Scaling High-Traffic EdTech: How YTECS Built & Ranked Egzamin.pl to #1

Executive Summary

The Hook: Handling millions of concurrent users in a single week requires more than just a website; it requires military-grade infrastructure. In the world of Polish education, the “Matura” (high school exit exams) and “Egzamin Ósmoklasisty” (8th-grade exams) create a digital tsunami. For 11 months, traffic is steady. For one month, egzamin.pl explodes.

The Result: Egzamin.pl is now the “Go-To” resource for Polish students, maintaining 99.99% uptime during peak exam season and dominating Google SERPs against heavily funded media giants. This case study details how YTECS transformed a vision into a performance monster, balancing User Experience (UX), aggressive AdTech monetization, and technical SEO to capture the Gen Z market.

The Challenge: The “Matura Effect” (Traffic Spikes)

The “Matura Effect” represents a predictable but dangerous 10,000% surge in traffic during May exams, requiring infrastructure capable of instant vertical and horizontal scaling to prevent catastrophic downtime.

The Silent Period vs. The Storm

In the EdTech vertical, seasonality is not a curve; it is a cliff. Egzamin.pl faces a unique behavioral pattern. From July to February, the platform serves a steady stream of proactive students and teachers. However, as April approaches, the “panic study” phase begins, culminating in May and June where traffic volume increases by a factor of 100x overnight.

The Technical Debt of Growth

Early iterations of educational portals often rely on standard shared hosting or basic VPS setups. This works for day-to-day homework help but fails catastrophically when 50,000 students log in simultaneously at 7:00 AM to check “leaked” topics or review last-minute notes.

Previous attempts in the market had resulted in “502 Bad Gateway” errors during critical moments. For a student stressing over an exam, a site crash is unforgivable. They immediately bounce to a competitor. YTECS identified that reliability is a feature. To win the market, Egzamin.pl didn’t just need better content; it needed to be bulletproof.

The Competitor Landscape

The challenge was compounded by the competitive landscape. We were not just fighting other EdTech startups; we were fighting:

Government Portals (CKE): High domain authority, official sources.
Media Giants (Onet, WP, Interia): These entities have massive Domain Ratings (DR 80+), unlimited server budgets, and news teams churning out content by the minute.

To win, YTECS had to be faster, smarter with SEO, and offer a UX that media giants’ cluttered, ad-heavy layouts could not match.

Architecture & Performance: Surviving the Siege

YTECS utilized a decoupled architecture featuring Cloudflare Edge Caching, Redis Object Caching, and auto-scaling server clusters to maintain Green Core Web Vitals and sub-second load times under extreme concurrency.

The Tech Stack: Performance by Design

We moved away from monolithic structures toward a highly optimized, decoupled WordPress environment tailored for high reads.

Cloudflare CDN (Content Delivery Network): We implemented a “Cache Everything” page rule strategy. By serving static HTML directly from Cloudflare’s edge nodes (located physically close to users in Warsaw, Kraków, and Gdańsk), we prevented 95% of requests from ever hitting the origin server.
Redis Object Caching: For dynamic elements that couldn’t be cached at the edge (like user login sessions or real-time quiz results), we utilized Redis. This reduced database query loads by storing frequent query results in memory, dropping database strain by over 80%.
Auto-Scaling Cloud Infrastructure: We deployed on a cloud architecture (AWS/GCP mix) that utilizes load balancers to spin up additional instances automatically when CPU usage spikes above 60%. This ensured that even if traffic doubled in 10 minutes, the server capacity expanded to greet it.

Balancing AdTech with Core Web Vitals

Monetization in EdTech relies on high-volume display advertising (Programmatic, AdSense, Direct Deals). However, AdTech scripts are notoriously heavy, often blocking the main thread and destroying Core Web Vitals (CWV) metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Interaction to Next Paint (INP).

YTECS implemented a rigorous “Performance Budget” strategy:

Lazy Loading: Ads below the fold are not requested until the user scrolls near them.
Script Delay: Non-essential JavaScript is delayed until after the LCP event occurs.
Layout Stabilization: We hard-coded placeholder dimensions for all ad units. This prevents Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), a common annoyance where the text jumps when an ad loads.

Result: Egzamin.pl achieves all-green Core Web Vitals scores (LCP < 2.5s) even with a full ad inventory, satisfying both the user (speed) and the publisher (revenue).

SEO Strategy: Building Topical Authority

By implementing a strict educational taxonomy and advanced Quiz and QAPage Schema.org markup, YTECS secured rich snippets and established Topical Authority to outrank high-DR media competitors.

Semantic Search and Content Clusters

We knew we couldn’t beat media giants on “News” volume, so we beat them on “Topical Authority.” Google rewards sites that cover a subject comprehensively.

