
1. How We 10x’d The Traffic To An Online Store
E-Commerce Industry Background This site was getting almost no traffic, even though it was registered in late 2013. The owner had spent a good amount of time on this site and built out a significant amount of pages, however, it wasn’t getting hardly ANY traffic.
Audit
The first thing we always do is audit the site to see if it has any major underlying issues. This site had no penalties, it just never ranked page 1 for the target keywords. It also had no over-optimization, they just didn’t have many links.
Ahrefs shows organic keywords but it doesn’t tell the whole story - You can see below that the site had keywords in the top 100, but that’s not as important in being in the top 10. That’s where our “easy wins analysis” REALLY COMES IN HANDY.
Easy Wins Analysis
With our easy wins analysis, we look for keywords that are ranking somewhere in Google, but not in the top spots where the majority of the traffic is. If we can identify these, we can push them up and see quicker traffic gains.
For this site, we identified 1001 easy wins keywords, ranking mostly on page 2-3 with traffic between 10 - 9,400ms, with CPC between about .50 cents - $6.
This site had HUGE potential, but since the site wasn’t cracking page 1, it wasn’t getting much love.
Content Gap Analysis
With the content gap analysis, we look for competitor keywords that the site isn't targeting yet, and this becomes the basis for our content creation.
For this site, we found 103 keywords volume between 150 - 2900 ms, with similar PPC costs to the easy wins. We worked with the client to pick out high priorities and selected some keywords based on their industry trends knowledge (This is why we work WITH the customers to understand business goals).
Here’s what our campaigns looked like:
Month 1:
- 1 Guest Post - Exact match on easy wins
- 1 Guest Post - Exact match (another kw) on another easy win
- HOTH Blogger 1 x 1000 word post - informational kw focus based on industry trends
- 1 Guest Post - money keyword variation
- 1 Guest Post - money keyword variation
- HOTH Blogger 1 x 1000 word post - money keyword
- 1 Guest Post - Branded
- 1 Guest Post - Branded
- HOTH Blogger 1 x 1000 - Content gap kw, high volume
Takeaways
This was only 3 months of work and this site has a ton more potential. In the next 3 months, we’ll begin linking some high volume keywords that we used for content. This site is set up for domination in the niche!
2. How We Drove $8k Worth Of Web Traffic
Local Business Background So this one is a bit crazy because it's both non-US and even Non-English - It's a French Canadian Site. For most of our SEO products, we work natively in English but the client was OK with that even though it's a French site. This was a good test to see if our strategy would hold up in a non-English use case. Audit We always start with an audit. This site had no penalties, it just wasn’t getting much traffic. They were slightly over optimized for their money keywords, having 1 exact match at 28% and another at 25%. This wasn't a big deal, as they just didn’t have many links, but still a consideration. Easy Wins - Find “Hidden Goldmines” This had less easy wins than some other sites, but that’s OK because it’s local. Traffic is lower than other niches, but it will convert higher since there is higher intent. We found 43 terms with traffic between 20 - 1000 searches a month, with CPC between .20c - $5 a click. We started by focusing on some high priorities around the $4-$5 a click range. Competitive Gap We found 31 terms between 20 - 1,600 ms with CPC between .10 - $3. Some of these were local areas they hadn’t targeted yet, some of these were popular brand names of appliances that they work with, and some of these were great keywords for services they offer that they don’t have pages for yet, or weren’t optimizing. We showed them all of these. This one was a bit different than our other case studies in that they had actually started doing SEO on their own with us around January 2016 before they hopped on HOTH X mid 2017. Their first order was placed in March 2016, and right after that they got a nice bump. For some reason, they stopped and didn’t place an order until Aug 2016:
They started ramping up orders around January 2017 with a mix of HOTH Platinum, HOTH Press etc:
Mid 2017, they hopped on HOTH X and we went at it more strategically:
Remember we have limited options, this is international AND foreign language, so here's what the strategy looked like:
Month 1-3 all the same
- Mix of Natural, Branded, and exact match since we have control
BOOM!
What's even cooler is that they have spent in total, all time since 2016 with us $5,300.99. However, Ahrefs is reporting a PPC cost of $8k PER MONTH.
$8,000 per month = $96k per year they would have to spend on PPC!!
Takeaway
The takeaway from this is that consistency is key. As you can see from the charts above, their SEO dropped off when they stopped taking action, and ramped back up when they got more consistent.
By using our SEO strategy, you can uncover big wins for consistent results. No matter what type of business you are, we probably have a solution for you. In addition, it's important to not focus on tons of traffic - focus on the RIGHT TARGETED traffic.
3. A Traffic Story: From 100 to 2500 Monthly Visitors
E-Commerce Industry Background This is an online store that sells items that cost between ~$50 - a few hundred dollars each. They had started SEO with us and did some blog content starting Feb 2017 and some linking starting April 2017. Audit This site had very little traffic until this year. They had No over optimization since most of the SEO was with us. Easy Wins Analysis We found 76 potential targets, mostly bottom of page 1 through page 3 all with CPC between .60 and $2.50. These terms / URLs were a mix between homepage, product pages, and their blog content and we selected high priority targets with the customer. Competitive Gap Analysis E-commerce is a bit different that other sites with the content gap analysis. When you run it, you often get a ton of product names that you may not sell. The other thing is that many stores have very little content on their product pages (not good for ranking). We work closely with the client on these and pick targets together. In this case they LOVED our content and we found some killer keywords where we could write long articles about. Month 1 - 3 we kept strategy the same- Blogger 4 X 1000 word with nice volume keywords related to the niche products
Going Forward
Now we have these awesome, long form blog content ranking (AND they are valuable pieces of content, as opposed to just product pages), we’ll be able to do some surgical link building and get these pushed up even farther.
What’s great is that we have LOTs of content to work with now… and it’s beginning to show!
By following this strategy, we see Google starting to unlock the floodgates - This is showing the massive potential that we can target coming up:
Takeaways
Ecommerce needs content, and by writing long form blog posts, you can start ranking for your valuable keywords. These pages are easier to rank, and you can do an internal link to your product pages. After you have the content, it makes getting good links 1000X easier!
4. The Key To Quintupling Your Keywords
AAS Industry Overview This is a software as a service business with big contracts. Even though most of the terms they want to target have small search volume, it's OK because they are very valuable keywords. Just 1 conversion for them means big money. This site had a pretty good amount of content, full pages, a blog, but they just weren’t seeing the rankings. Audit This site had no previous penalties. It did have some previous traffic, but it wasn't growing. There was no over optimization, and overall they just didn’t have enough link juice! We wanted to increase their link equity, as well as continue making sure they got consistent content. Easy Wins This site had good content, a few first page rankings, but this is such a lucrative industry just getting a few more clients could easily mean $100k+ a year difference per client - Some of the PPC costs were up to $130 per click! We found 114 terms with volume between 10-40 a month, with an average CPC of $20! The majority of these terms were on page 2-3. We knew from the beginning we probably wouldn't see impressive traffic graphs for easy wins, but it would be lucrative! Competitive Gap We found 301 terms between 300 - 10,000 searches a month, all with CPC. However this is a competitive space, and there were lots of brand names in there. Even with that said, there were lots of gems in there and we shared these ALL with the client. Strategy This was a pretty sound HOTH X strategy without too many variations. Here’s what we did: Month 1- 1 Guest Post - exact match with easy win keywords
- 1 Guest Post - exact match with other easy win keywords
- 1 HOTH Blogger x 1000 words - exact match from content gap
- 1 Guest Post - exact match with easy wins
- 1 Guest Post - exact match product page 2 from easy wins
- 1 x HOTH Blogger 1000 - keyword from content gap
- 1 Guest Post - exact match
- 1 Guest Post - partial match product page 2
- 1 x HOTH Blogger 1000 - keyword from content gap
Traffic following suit:
and the $$$:
Takeaway
If you have a good amount of content, but you’re not getting ranking, build high quality, diverse links. Remember content + authority links is the key.
Month 4+ starts getting really exciting because we see the results from the linking, have more to target, and can push more to page 1!
Conclusion
As you can see, by following a strategic plan, you can get some pretty impressive results in a short period of time. All these clients are on our HOTH X managed SEO program. We encourage everyone to be consistent in their SEO plan and stay on for at least 3 months to start seeing results. Any questions? Let us know in the comments!The author
null null
description
Discussion
Comments
Kevin Puls
March 28th, 2020
Thanks for this article, Clayton.
I must have read it about three times.
I think that, and correct me if I’m wrong, many people who claim that they are SEO experts hardly ever intra-link between pages of their website.
Why is that? I mean it’s super easy to do, b/c it’s on page optimization. When I intra-link, I try to hyperlink relevant keywords.
Clayton Johnson
March 30th, 2020
I don’t think that’s a common problem for SEO experts, but yes, interlinking can help a lot 🙂
Vishal chauhan
January 18th, 2020
What an excellent post I am very glad to read this.
Do you have any suggestions to rank high in Bing?Stefan Boldisor
October 27th, 2019
Well done guys! This info is very useful!
