SEO Case Study: 534% More Organic Traffic

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organic search traffic growth

We grew a client’s organic search traffic by 534%. Here’s how we did it:

How to Grow Organic Search Traffic by 534% Using AMP…?

The client in this case study runs a media website in the competitive legal space. Here’s what we did to grow their organic traffic in a short amount of time:

1. Optimize Loading Speed & Mobile UX

The client was using a dated, slow WordPress theme and had an excessive amount of plugins. So the first thing we did was consolidate and delete plugins.

Then we pitched the client on moving to a 100% AMP website.

The rationale was simple:

They’re a content site, and the page loading speed is paramount to their success.

Plus, Google Adsense plays nice with AMP. Fortunately, the client agreed! We spent about a month making the website 100% AMP compliant.

Here are a few things we did:

We selected “Standard” mode on the AMP plugin, which will make your entire website AMP by default.

However, you can manually disable AMP on any page if you want.

We also:

  • Eliminated and replaced all plugins that don’t play well with AMP
  • Installed GeneratePress WordPress theme because it’s lightning-fast and it’s highly customizable
  • Redesigned the new theme to match the previous one
  • We moved to Google Tag manager and made the tracking AMP-compliant.

Here’s their performance before and after these changes:

The cool part about a 100% AMP-friendly website is that it optimizes speed and mobile experience simultaneously.

2. Eradicate “Dead” Content

The website had nearly 3,000 blog posts when we started. The only way to tackle this level of content volume is with data.

So we did a complete content audit similar to what I do in this video:

In a content audit, I’m looking for a few things:

Is there keyword cannibalization (when two or more pages are targeting the same keyword)?

Fixing keyword cannibalization is a priority because it can kill your performance.

Are there pages with no traffic, no leads, no sales, and no backlinks?

These pages become the priority for deletion, redirection, or consolidation.

In the case of this client, we decide to take a “start from scratch” approach. Most of the content was dated and thin.

That’s why we chose to delete 2,170 posts.

Now we’re replacing this content with new SEO content built to rank instead of content created to meet content publishing targets.

3. Increase Publishing Velocity

Google is slowly removing the deleted content and reindexing the site. At the same time, we’re publishing new SEO content built around our proven framework.

This client, fortunately, has a team of writers, so it’s making our life easier.

Here’s how our SEO content development process looks at a high level:

1. Identify qualified keywords with low competition

Targeting low competition keywords can help you get early momentum, which makes ranking easier in the future.

Why? Because you’ve built topical authority.

The more topical authority you have, the easier it is to rank.

2. Identify clustering opportunities

About 20% of the keywords we target won’t have much search volume. And it doesn’t matter because we’re qualifying the topics using other sources.

In particular, Google’s “People Also Ask” SERP feature.

We use this tool to find these clustering opportunities.

3. Create SEO content strategies

We separate our SEO content strategy and briefs into two different templates.

In the “SEO Content Strategy” brief, we answer questions like:

  • What SERP features are present?
  • What’s the ideal word count?
  • How many backlinks will we need?
  • Do competitors satisfy the intent correctly?
  • What’s our unique angle for differentiation?

There’s a total of 29 various points we tackle in our SEO content strategy briefs.

It may seem excessive, but our goal is to avoid being wrong.

4. Create SEO content briefs for the writer

Once we finish the SEO content strategy, we develop an SEO content brief for the writer.

It pulls information from the strategy brief but also adds some other critical points like:

  • Exact keyword mentions
  • Secondary keywords to use
  • Phrases to include (pulled from Surfer SEO)
  • Writing guidelines like Angle, Audience, Tone, and other key points

We then send this to the writer and then perform the final step in the process.

5. Optimize the content for search

If we tackled the previous steps well, there shouldn’t be much to optimize. However, we still run the content through Grammarly (to improve grammar, spelling, and readability), and then we run it through Surfer.

Watch this video if you want to learn how to do on-page SEO:

6. Acquire editorial backlinks

Do all the previous steps well, and you won’t need many backlinks to rank. You just need the right types of backlinks. Those are going to be backlinks from trusted websites with authority.

We’re Just Getting Started!

The early stages of an SEO campaign are challenging because you’re typically cleaning house. But once the foundation is strong and you’re pushing out SEO content (the right way), you’ll start to see traction.

Then throw some powerful editorial backlinks into the mix, and your organic traffic will be off to the races.

Listen:

If you’re struggling to get consistent SEO results, then I recommend enrolling in Gotch SEO Academy. It will show how to get first-page rankings and more organic search traffic (systematically).

If you need more hands-on SEO help, then book a free SEO strategy session, and let’s see if there’s an opportunity for us to work together.

Thanks for reading, and share it if you got value!

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