We structured Egzamin.pl using strict Silo Architecture:

Level 1: Exam Type (e.g., Matura)
Level 2: Subject (e.g., Mathematics)
Level 3: Specific Skill/Topic (e.g., Quadratic Equations)

This logical hierarchy helps search engine crawlers understand the relationship between pages. We didn’t just write about “Math”; we built a semantic web of content linking “Past Papers” to “Quizzes” to “Explanations.” This internal linking strategy passed “link juice” from high-authority news pages to deep educational content.

Schema.org: Speaking Google’s Language

EdTech offers unique opportunities for Rich Results. We didn’t just publish text; we wrapped our content in structured data:

Quiz Schema: Allowed Google to present practice questions directly in the search results, increasing Click-Through Rate (CTR).
QAPage Schema: Used for specific homework questions, allowing us to appear in the “People Also Ask” boxes.
NewsArticle vs. Article: We differentiated between time-sensitive exam news (NewsArticle) and evergreen educational guides (Article) to target different areas of the SERP (Top Stories carousel vs. Organic listings).

The “Evergreen” URL Strategy

A common mistake in EdTech is creating new URLs for every year (e.g., domain.com/matura-2023). This dilutes authority.

YTECS implemented a single-URL strategy. The URL domain.com/arkusze-maturalne-matematyka remains constant. Every year, we update the content of that page with the newest papers and archive the old ones lower down the page. This means the URL accumulates backlinks and authority year over year, making it an unshakeable fortress in the #1 position.

UX/UI Design: Capturing the Gen Z Attention Span

A “Mobile-First” design philosophy prioritized thumb-zone navigation, dark mode, and instant feedback loops to retain Gen Z users, resulting in higher engagement and reduced bounce rates on mobile devices.

Mobile-First is Not a Buzzword

92% of Egzamin.pl’s traffic comes from mobile devices. Gen Z students consume content on the bus, under desks, and in bed. Designing for desktop first and shrinking it down was not an option.

YTECS designed the UI for the “Thumb Zone”:

Primary navigation elements (Next Question, Show Answer, Menu) are located at the bottom of the screen, easily reachable with a thumb.
Touch targets are enlarged (min 44×44 pixels) to prevent “fat finger” errors.
Dark Mode: We implemented a system-aware Dark Mode. For students studying late at night, a blinding white screen is a UX failure. The site automatically respects the user’s device settings.

Gamification and Micro-Interactions

Retention is driven by dopamine. Traditional PDFs are boring. We converted static “Arkusze” (past papers) into interactive quizzes.

Instant Feedback: Students get immediate “Correct/Incorrect” validation with explanations.
Progress Bars: Visual indicators of completion encourage users to finish the test.
Shareability: Results screens were designed specifically to be screenshotted and shared on Instagram Stories or TikTok, creating organic viral loops.

The Results (Metrics)

Egzamin.pl achieved 100% uptime during peak exam hours, dominated top-3 SERP positions for high-volume keywords, and maintained sub-second load times, solidifying its status as the market leader.

The implementation of the YTECS strategy delivered measurable, business-critical results during the most recent exam cycle:

1. Performance & Reliability

Uptime: Achieved 99.99% availability during the critical “Matura week,” serving millions of requests without a single server crash.
Speed: Average Page Load Time on 4G networks dropped to 0.8 seconds.
Core Web Vitals: maintained a 96% “Good” URL ratio in Google Search Console, a direct ranking factor boost.

2. SEO Dominance

Rankings: Secured #1 positions for “highly contested” keywords including “matura polski arkusze,” “kalkulator maturalny,” and “testy ósmoklasisty.”
Visibility: Outranked major news portals (Onet, WP) in the “Education” sector for organic search visibility.
CTR: Rich Snippets (FAQ and Quiz schema) improved organic CTR by 22% compared to standard listings.

3. Business Impact

Ad Viewability: Despite lazy loading, ad viewability increased to 75% because users stayed on the page longer due to faster load times.
User Retention: Bounce rate on mobile devices decreased by 15% following the UX overhaul.

The success of Egzamin.pl proves that in the high-stakes world of EdTech, content is King, but infrastructure is the Castle. Without a scalable architecture, the best content in the world is inaccessible. Without semantic SEO, it is invisible.

YTECS demonstrated that by understanding the specific behaviors of Gen Z users and the technical requirements of modern search engines, it is possible to build a platform that doesn’t just survive the seasonal flood—it rides the wave to the top.

We don’t just build websites; we build scalable digital ecosystems. If we can optimize for millions of impatient teenagers during the most stressful week of their lives, we can handle your corporate traffic.

Need a platform that scales? Contact YTECS.

Scaling High-Traffic EdTech: How YTECS Built & Ranked Egzamin.pl to #1

Table of Contents

Executive Summary