About the Company
The company produces innovative, multifunctional two- and three-wheeled bicycles that can serve as a practical alternative to cars.
Goals
- Increase non-branded organic traffic.
- Rank important high-search volume keywords in Google’s top 10.
- Boost website revenue during peak seasonal months.
Strategy
- Conduct a competitive analysis to uncover competitors’ strengths and best practices for promotion.
- Optimize existing website pages to improve rankings for targeted keywords.
- Create new landing pages.
- Write blog articles to attract informational traffic.
- Build a high-quality backlinks profile.
The Results of SEO in March 2023
Search Engine Traffic (Users)
Increase in search engine traffic from October 1, 2021, to March 31, 2023 (730 > 4,300 users) (orange line)
Google visibility for priority keywords
Website visibility is an indicator that reflects the percentage of users who enter specific keywords and see the promoted website in search engines, in this case study, Google. Due to active optimization efforts for the online store, we were able to increase the website visibility from 6.2% to 50%.
Google rankings for main commercial keywords
All business-critical keywords now rank in the top 10. Some of them are consistently ranking in the top 5 now.
Thus, the SEO efforts for the bicycle online store resulted in a 489% increase in traffic from search engines (from 730 to 4,300 users). The website visibility has increased to 50%, with high-frequency keywords important for the business reaching the top 5-10 positions.
Project Overview
- The website already had basic SEO (technical, content-related).
- The website had a weak backlink profile of ~50 referring domains. The company had not engaged in paid placements prior to working with Remote SEO Staff.
- At the start of our work, search traffic was around 1400 users per month, with important high-frequency (HF) keywords ranking outside the top 30-60.
Our goals were as follows:
- Increase website traffic from search engines.
- Rank important business-related keywords in the top 10 and outperform major competitors for HF keywords.
- Boost sales from the website during peak seasonal months.
Challenges Faced During Project Execution
At the outset of our SEO efforts, we faced a challenge with slow approval cycles on the client’s end. The company lacked a manager who could communicate with the SEO specialist and account manager, and promptly coordinate the proposed project tasks. As a result, the first 2-3 months of work yielded very weak results.
Once the client appointed an in-house manager, we were able to promptly coordinate and implement our tasks to improve the project and finally began to see some positive outcomes.
Additionally, during the course of our work, we encountered traffic drops in the fall–winter season. We conducted additional analyses to determine the reasons for the decline and found that the demand seasonality strongly influenced the niche of bicycles: according to our calculations, the seasonality coefficient during peak demand was 1.7, whereas in the “off-season” it was only 0.4. This explains the declines in traffic, clicks, and other metrics on the graphs.
What SEO Efforts Were Undertaken for the Website?
Analyzing Competitor Websites
The client’s company operates in a fairly narrow but highly competitive niche in the USA, with a complex and expensive product. By the time the project’s promotion began, there were already about a dozen players in the Google search results who held their high positions in the top for years, as well as receiving a large percentage of branded traffic.The company, on the other hand, emerged in the market relatively recently, and very little branded traffic came to the website, with positions for main keywords lying beyond the top 30.
The first step was to compile a list of both well-known and newer competitor websites that ranked in the top 10 for various important project keywords. Analyzing the first set helped gather comprehensive keywords and understand which conversion elements could be implemented on the website. Analyzing the second set helped identify the actions through which the young project managed to break into Google’s top results and outperform major competitors. This often occurs through the accumulation of high-quality backlinks and the creation of new landing pages.
Competitor analysis helped us form a further strategy for working on the project, the main points of which included:
- Expanding the keywords lists with new commercial and informational keywords that were not previously promoted on the website.
- Identification and creation of new landing pages.
- Gathering potential traffic topics for the blog and subsequent work on content marketing.
- Selection of websites and placement of links to the promoted project.
Next, we will describe the main tasks that allowed the project to improve its performance.
On-Page SEO
Seeking Untapped Semantic Opportunities and Supplementary Keywords
Following the analysis of competitor websites, we have identified that the project is not being promoted for all possible keywords on this topic. Therefore, in the process of working on On-page SEO, we started to collect:
- keyword gaps – keywords that competitors use for promotion and for which they are already ranked in the search results, but the client’s project is not (for new landing pages);
- additional keywords – keywords for existing landing pages that were not used during the initial SEO optimization of the pages (different forms of the primary query, long-tail keywords, etc.).
To search for keyword gaps, we used Ahrefs and SemRush tools. We selected 3-5 competitors, analyzed their semantic core, and compiled clusters of new keywords that we can use in promotion, both commercial and informational.
To search for additional keywords, we worked with Google Search Console and its tool “Search Results” -> “Keywords.” As part of the task, we analyzed lists of keywords for which the website was already being searched in Google results and selected those with high impressions but low clicks and which were positioned in positions 11-20. Such keywords have great growth potential.
