Case Studies
Self Development Content Publisher Case Study
Summary
Website Background: Self development content publisher
Main Objective: Recover lost ranking positions and traffic from May 2020 Core Update.
Results: Improved organic traffic by 65.44% when compared year-on-year.
The Case Study
The Objective: The main objective for this campaign was to recover the lost ranking positions and traffic after being impacted by the May 2020 Google Core Update.
The Website: This is a content publisher focused on creating informative articles about self development.
The Challenge
- Fixing keyword cannibalisation issues
- Recovering lost featured snippets
- Optimizing on page elements including page titles, headings and image alt texts
- Building authority with a more aggressive outreach strategy
The Strategy
Fixing Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization occurs when a single website unintentionally targets the same keyword across multiple URLs. This issue can be fixed in several ways - using canonical tags or redirects, but in the case of this client, we implemented internal linking to give Google more signals about the proper keyword and URL mapping.
Recover Lost Featured Snippets
Before joining us, the client had lost many featured snippet ranking positions for keywords that required instant answers. To recover these lost positions, we made sure that the most important content related to the keyword was positioned as close to the top of the page as possible. This increased the chances of Google seeing that the site was providing the information that the user was looking for.
On Page Optimization
With hundreds if not thousands of articles across the site, we identified many pages that needed their on page elements to be optimized. Making sure that page titles, headings and image alt texts are optimized is crucial to ensure that we are making it as easy as possible for Google to understand the content on the page. This also helps improve the user experience as well written headings for example, make it easier for users to navigate through the contents of a page to find what they are looking for.
Outreach Strategy
Although the site already had a strong backlink profile, the anchor texts used were relatively safe with the majority of them being branded or URL-based. However, there were also many questionable anchors being used that were not relevant to the site - these were disavowed. Following the initial backlink review, we implemented a more aggressive outreach strategy by securing backlinks from topically relevant domains using a mix of targeted, keyword-rich anchors along with branded anchors to maintain a balance. This helped continue to build the site's authority so as to match the profiles of the site's competitors.
The Results
The site's organic search traffic has grown by 65.44% when compared year-on-year.
The number of users increased from 1,911,138 to 3,161,829 The number of sessions increased from 2,343,521 to 3,893,165
The client is now ranking for 63,494 keywords within the top 3 positions of the search results compared to 30,815 keywords before the start of the campaign.
This represents an increase of 106.05%.
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