Client: A top 3 Ukrainian SEO agency according to IT Rating
WEDEX is a Ukrainian full-service digital marketing agency founded in 2013. Since its early days as a small office with only a few SEO specialists, the company has grown into a multidisciplinary agency with more than 50 employees across eight departments.
Today, WEDEX provides end-to-end services in online marketing, web-development, and content production. The agency manages over 200 active projects, delivering comprehensive digital growth strategies with a primary focus on the e-commerce sector across multiple industries. The agency serves three segments: exporters, Ukrainian businesses operating abroad, and local foreign companies.
Over its 12+ years on the market, WEDEX has built a strong reputation in SEO and performance marketing, ranking among the Top 3 SEO agencies in Ukraine according to IT Rating.
Challenge: Operational inefficiency and high resource overheads
With dozens of projects running in parallel, WEDEX faced a critical challenge: the sheer volume of paid placements, reaching into the thousands, created an overwhelming operational workload.
To manage such workload, the agency maintained a dedicated link-building department, yet the manual nature of the workflow consumed hundreds of hours of senior specialists’ time. Even with a pre-existing database of 10,000 direct media contacts, the process remained inefficient due to several key factors:
- Database maintenance and resource fatigue. Keeping a massive database of media contacts up-to-date required continuous manual verification of prices and availability. Furthermore, frequently contacting publications for updates without placing actual orders led to “publisher fatigue” where they eventually stopped responding.
- Accounting and financial complexity. Managing direct payments to hundreds of publishers in different countries created a heavy accounting burden. Multiple invoices, varying contract terms, and currency conversions complicated financial operations, slowing down the procurement process.
- Scaling and language barrier. Effective international expansion would have required hiring specialized English or French-speaking outreach experts for each specific region. This would have significantly increased recruitment and operational costs.
- Budget risks and unprotected investments. Direct procurement lacked security. The agency faced risks where links could disappear shortly after payment or site owners would stop responding, leaving client marketing budgets unprotected.
Ultimately, the manual-only approach made it impossible to scale the agency’s portfolio without an increase in headcount.
Goal: Optimize manual, routine workflows to increase content distribution efficiency
WEDEX’s goals focused on:
- Optimizing all possible manual workflows such as price monitoring, database maintenance, and negotiations with media outlets.
- Establishing a reliable toolset to support clients expanding into international markets, primarily in the United States and Europe.
- Centralizing financial and legal operations, which included a transparent legal framework and the ability to operate in a white-label model aligned with the expectations of corporate clients.
Achieving these goals would have reduced the team’s workload, allowing specialists to focus on strategic initiatives rather than repetitive administrative tasks.
Serhii Ivanchenko, WEDEX’s CEO, says: “For us, ‘buying a link’ is not just a transaction, but a strategic element of organic traffic growth without search engine penalties”.
Results: Scaling the business without increasing headcount
Since 2022, WEDEX has doubled its portfolio, reaching 200 active projects, with annual publication volumes surging to more than 20,000.
To efficiently manage such a portfolio, WEDEX adopted the PRNEWS.IO platform. This move allowed them to strategically optimize a number of internal workflows.
As a result, the agency was able to handle the increased number of projects without increasing the headcount. While they used to have two specialists managing the internal database and paid placements for about 50 projects, now a single specialist handles the entire flow of 20,000 placements. The time required for making a single placement dropped for 60+ minutes to 20 minutes via PRNEWS.IO. This reclaimed hundreds of hours for senior SEO specialists to focus on high-level strategic tasks.
Beyond resource savings, WEDEX finally gained a transparent financial model. A single contract with the PRNEWS.IO platform replaced hundreds of individual invoices and complex cross-border transactions. This relieved the accounting department, minimizing the risk of errors when managing large-scale budgets.
This approach enables the agency to provide clients with favorable rates and solid guarantees without adding an extra administrative burden to the team.
By leveraging the wholesale pricing model, WEDEX secures rates that are often more accessible than one-off direct requests, helping maintain competitive service costs. This is further supported by a content permanence guarantee: if a media alters or deletes a publication, PRNEWS.IO manages the restoration or issues a full refund. Ultimately, the agency delivers a predictable, protected outcome, delegating the technical oversight of each placement to the platform.
Process: Transitioning from manual outreach to an automated workflow
WEDEX uses the PRNEWS.IO platform as its central operational hub for paid placements. The agency’s workflow is now divided into an automated stream via PRNEWS.IO and selective manual outreach for highly niche requirements or publishers that do not collaborate with AdTech platforms.
Using the PRNEWS.IO has transformed the agency’s internal processes across several key areas:
- Access to a scalable media database. Working with PRNEWS.IO allowed the agency to shift the burden of infrastructure maintenance to the platform. Instead of manually building and updating private contact lists, WEDEX gained instant access to a curated catalog of 106,000+ publications, updated continuously This eliminated costly database audits and replaced fragmented manual outreach. Instead of endless email threads, the team now places orders as easily as in a supermarket, moving straight from selection to rapid publication.
- Data-Driven publisher scoring. Instead of deep manual audits, managers rely on PRNEWS.IO’s built-in metrics. They select relevant resources by evaluating key SEO indicators directly within the platform: Domain Authority (DA), organic traffic trends, audience geography, and indexed page count. The entire technical analysis is completed directly within the catalog.
- Real-Time CRM synchronization. The agency stopped tracking publications in spreadsheets. Instead, they manage the entire process through the PRNEWS.IO dashboard. This allows a single manager to oversee dozens of projects simultaneously in a single interface.
- Streamlined financial planning. The procurement process became continuous thanks to a pre-funded platform balance. The agency no longer needs to pay individual invoices for every single link and wait for the payment confirmation. Instead, managers launch publications instantly using a single pre-funded balance, reducing the time from selection to order to just a few minutes.
- Content Writing. When the in-house editorial team is tied up with strategic tasks, SEO content preparation is delegated to the PRNEWS.IO platform’s writers. This ensures publication continuity regardless of internal resource availability or staff vacations.
This approach scales perfectly across international markets. For an SEO specialist, it doesn’t matter where to buy placements — in the U.S., or in Poland, or on the local market: everything is done in the same interface with identical metrics. This allows the agency to enter new markets in a single day without disrupting internal workflows.
Testimonial by Serhii Ivanchenko, CEO WEDEX
“Using PRNEWS.IO at WEDEX is more than just a method for acquiring placements; it is a strategic decision that enables us to scale client results without compromising quality. The platform handles the most labor-intensive and administrative aspects of the process: maintaining a massive publisher database, managing financial logistics, and providing legal support for every transaction.
It transforms link building from a manual craft into a managed, predictable tool. This allows our team to focus on the initiatives that truly drive ROI for the client — sophisticated strategy and sustainable traffic growth.”
Next steps: Scaling toward global leadership
The next stage of WEDEX’s growth focuses on expanding into Tier-1 markets, particularly the U.S. and Western Europe, by leveraging its automation-driven operating model. The agency aims to further redefine the role of its SEO specialists, shifting their focus from operational routines to deeper strategic analysis.
By outsourcing technical execution and financial operations to the PRNEWS.IO platform, WEDEX can scale its business and increase client ROI without proportionally expanding its administrative team.