Important!
If you have an ecommerce website or a project in a rapidly developing niche, it is necessary to conduct research for new keywords every 3-4 months to capture a larger demand and gain additional traffic to the website.
Enhancing Existing Website Pages and Crafting New Ones for Optimal Performance
Upon collecting additional and keyword gaps, we proposed pinpoint adjustments to meta tags and texts to improve the ranking of pages for new keywords. We regularly work on improving the content, which allows us to ensure the growth of the website’s visibility for keywords and increase impressions and clicks in Google search results.
Crafting Informative Articles for the Blog
It is crucial for the project to generate informational traffic, so we also focused on gathering informational intent keywords and writing articles for the blog. The challenge at this stage of the work was finding good native copywriters who could quickly grasp the subject matter. A manager from the company joined the search process, and together we were able to find three copywriters who consistently produced high-quality content for users throughout the project duration.
The process of preparing content for the blog looked as follows:
- Creating a content plan and aligning blog topics with the manager.
- Drafting a SEO brief (including an article outline, text requirements, keywords, etc.) and assigning it to the copywriter.
- Proofreading and, if necessary, adjusting the texts. Proposing optimized meta-tags, interlinking with commercial pages, and image optimization.
- Coordinating and publishing articles on the website. Accelerating indexing using the Google Indexing API.
Over the course of the project, we have authored over 20 informational articles. Information requests in this niche are primarily low-frequency (LF), so traffic from the blog constitutes a small percentage of the overall traffic. We managed to increase the blog’s traffic from 200 users to 500 as of March 2023.
Off-Page SEO
Improving the website’s backlink profile emerged as one of the pivotal growth points for the project. Prior to engaging with Remote SEO Staff, the company had not actively pursued link building, resulting in a significant lag behind competitors in search engine rankings. As part of this task, we undertook extensive efforts to enhance the website’s backlink profile by acquiring high-quality backlinks and removing links from low-quality platforms.
Growth in Referring Domains Over Time (blue line)
To construct a link-building strategy, our initial step involved analyzing the backlink profiles of the main competitors of the project and emerging rapidly growing websites in search results. This enabled us to determine the types of links to place and select potential websites for placement. In the selection and analysis of quality platforms, we relied on SEO tools such as Ahrefs and Similarweb.
Types of placements we utilized in our work:
free
- trustworthy directories providing information about companies;
- niche forums.
paid
- guest post placements on relevant websites.
- placements on the main pages of sponsored partner projects.
For guest placements, we curated a monthly list of 5-10 high-quality platforms, taking into account the thematic relevance, focusing solely on projects related to parenting, family and motherhood, as well as those centered around bicycles and transportation.
The most effective method of engaging with these platforms proved to be outreach, wherein direct negotiations for paid placements were conducted. We devised several email templates containing links to the company’s website, and with the assistance of project managers, initiated their distribution to the moderators of these platforms. As a result, we managed to secure 2 links from such resources on a monthly basis.
Another avenue for paid placements involved obtaining links from the homepages of sponsored projects. On these platforms, we acquired links from sections such as “Our Partners” and “Our Professional Colleagues,” among others.
It is also important to note that for paid placements, we use commercial anchors for the keywords we want to rank highly for. This has allowed us to rank high-frequency and competitive keywords that were previously on the 3rd-6th page of Google search results, as well as outperform strong competitors.
Google Updates 2022
In 2022, Google updates were rolled out extensively, with some outlined below:
- Page Experience Update – desktop (February)
- Product Reviews Update (March, July, September)
- Core Update (May, September)
- Helpful Content Update (August)
- Spam Update (October, December)
- Link Spam Update (December)
The traffic decline commenced in September following a significant Core Update algorithm release. During this period, we conducted an analysis of query positions and found no widespread drops. Therefore, as mentioned at the beginning of the case study, we delved into demand seasonality and were able to ascertain that the decline was a result of seasonal demand patterns (the seasonality coefficient during summer was 1.7, while in autumn-winter it ranged from 0.4 to 0.6). Additionally, according to the client, by the end of the year, a recession in the U.S. economy had begun, leading to fewer individuals being inclined to make expensive purchases.
The Result
We have detailed just a portion of the tasks conducted on the website, as there are many such activities ongoing. However, the outlined strategy has proven instrumental in achieving outstanding results in promoting the bicycle online store in the USA.
Over 1.5 years of project engagement, we have realized a threefold increase in website search traffic, elevated critical commercial keywords into the top 10 search rankings, and successfully amplified website revenue by 128% during peak seasonal months!
The result was achieved through:
- content improvements;
- creating new commercial pages and writing blog articles;
- active work to improve the backlink profile.
Interested in Replicating the Success?
Submit a request on our website, and Remote SEO Staff specialists will provide consultation on SEO outsourcing services and answer any questions you may have. We look forward to hearing from you!
