Iceland Review: Editorial Platform Rebuild

Iceland Review is Iceland’s leading English-language news portal and travel adviser. It’s part daily news for readers following the country, part travel guidance for visitors planning a trip. Almost all of its income comes from display advertising, so this rebuild couldn’t treat ad placements as an afterthought. They needed to be part of the layout from day one.

We rebuilt the platform on a custom WordPress theme with Advanced Ads managing every placement: banner units the editorial team can position and swap without touching a line of template code, sized to stay visible and viewable (which is what actually drives ad revenue) without slowing the site down or burying the articles underneath them.

Around that ad infrastructure, we restructured navigation for the site’s two real audiences: News for readers following Iceland day to day, and Travel for visitors planning ahead. We also cleared years of accumulated technical SEO debt and set up an ongoing webmaster relationship that’s still running today.

Real Search Console data over the past 3 months: