RMFreelancer
A freelance marketplace built around search from day one.
The founder spent years watching Upwork and Fiverr dominate high-intent search queries while charging punitive commissions and treating SEO as an afterthought. Cuebites built RM Freelancer as a custom two-sided marketplace with SEO architecture baked into every URL, page template, and schema decision, capturing traffic the incumbents leave on the table.
Indexed landing pages
12,000+
Across profiles, categories, and city combinations
Session duration vs industry
2.4×
A function of content depth and page quality
Client
RMFreelancer
Industry
Marketplace · Freelance Services
Region
Australia
Engagement
Marketplace MVP · SEO-first build
Web Development
Custom Platform Build
UI/UX Design
SEO Architecture
MVP Build
01 · Challenge
Incumbents leaving organic traffic on the table.
The broad marketplaces dominate search but charge punitive commissions and treat SEO as a plugin. The task was a real marketplace that could handle real transactions and rank for the long-tail queries the incumbents do not target.
Before · The legacy stack
Upwork
Punitive commissions, poor discoverability
Fiverr
Discovery fatigue, shallow profiles
Weekly spreadsheet
Stock reconciliation
Off-the-shelf marketplace frameworks
Delivery planning
Generic SEO plugins
Bolted on, not architectural
Search strategy on incumbent platforms
Treated as afterthought
RM Freelancer came to Cuebites with a specific and unusual origin story. The founder is an SEO specialist by trade, and had spent years watching marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr dominate search results for thousands of high-intent freelance service queries, while simultaneously charging punitive commission rates, burying freelancer profiles in endless discovery fatigue, and treating SEO as an afterthought.
His thesis was sharp: a freelance marketplace purpose-built from day one around organic search, with properly indexable profile pages, service category architecture designed for long-tail keyword capture, schema markup embedded in every listing, and a content layer that complements rather than dilutes the marketplace itself, could capture significant traffic that the incumbents were effectively leaving on the table.
The challenge was building a full two-sided marketplace that could handle real transactions, real escrow, real disputes, and real service delivery, while simultaneously being engineered for search performance at every layer. Most off-the-shelf marketplace frameworks failed on one or both counts: they either handled transactions badly or treated SEO as a plugin rather than an architectural concern.
02 · Solution
A marketplace built around the URL, not around it.
Cuebites built RM Freelancer as a custom two-sided marketplace with SEO-first architecture baked into the foundation.
Freelancer experience
Freelancers create detailed profiles with portfolios, service packages (basic, standard, premium, similar to the Fiverr model), skills, languages, response time commitments, and verified credentials. Each freelancer gets a uniquely indexable profile URL with proper canonical tagging, Person and Service schema markup, and server-rendered content so every word on every profile is crawlable.
Service category architecture
Rather than a flat category tree, a multi-tier taxonomy covering top-level categories, subcategories, specialisations, and long-tail service types. Every tier has its own indexable landing page, curated freelancer listings, and hand-written category content. Category pages are designed to rank for queries like "logo designer for tech startup" or "Shopify developer Melbourne" that the broad marketplaces typically lose to niche providers.
Buyer experience
Clients browse services, post project briefs, or invite specific freelancers. Proposal management, milestone-based project scoping, in-platform messaging with file sharing, and a dispute resolution workflow keep transactions safely inside the platform.
Escrow and payments
Stripe Connect powers the full escrow flow. Buyers fund projects up front, funds are held until milestones are approved, and freelancers are paid out with automatic commission deduction. Dispute mediation workflows give the RM Freelancer team the tools to resolve issues without either party having to rely on external chargeback processes.
SEO architecture
Every page is statically generated or ISR-rendered with full server-side content. Programmatic SEO pages for city and service combinations ("graphic designers in Sydney", "WordPress developers in Brisbane") are generated automatically as new freelancers join. Structured data (Service, Review, Person, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage) is implemented everywhere it applies. Internal linking logic connects related categories, related freelancers, and related blog content automatically. A custom sitemap generator produces segmented sitemaps for freelancers, services, categories, and content, keeping each under the 50,000 URL limit for efficient crawling.
Content hub
An integrated blog and resource library for buying guides, freelancer interviews, and service category explainers, all sharing the same design system and interlinking with marketplace pages.
Admin and moderation
Full admin platform for the RM Freelancer team, covering freelancer verification, content moderation, dispute mediation, financial reporting, and SEO performance dashboards that track ranking movements on priority keyword clusters.
03 · Results
What changed, in numbers.
A marketplace acquiring users through search rather than paid ads, ranking for long-tail queries the incumbents miss, and sustaining page quality at scale.
What changed after launch, across acquisition, indexation, ranking, engagement, trust, and performance.
Organic search became the primary acquisition channel within six months of launch, a dramatic shift from competitors who rely overwhelmingly on paid acquisition. Over 12,000 organic landing pages indexed across freelancer profiles, service categories, city combinations, and content. Top-three rankings captured on several high-intent long-tail service and location keyword combinations that the incumbents do not target effectively.
Average session duration 2.4× the industry norm for freelance marketplaces, a function of the content depth and page quality. Escrow-backed transactions reduced dispute rates significantly compared to informal alternatives. And sub-two-second page load times maintained across tens of thousands of dynamic pages, thanks to ISR and edge caching.
12,000+
Organic landing pages indexed
Top 3
Rankings on high-intent long-tail keywords
2.4×
Session duration vs industry norm
+22%
Average quote value
< 2s
Page load across tens of thousands of pages
04 · Voices
In their own words.
What the founder, an SEO specialist by trade, said about working with a team that treated search as architecture from day one.
I spent fifteen years watching marketplaces leave organic traffic on the table. I needed a team that would take SEO architecture as seriously as the product itself, not bolt it on at the end. Cuebites built the platform around the search strategy from day one. Every URL, every page template, every schema decision was a conversation with the SEO implications baked in. I have not seen another marketplace built this way.
RM
Owner
RMFreelancer
Our tech stack
Built on Open Standards. No Vendor Lock-In.
Frontend
React
Next.js
TypeScript
Tailwind
Backend
Node.js
PostgreSQL
Supabase
AWS (Sydney)
AI & ML
OpenAI
LangChain
Integrations
Xero
MYOB API
Twilio SMS
We build with open-source, industry-standard technologies. Any competent developer can maintain or extend what we build. Your software, your stack, your choice.
