two journeys to compete with each other.
The website had to grow at the same pace as Beacon
This was never a launch-and-leave project. As Beacon entered new markets and added new offers, the website had to become more useful without losing the clarity of the original proposition.
The first expansion concentrated on recruitment demand. We created focused pages around the searches employers were actually making: hospitality recruitment in specific counties and cities, and recruitment for roles such as head chefs, sous chefs, pastry chefs, bar managers and restaurant managers.
We structured each page as a focused route from a specific need to Beacon’s expertise, process and next step. Together, they widened the number of commercially useful searches the site could serve.
We also separated the candidate and employer funnels more deliberately. A person looking for work needed a different message, form and follow-up path from a hospitality operator looking for staff. Treating them as different journeys made the site easier to use and gave Beacon better context when an enquiry arrived.
One platform, built in deliberate phases
The work developed as Beacon’s business model developed. Instead of replacing the website every time the business changed direction, we treated it as a platform that could absorb new services, audiences and acquisition routes.
| Starting position | What we changed | Commercial purpose |
|---|---|---|
| New business without an established digital presence | Positioning, identity and a complete website | Build credibility and create a clear route to a conversation |
| One broad recruitment offer | Location and role-specific search journeys | Reach employers when the need was specific and urgent |
| Candidate and client needs sharing the same path | Separate messages, forms and funnels | Reduce friction and improve the context behind each enquiry |
| Recruitment-led proposition | New consulting architecture and service pages | Give the growing advisory offer enough clarity and authority to win work |
| Reliance on bottom-of-funnel service pages | Useful tools, lead magnets, newsletter and educational content | Reach operators earlier and create reasons to return |
| Discovery centred on traditional search | Structured data, answer-led content and authority building | Improve the chance of being found and cited across Google and AI platforms |
Building a second growth engine for consulting
Around a year into the relationship, Beacon wanted its consulting offer to become a much larger part of the business. That changed the job of the website again.
Recruitment buyers often arrive with an immediate vacancy. Consulting buyers may first recognise a risk, a compliance gap or an operational problem. The website therefore needed to explain a broader set of services while proving that Beacon understood the day-to-day realities of hospitality.
We developed a new consulting structure around food safety, HR and compliance, and business strategy. Each area received focused service content designed around a real operational problem rather than a generic list of capabilities.
We then extended the journey above and below those pages:
- practical tools and lead magnets gave operators an immediate reason to engage;
- a newsletter created an ongoing relationship with readers who were not ready to enquire;
- an expanded editorial programme answered regulatory, staffing and operational questions;
- technical and structured-data work helped search engines understand the services and expertise behind them; and
- an editorial authority campaign supported the site’s ability to compete for broader searches.
The result is a connected acquisition system. A hospitality operator can discover Beacon through a location page, a role page, an employment update, a compliance article or a free tool, then move into the relevant service or mailing-list journey.
Organic search became a dependable growth channel
The real change was not one ranking or one successful article. Beacon developed a much wider search footprint, with different pages attracting employers, operators and industry readers at different stages of their decision.
Location and role pages helped Beacon appear when an employer had a specific recruitment need. Consulting pages created routes into higher-value advisory work. Practical tools and industry content brought hospitality operators into the site before they were ready to speak to a provider. As those routes accumulated, each useful page strengthened the wider platform instead of working in isolation.
The result was sustained momentum. Comparing an early 28-day period in spring 2025 with the latest equivalent period in summer 2026, organic clicks grew from roughly 200 to almost 2,000. That is a 10.3x increase. Search impressions rose from approximately 6,400 to more than 160,000—a 25.2x increase in how often Beacon appeared in Google.
Daily organic traffic moved from fewer than seven clicks on average to around 71, with the strongest days now passing 100. Across the latest six-month period, Beacon earned approximately 5,800 organic clicks and 465,000 search impressions.
That scale changes the role of the website. Organic search is no longer an occasional source of discovery; it is a growing channel capable of introducing Beacon to prospective clients across recruitment, compliance, consulting and broader hospitality operations.
The growth is also spread across the site. The homepage remains important, but a free annual-leave calculator, employment-permit content, the national hospitality-recruitment page, and multiple role and location pages now attract search visits of their own. Beacon is no longer dependent on one page, one keyword or one type of demand.
This growth reflects the cumulative value of the programme: a stronger website, wider service architecture, useful content, technical search work and sustained authority building all working together. Every new route gave Beacon another opportunity to be discovered, while strengthening the site as a whole.
AI discovery opened another measurable route in
Traditional search was only part of the brief. We also worked to make Beacon’s expertise easier for AI systems to understand and reference through clear service architecture, answer-led content, structured data and stronger external authority.
AI-source traffic increased by 146% over a 90-day period, making discovery through ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity a growing part of Beacon’s organic acquisition mix.
The quality of those visits was especially encouraging. Visitors arriving from AI sources recorded both a higher engagement rate and more average time on site than overall website traffic. In the largest ChatGPT traffic group, visitors achieved a 71% engagement rate and almost 90 seconds of average engagement time. They were not simply landing and leaving; they were spending meaningful time exploring Beacon’s expertise.
The business outcome, in Beacon’s own words
The commercial outcome comes directly from Beacon. In his video testimonial, Director of Business Development Kieran McDermott describes the website as something the team is proud of and “our main business driver”. He also credits the work with giving Beacon a more targeted reach and supporting sales and conversions faster than the team had expected.
The evidence tells one consistent story: substantially greater search visibility, a growing stream of engaged visitors from Google and AI platforms, and a website that Beacon sees as central to how the business wins work.
What happens next
The next phase is about compounding what already works: reaching more employers, growing the consulting audience, expanding the newsletter and creating more useful routes into Beacon’s expertise.
That means continuing to develop the website, local and organic search programme and AI-search work as Beacon enters new markets and strengthens its position across Irish hospitality.
The website has continued to grow with the company—from an early recruitment brand into a broad platform for discovery, trust, lead generation and ongoing commercial growth.
Common questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What did Hatch deliver for Beacon Recruitment?
Hatch delivered the initial brand and website, then continued with website development, location and role pages, consulting service pages, content, practical lead-generation resources, search optimisation, authority building and AI-search work.
What organic-search growth did Beacon Recruitment record?
Beacon's organic clicks increased from roughly 200 in an early 28-day period to almost 2,000 in the latest comparable period—a 10.3x increase driven by the expanding website, content and search programme.
Did AI platforms send traffic to Beacon Recruitment?
Yes. AI-source traffic increased by 146% over a 90-day period, with visitors from AI platforms also recording a higher engagement rate and more time on site than overall website traffic.
“What Ben built for us is something that we at Beacon are very proud of, and it is also our main business driver.
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