Global Sanctions (previously European Sanctions) is the most comprehensive online resource sanctions tool available. Run by Maya Lester KC at Brick Court Chambers and Michael O’Kane of law firm Peters & Peters; the site publishes content multiple times a day. Due to the organic growth of the blog, a number of issues had arisen and the Global Sanctions team wanted to rebuild their site armed with the lessons they had learnt since its inception.
Project goals
Goals for the project included:
- Improve user experience & ease of access to information;
- Handle the change of name(European Sanctions to Global Sanctions) without losing search engine rankings and traffic to the site;
- Increase the number of user sessions and time spent on the site;
- Streamlining internal & external membership processes.
Solutions
We redesigned the homepage to highlight the latest news more prominently and streamlined the main navigation by reducing the number of top-level menu items, making the site easier to browse. We also implemented daily and weekly digest emails to keep subscribers informed of new content as it’s published.
Name change and SEO impact
The original site was branded simply as ‘Sanctions’, while the domain name was europeansanctions.com. This mismatch created confusion: the client felt the name was too narrow for their broader focus, but the domain had strong SEO performance for keywords like ‘European sanctions’. They wanted to rebrand without losing valuable search visibility.
This was a complex transition. Not only was the domain changing, but the competitive context for the site was shifting too. We began by capturing baseline keyword rankings, then created a comprehensive URL map and set up 301 redirects to preserve link equity. We audited and updated all internal links to point directly to the new URLs (not just relying on redirects), and reconfigured Google Search Console for the new domain. Four months later, the site’s search rankings had fully recovered to their previous levels.
User experience & time spent on site
The improved tagging system allows the user to move around the site seamlessly, never reaching a ‘dead end’. New posts can be linked to the relevant sanctioning bodies, the country and/or thematic regime it relates to and the author penning the piece and reciprocal links will be placed on those pages, ensuring the flow of interest continues.
The new filtering system combined with the super-fast Algolia search system ensures that user interest can always be sated. An initial drop-down of search returns can be expanded to a full page list, if required, and then search results can be filtered further by content type, region, sanctioning state and categorised tags.
Streamlining membership processes
We completely overhauled the membership system and implemented a variety of new measures that improved the efficiency of managing the blog and the users experience of using it; these included:
- Paypal was replaced with Stripe, which saves a lot of manual labour when processing membership applications;
- VAT receipts are now available;
- Corporate memberships are now part of the membership offering;
- The new and improved account management panel means that everythign the team needs is at their finger tips.
WebAwards winner
In September 2024, the Square Eye and Global Sanctions teams were delighted to win the Legal Standard of Excellence award at the 2024 WebAwards for their work on the site.Since launch
We are very busy helping the Global Sanctions team run their successful membership operation, publish content on the site and to their email list of thousands, and adding regular new features.