The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Back to feedPost
How I Built an SEO-First AI Career Platform That Actually Ranks (And How I Can Do It For You) - Case study
The challenge: HiringMessage (AI resume/cover letter platform) competing against Enhancv, Resume.io, Zety, Jobscan.
They had:
• Years of backlinks
• Massive marketing budgets
• Established brand authority
We had: better architecture.
Avg SaaS SEO is broken:
- React SPAs = invisible to crawlers
- SSR adds latency
- Monolithic = slow loads
- Poor Core Web Vitals = ranking penalties
So I built the "Traffic Cop Pattern" - a split-architecture system that changed everything.
The Architecture:
Edge Layer (Cloudflare Workers)
→ Astro SSG for landing pages
→ 50-300ms TTFB globally
→ Lighthouse scores: 95-100
Origin Layer (Fly.io)
→ Wasp (React/Node) for app logic
→ Auth, payments, complex features
Router routes intelligently between them.
Result: ONE unified domain.
Users experience seamless navigation.
Google sees lightning-fast static pages (sub-300ms loads vs competitors' 2-3s).
Competitors are on bloated WordPress/Next.js. We're on the edge.
Speed = rankings. Rankings = traffic. that's it!
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Related posts
Here's how I got 90K views on LinkedIn in the past week.
I posted every single day, replied to every comment, and focused on two types of content: entertaining and informative.
For entertaining posts, I leaned into 1-liners. They stand out on a platform that takes itself too seriously, and people can't help but engage with them.
For informative posts, I kept it simple: short sentences, straight to the point, no buzzwords, no jargon.
That's the formula: short sentences, real value, genuine engagement. Do that consistently and the views will follow.
52K members reached? Nice! I'd be willing to say engaging with people is a huge component in growth.
Poster + Responsive Landing page for a Book Author/Podcaster
Amazing work, John.
Trending
maxearnings
The next frontier of payments is live on Contra. How are you maximizing revenue?
micrographics
Micrographics started as utility - barcodes, packaging, instruction labels. How would you use them?
aidesignflow
AI tools are redefining how designer work. What does your workflow look like?
aivideo
AI video tools are moving at warp speed. What tools are you using?
whennotai
As AI accelerates, creative judgment matters more. What part of your work stays human?