Organic traffic nearly doubles in the first 28 days.
The Client
A small to medium sized firm in the Real Estate Industry.
The Story:
August 28th, 2023:
The client had a super-specific mission: ‘’We want to be everywhere!’’
This is a sentiment often echoed by many small business owners when they first explore SEO or organic strategy.
SEO was changing, primarily due to advancements in gen AI. Everyone involved, from algorithm developers to content managers, was required to adapt. By September 2023, AI LLM’s like ChatGPT and Bard had become a mainstream part of this evolution, transitioning from feared job killers to essential work tools.
However, the client wasn’t concerned how, he simply wanted to grow.
And in the end, we knew he meant LEADS.
Table of Contents
The Challenge
We used Ahrefs, SimilarWeb, Ubbersuggest and Google tools to identify key challenges in their organic growth strategy.
Key thematic findings included:
– Poor website domain authority (this includes anything below “DR – 20” on Ahrefs).
– Competitors’ publishing volume, cross channel, was prominent.
– Google Search ranking criteria was changing and competing on a nominal budget wasn’t realistic.
These are the usual suspects.
In addition:
Exhibit A: They’re website only generated 9 visitors monthly, on 55 low ranking keywords.
Exhibit B: They’re website did not rank for any targeted keywords.
Exhibit C: Their competitors were lightyears ahead in terms of external link volume and domain authority.
The Principles of success and ROI with SEO:
1. Quality leads come from quality traffic.
2. Quality traffic comes from quality impressions.
3. To earn impressions, you must BE a relevant source of information for a key topic.
Meaning, post often and with enough quality to gain the algorithm’s trust.
Furthermore, Google has intentionally shifted focus away from smaller sites that:
– Lack in-depth content.
– Have poor internal linking structures.
– Offer subpar user experiences.
We responded to this client’s impossible request with, “game on!”.
The Plan
Keeping these challenges in mind, we decided to go bold; “Let’s get him to rank for a difficult keyword in less than 3 months.”
At Vigital, we subscribe to the mantra; Harness Creativity, Leverage Innovation, Demonstrate Mastery.
In order to do this, under Google’s new “helpful content” policies, we needed to accomplish the following:
- Publish enough content to have more links for Google to crawl and build a knowledge graph.
- Scale quality factors like personal experience, deep research, and unique offers.
- Build a crawlable framework to allow bots to discover new pages quickly.
To begin building a “rank-page-one-in-3-months” strategy for the client, we began with our SEO keyword and content research process:
- Identify the audience and competition in great detail: Who were they, which subjects did they cover, and how many times did they post on any target topic?
- Conduct keyword research to identify the top 20 relevant keywords for this brand and niche.
- Using an opportunity-gap analysis, we identify high-volume, low-competition keywords to begin creating content around.
However, SEO competition in ’23-’24 is at an all time high thanks to generative AI. So we needed to add scale to the content mix to meet the demand.
Why?
AI & EEAT. These acronyms have changed the SEO game forever.
E.E.A.T. at Scale (No, not Nom Nom!)
In order for a page to rank, according to Google, a page must demonstrate the following:
E – Expertise: You need to demonstrate a deep understanding of a key subject. To be competitive, be in the top 1% of your knowledge category – or at least appear to be.
E – Experience: If you weren’t there, don’t talk about it. This was an attack mostly on affiliates who DID NOT USE A PRODUCT BEFORE REVIEWING IT. Google sought more real experiences to support claims made in posts. This also allowed readers to relate, in turn, enhancing the USER’s overall experience – a key tenet in Google’s Search strategy.
A – Authority: Are you entry-level or a 3rd degree blackbelt? This is where you need to demonstrate your RIGHT to command attention on a topic. Be a professor, a well-known enthusiast, or a dedicated researcher on this topic. Every blogger needed to find a way to incorporate this seamlessly into their content plan.
T – Trust: How trustworthy are you? This often comes down to social proof. Reviews and testimonials are the best pillar content for this part of your strategy.
The Vigital Approach to Content Scaling
Vigital’s goal is to help our clients achieve maximum visibility on ANY digital platform.
We’ve been in SEO for over 10 years. We’ve watched the algorithm defeat countless newcomers that lacked the strategy or stamina to produce quality content toe-to-toe with the usual brands that dominated SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
The Solution: Vigital Custom Content Automation
Creativity. Innovation. Mastery.
- We used creativity to design out-of-the-box topical content that fosters a unique experience.
- We harnessed innovation to mass produce quality content chunks that we’d later assemble into articles and other media.
- We incorporated professional content writing fundamentals to ensure an engaging experience for our target reader.
In essence, we used a proprietary process to train AI on our client’s brand, their target audience, and their core offers.
We then developed a Persona for the Ideal Customer that was used to rapidly produce high quality pieces alongside our editors, designers, SEOs, and growth marketers.
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The result were unexpected.
The Results:
We made a plan to publish 8-10 times a month, and partner with social media agency TopShot Pro to scale distribution and content formats. Our partnership enabled the client to produce quality content at scale, and cross-channel.
These are a few of the early stage highlights.
The First 28 Days:
Top 10 Ranked Keywords in weeks! (3 weeks after first articles posted to be exact).
This enabled the client to begin capitalizing on fresh traffic with lead magnets and other core offers.
Note: At the time of this report snapshot, they were also new to the popular local keyword category “things to do”. So, they went from un-ranked and unknown to top 10 rankings for popular keyword categories within 30 days!
The First 60:
Backlinks doubled, and ranking keywords hit all time records.
Within 6 months
They’ve become an entirely new competitor in their search category. Over 60 new quality blogs and articles added to the site, making it larger and much more challenging to outrank.
Additional Notes
After just 6 months, the client’s impressions, traffic, and rankings exploded.
New keyword data skew keyword ranking averages (on Google Search Console), so those are removed in this image. However, organic traffic doubled for this brand in just 6 months, and all it required was a consistent publishing effort and quality SEO content production across a few platforms.
They appear on the SERPs for related keywords and now have an engaged audience.
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Many of these related keywords can be used for partnership or affiliate opportunities with local shops interested in that audience!
This creates opportunities to partner with local businesses and generate affiliate revenue through referrals through website activity alone!
In the end, we decided to build this system into a productized service. Learn more about how you can automate this strategy for your team and grow exponentially in months here.
Still wondering how to add a massive boost to your content program this year?
Schedule a 15-minute chat to discuss our custom content automation platform and how it can help you achieve similar results.
