Category: Case Studies

From 0 to 55,000 organic visits per month.

Client

DTC manufacturer in a large home appliance category.

Plan

I ran all the digital marketing here, but one of the main goals was of course a solid SEO foundation for a DTC eCommerce website within the first year. Here’s how it went.

Execution

The first hurdle was the website which was in shambles. It was aged and you couldn’t even purchase online any more, the functionality had been broken and replaced with a message to call in. The traffic was nearly 0.

The company in charge of redesigning had good intentions and the result was a nice looking website, but it performed terribly. Load times upwards of 10 seconds per page. After working intensely on speeding it up I came to the conclusion that it needed redone, again.

With a snappier theme design, paired down plugins, and a few platform optimizations, we had a solid website to work with.

It is important to note that even though a solid website delivery took months, SEO was still building in the background. I started publishing optimized articles targeting the top and bottom of the funnel within a few weeks of starting.

Things quickly started picking up pace, and I continued that pace of 3-4 articles per week for around a year.

Along with that, product and category pages received continuous SEO and CRO optimizations.

Results

We more than achieved our 1 year organic traffic targets. Both Organic traffic, and most importantly, Sales, continue to climb even further.

Gained an additional 139,000 visits per month!

Client

Niche site in the outdoor space.

Plan

The website had a decent mix of affiliate and informational content and was in the process of expanding its categories to include more topics.

One of the biggest problems here was that multiple owners and strategies over time had caused it to not be cohesive and organized. The first steps were clear:

• Remove or combine duplicate topics
• Add internal linking to and from relevant pages to create clusters of content
• Identify pillar articles for each topic
• Be sure to use varied keyword rich anchor text for internal links

With these changes in place Google would be able to better “understand” our topics and the relation of the articles between each other. We also would be sure to put our most valuable articles into focus as the “pillar” piece of content for a topic cluster.

Execution

While simple in theory, thousands of pages needed addressed. Spreadsheets were used to organize the work and a lot of time was taken to get the plan done right.

To identify what keywords to target with the anchor text I examined what was already ranking well or close to ranking well via Ahrefs.

It took about 2 months to fully execute the plan.

Results

In month 3 the traffic took a clear jump. We started at 252,756 visits in month 1 and ended month 3 with 391,904 visits – a 139,148 visit increase!

This laid the foundation and structure for future content to be put into in order thrive and drive even more traffic growth.

Gained over 402,000 visits per month!

Client

Fortune 500 Company in the Financial space

Plan

This client had a well established blog already bringing in decent traffic. But they knew they could do better.

They needed to:

1. Clean up competing content (often referred to as content cannibalization) for better rankings on those topics
2. Optimize existing content by rewriting it with SEO tool assistance, so that it can rank higher and bring more traffic

Execution

To clean up competing content I combed through their website data and found keywords that had more than one page ranking for the same keyword at different times. After reviewing the pages to be sure they were indeed covering the same topics in a similar way, I had them rewritten and combined into 1 article, so they no longer competed.

To optimize existing content, I found articles that were on ranking on page one in positions 4-10 for their target keyword, ran an analysis on them in a SEO tool that uses Natural Language Processing (NLP), and had them rewritten accordingly with a subject matter expert. The writers expertise combined with my SEO strategy and NLP analysis moved the needle on almost every article we optimized.

Results

In 9 months time their website increased by 402,000 visits per month!

From 0 to 79,658 visits in 12 months!

Client

Niche Food Product Startup

Plan

This client had little to no existing content outside of their product pages. They needed to increase organic traffic for topics that were relevant to their potential customers. 

The plan was straight forward – they needed content that:

1. Reinforced their products as a solution
2. Educated potential customers
3. Stayed true to their brand voice and identity

Execution

Their website was built on Shopify, so the SEO basics were covered pretty well and no Technical SEO adjustments needed to be made.

After researching their food category I created a content plan based on a mixture of keywords that included:

• High purchase intent
• Customer pain points
• Entertaining opinions on their product type
• Low ranking difficultly to see quicker results

With the content plan approved by the client, 2 pieces of content were produced each week for 12 months.

Results

Starting at 26 visits the month we started working together, they had 79,658 visits 12 months later!

Six months to a 775% increase in traffic!

Client

Transportation Equipment Manufacturer

Plan

When I started working with this client they had a custom built website, a grouping of product pages with little or no description, and a few random category pages. They were successful in their market, but not doing as well online for B2C searches.

We needed to audit their website code to be sure Google was parsing it correctly, organize their products in a user friendly and logical way, build industry relevant links, and start producing relevant content.

Execution

Their website was custom built in Ruby on Rails and lacked some meta data code and schema markup that are helpful for getting Google to parse and categorize a web page correctly. I worked directly with their developer to implement these changes to the code and understand their custom content management system. From their I was able to make the necessary changes to page elements, optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, and schema markup – all referred to as Technical SEO.

Once the technical SEO changes were made, I started digging into product specific changes. Many products had little or no product description on the page which is a major issue if you want a search engine to understand what a product is about and present it to a potential customer in the search results. I worked closely with the team to get accurate product details, descriptions, and product photos added to each page, drawing out the major differentiators and positioning the product description to not only help SEO, but also to help sell the product.

While working through the products and categories one by one, I also started work on the blog / news section of their website. Historically this part of their site contained short snippets of news relevant to their industry. Important information, but not something that would come up in Google’s search results. I started creating content that targeted potential customers of their products and the issues they would have prior to searching for the products. This allowed them to capture traffic before they knew the solution to their problem, so they were already on the site when they realized it. This allowed them to position themselves for an easy sale.

In addition to capturing upstream traffic, this reinforces the topical authority of the website, showing Google that you are an expert resource for the product and boosting your main product page in the search results. This is a large part of modern SEO.

Many industry specific backlinks were acquired to the site through out this time as well. These were often directed toward the newly created blog content that was created to serve as a “link magnet” by providing interesting tips or facts about the industry. A strategy that positioned them as leader to customers and peers.

Results

All of these changes were made in about 6 months time resulting in a 775% increase in traffic.

Update: Since my time with this client they have continued with my suggested content creation road map and are now at a traffic increase of 2,283%!