SEO case study

Canadian Insurance Agency Increases Web Traffic 3300%

Online businesses depend on web traffic to collect leads and ultimately earn conversions. There is a direct correlation between a website’s traffic and its conversion rate.

So many businesses struggle for years to increase their web traffic because they don’t know the specialized SEO techniques guaranteed to deliver results.

Below is a case study describing how we helped an insurance company to boost their traffic by 3,300% in only 1 year.

Background

One year ago in December 2020, we were contacted by a Canadian online insurance company looking to boost their SEO to attract more leads.

The company’s website was designed to help customers compare insurance rates and the price of various financial products. Clearly, they depended on visitors to read their content and request online quotes.

Even though the site was established in mid-2017, they had been unable to get more than 3,000 monthly visitors before reaching out to The HOTH.

We recommended that they enroll in HOTH X, our best-selling managed SEO service, because it gave them access to every product in our toolbox.

The SEO Audit

With this new client on board, we had to conduct a complete audit of their site to understand what keywords were ranking, how their content was performing, and whether there were any technical issues on their site.

Our audit indicated that traffic hovered around 1,000 monthly visitors in December 2020 (it had fallen well below past highs).

At the same time, they ranked for approximately 7,000 keywords. While that amount wasn’t the lowest we’ve ever seen, it was also trending downward.

Links play a huge role in search ranking so we checked to see how many other sites linked back to them. They had about 500 referring domains at the end of 2020.

Keyword Research

Keywords are the foundation of effective SEO. Therefore, we needed to help the client start ranking for more keywords in order to improve their traffic.

Our first step was to find “easy win” keywords. These are keywords ranking in positions No. 4-30. They aren’t as lucrative as those in the top three spots but if incorporated onto a site they can make small and immediate gains for a client.

We found that this client had over 9,300 “easy win” keywords. These included keywords like “best credit cards Canada” or “cpp payments” that ranked lower on Google but had tens of thousands of people using them each month.

A competitive gap analysis is another technique for identifying new keywords. During our research, we identified 40 domains that could be considered direct competitors to our client.

One of their top competitors ranked for 1,884 keywords that our client did not. The two companies only shared 290 keywords in common, meaning there was room to expand our client’s keywords by seeing what the competitor was doing.

Not every keyword would be relevant for our client but the gap analysis was a good start.

The SEO Campaign

Now that we had all of the necessary information the next step was to create a customized SEO strategy for the client.

As HOTH X enrollees, the client got a dedicated campaign manager who assisted with picking the best SEO products to increase their web traffic. This managed SEO service also allows a client to be as hands-on or hands-off as they wish.

After a series of conversations with the client, we decided the first step should be to grow their blog. Good content helps with Google ranking and blogs can help with traffic if they’re shared or linked to.

HOTH Blogger was the product we used the most with this client. Our team of professional writers crafted high-quality blogs for their site. The client could choose blog lengths between 500 to 2,000 words and each blog was optimized with high-performing keywords.

We spent about six months beefing up the client’s blog and then we used HOTH Link Outreach. Rather than be published on the client’s site, new blogs were published as guest posts on other sites with backlinks.

For this client, we reached out for guest posts on websites with higher domain authority.

These link-building efforts would bring significant gains to their ranking. In the meantime, we continued posting new blogs to their site.

Results

The client’s growth in monthly web traffic was more than any of us could’ve predicted! Check out the chart below. In one year, their organic traffic skyrocketed to 34,180 monthly visitors.

The insurance company's growth in organic traffic over one year.

The client’s traffic increased so rapidly because we spent the year posting new blogs with high-performing keywords. As you can see in the chart below, they ranked for about 7,000 keywords when they started working with The HOTH.

Today, the client is ranking for 27,935 keywords! You can also see an increase in keywords ranked in positions No. 1-3.

The insurance company started ranking for thousands of new keywords.

Earning backlinks is the most effective way to improve search rankings. Each link from another site is like a “vote of confidence” for your content. Don’t forget Google loves finding the best content to deliver to users.

Below you can see how the number of links from other domains catapulted from approximately 500 links to nearly 3,000 today.

A chart outlining how many backlinks the client earned.

Nothing makes us happier than seeing these record-breaking peaks in our client’s SEO report!

Takeaway

We hope your biggest takeaway from this case study is that with the right strategies you can take your SEO to levels you never expected.

Optimizing your website’s SEO is not optional. With so many businesses offering products and services online, you can’t afford to ignore your rankings. Better SEO will bring you more traffic, which will also increase your conversion rate.

Here at The HOTH, we offer options for clients. You can separately order as many of our products as you want and handle the optimization on your own, or you can sign up for our best-selling managed SEO service HOTH X.

Either option will get you results but HOTH X will ensure your efforts are laser-focused. Our dedicated campaign managers work with you every step of the way to craft an individualized and effective SEO strategy. Clients get their choice of any HOTH product and regular performance reports.

Want to hear more about getting these kinds of results for your business? Simply book a call with us to get started.